Before I share our Barcelona, Spain🇪🇸 adventure with you there are a couple of things you should know to help set the story! After booking our travels to Europe we heard of a couple of incidents in Barcelona. First a car bombing, then escalating riots in Catalonia as the state pushed for Independence from Spain. These incidents made us a little nervous for our adventure there, but then again–YOLO!
We arrived at the Barcelona airport at about 11 pm on Thursday, October 5th. We switched our original form of transportation to a rental car–thinking it would be better to cruise around at our own pace and not be on public transportation. After finding our car at about midnight we got into our Fiat 500 and tried to make our way out of the parking lot!
I think it took us 30 minutes to figure out the vehicle. We started the car–which continuously beeped at us, when we got that off we couldn’t figure out how to shut off the parking brake–so we asked some Spaniards to help. After getting the beeping to stop and getting the parking brake off, our next challenge was to figure out how to put the thing in drive. You get the picture, we didn’t know how to work this thing! Finally, we made it out of the lot and onto the freeway.
We entered downtown Barcelona at about 12:30 am. If you ever go, I’d highly recommend showing up at an earlier hour. 😳 The streets were dark and eerie, the gothic architecture just added to the ambiance! There were groups of people in random areas having parties and hangouts–can you say sketchy? The address to the parking lot we were suppose to park in was a few blocks from the flat, so we made a couple of laps looking for closer parking. After finding the flat, we parked out front trying to decide if we even wanted to stay there. As we were sitting in our Fiat with no tint and unlocked (because we didn’t know how to lock it) a guy walked directly towards us as if he is going to get in the car too!! Luckily he just stared and kept walking! We looked around and there was a nightclub of some sort right below the flat which was making for an even sketchier scene! Our Airbnb experiences were officially a fail! We started looking up hotels and off we went to stay somewhere other than the heart of Catalonia.
Our accommodations ended up being here. Included in our stay was an elaborate buffet breakfast and an executive hour of drinks and snacks. Being a little shook up after the events of the evening we thought that sounded amazing because if everything else was a fail in Barcelona we would at least be all set staying in inside our hotel until we flew back to the states! 😂 Ok we ended up getting out and doing things but hey we had all we needed right there at the hotel.
We checked the weather for Friday and saw that the warmest weather near Barcelona was a beach, south of Barcelona. So we headed there! I think it took us 1 hour to maneuver our way out of the city because of wrong turns and the GPS not being quite up-to-date with their road systems–but we finally made it! If you read the intro to our adventures you know that the Fiat was quite a trip in itself! Our beach adventures were where we really took it for a spin! At one point we were driving down a street basically knocking over restaurant tables because it was so tight and no other vehicles to be found. (Not sure this street was even made for vehicles.) This city was another quite sketchy place, but we made it to the beach and just minded our own business laying out! #anothertoplessbeach😳
Leaving the beach was when we took the Fiat racing over speed humps the size of Texas!! #justforfun
Saturday we slept in and then headed to some sites that we thought would be fun to see before our flight out that evening.
Our day was filled with crazy driving, beautiful sites, and a couple of tired travelers. Ok maybe I shouldn’t speak for Jess, but I was exhausted!
We headed to the airport as we anticipated our 10 hour flight to Ft. Lauderdale and the next 24 hours of travel!! #woof I slept approx 2 hours on this flight 😅 which is really abnormal for me, I’m usually out on flights! We landed safely at FLL and made it through customs and then a new adventure began as we had planned to spend the night in the airport to make our flight out at 6:00 am to Charlotte. (It was about 12:00 am when we got settled in) Lets just say I think I slept 1 hour during that period! To pass time we ordered a pizza and had it delivered–that didn’t pass enough time, but was some good American food! I have never looked at the clock more in my life, I think it was like every 30 minutes lol. So we finally made it on our flight and then to Charlotte where we parted ways and took our separate flights to Indy and San Fran. Jess, thanks so much for an amazing Europe trip! It was definitely a trip of a lifetime and am so glad you worked to make it happen. ❤️
I arrived in San Fran at noon on Sunday, October 8th where I was greeted by my little family! #bucherpartyof3 It was great to see them and the smiles that little G greeted me with were surreal– he literally couldn’t stop smiling! #priceless
Well thanks for following our Europe adventures!
Until next time, stay classy⚜
Glad you had fun! Even more glad to have you home 😉
Melinda Just was able to look at. Loved it. looked like fun. You and Jess are really adventuresome. Keep the stories coming…..Have a great Thanksgiving. Love Aunt Enid