Day 1 : Nov 9, 2009

Arrived at Barcelona El Prat Aeroport about 10-ish am. Head towards the train terminal and bought ourselves a T10 (Zone 1) metro ticket for 7.70EUR from the ticket machine. T10 meaning 10 trips on metro/ train/ bus/ tram and the special thing about the ticket is that it can be shared among the members of the group- 1st person slip the T10 card into the validation machine, walk through the turnstile, and passed the T10 ticket to the next person, so on and so forth. And Zone 1 is the city centre, where most of the attractions would be. So Zone 1 would suffice for our 2 days trip, although we had to buy individual tickets to Parc Guell.

First and foremost was to check into our hostel to unload our “burden”. Mine was about 10kg, and MV’s was 11kg. Why are we already carrying so heavy haversacks at the beginning of our trip? I have no idea.

Anyway, thanks to Google map already bookmarked into MV’s iPod Touch (which I named Lulu, short for orlulu- Hokkien for tarry black), a compass, along with a well developed public transport system, moving around Barcelona was an ease. A compass?! Where were you going? Barcelona rainforest? If that was your first reaction, so was mine. It was in MV’s bag. And thankfully he brought it because it saved us the trouble of having to walk down the road to a junction, check the names of the adjacent roads, and find out if we were on the right direction. And believe me, it could be a long walk.

We took the train from Aeroport to El Clot-Arago, which was the nearest station to our hostel- Barcelona Urbany Hostel. From there, we followed the directions given on the reservation email.

Note: Most hostels we stayed in throughout our trip were booked from Hostel Bookers. It is a very reliable website, covering extensive locations with inexhaustible hostels. It’s a good place to start looking. Once you have narrowed down the hostels, it is equally important to check out reviews of the hostels from other websites. Sounds like a lot of work, especially since we were travelling upto 16 days around Europe. But thanks to Ko, it was all taken care off during our exam.

After unloading our bags, off we went for sight seeing. Not far from our hostel, we stopped for lunch in a restaurant, which serves set lunch at a somewhat reasonable price. We ordered grilled rabbit (Poor, whabbit!) for 7EUR, and a bottle of local wine for 3EUR. I still can’t believe we ate rabbit, especially when we were contemplating to become full time (or most of the time) vegetarian. But that’s another story, another time.

Above: Hmm.. The 3 EUR bottle of local wine.

Above: What's with the sleepy eyes? Anyway, observe the wall behind MV. They probably just hang everything that they are not using from the kitchen.

To make things worse, the meal was bad. It felt as though the killing was so not worth it, and it was too late to save the rabbit. The only consolation was the cheap but good wine to help us swallow our remorse. We did not eat much of the poor animal. Instead, we became full because of the bread that came with it.

Although we had such a lousy first meal, we started our Day of Gaudi’s creation in Barcelona. Gaudi (1852- 1926) was THE architect behind all the peculiar buildings found in Barcelona.

First on our itinerary was La Sagrada Familia ( Translate: The Holy Family).

Next Gaudi’s creation that we visited was Casa Milà (La Pedrera), at Passeig de Gracia.

The other Gaudi’s creation along Passeig de Gracia was Casa Batlló.

As we walked down the road, we came to Placa de Catalunya.

There’s an information (underground) building, to which we were told to go and ask for bus information to Parc Güell.

Tips: Unless you want to pay a visit to the information centre, let me share with you here how to get to Parc Güell and save you the trouble. At Placa de Catalunya, locate where Corté Ingles departmental store is. Walk towards that building. Now, that building should be directly on your right, and the Placa is on your left (across the street). Wait at the bus stop, where Bus 24 stops. You can buy the ticket from the bus driver (I can’t remember how much it was). It’s that simple.

The bus became very crowded along the way. But we did enjoy the scenery and buildings with nice balconies. We passed Casa Batlló on the left, at the beginning of the journey .

Above: The egg shaped building is Torre Agbar. We could see the building just outside our hostel room window. But I forgot to take a picture of it, thinking that I would do it before we leave. But then again. maybe not.

Just hanging out at the peak and enjoy the sunset.

We took the same Bus 24 back to Placa after enjoying the sunset at Parc Güell. By the time we reached, it was already pitched dark. We went inside Corté Ingles departmental store, get a few bottles of water and some snacks; and then look for a restaurant for dinner. The only one that they have is on the top floor. As the place was quite packed, we thought the food must be quite good and so we went in. We ordered a plate of seafood paella and a slice of cake for dessert, which we saw many people took.

Looks very appetising on these pictures I took.

But do not be fooled by the looks. The paella was too dry, the rice was hard and it was not warm enough. As for the dessert, it was basically vanilla cake with sunflower seeds and icing sugar. It was an interesting initial few bites, but it became too sweet by the 4th bite. What a disappointment.

We took the metro back to our hostel after that and called it a day, still very much disappointed with all the meals we had that day.