Barcelona in January

As I said before, Yeji (one of my friends) and I spontaneously booked a trip to Barcelona last week. We had no resits, so we had a week off and why not celebrate this in beautiful Barcelona? Since tickets were only 50 euros and we found a hostel (which was called 'The Hipstel', awesome right?) for only 9 euros a night with breakfast included, the choice was easily made.


Last Tuesday we flew from Eindhoven (a city in the south of the Netherlands) to Girona, Barcelona. We only booked hand luggage, so it was quite a disaster to get everything we wanted to bring with us in those small suitcases. Eventually, we managed to do this and we began our short trip. We arrived at the hostel around dinner time. Fortunately, everything went well. I'm emphasizing this, since we both are awfully chaotic. We lost our key, phones and passports several times and I'm not even talking about the amount of times our sense of direction left us in the lurge.

Anyway, the first night we had planned to go out, despite the fact we didn't sleep good at all the night before our departure. I only slept 3 hours that night, which wasn't the best way to start a trip filled with shopping, wandering through Barcelona and going out. But a friend of Yeji had worked in a very exclusive club at the beach last year, and she'd arranged to put us on the guest list, so we had no choice. That night was a special R&B/Hiphop night as well, so it turned out to be pretty nice. Though the drinks had outrageous prizes, we had a good time, since the music was very good. It was funny to see all those Spanish party people, everyone was looking shiny: high heels, short dresses and lots of hair. Quite different from Amsterdam.

































The second day was dedicated entirely to shopping. One of the reasons we came to Barcelona! Topshop was very disappointing. The store was tiny, especially compared to those in London and NY and the collection wasn't special either. Thank god Zara was heaven on earth. Everything is cheaper in Spain anyhow (since Zara is spanish) and there was still sale, so the prizes were amazing. I bought a few wonderful things, all about 10 euros a piece. Mango was good as well. After a long day, we had dinner in a cosy bar, called Bar Lobo. We ate a lot of hummus, which we had also bought for breakfast and lunch, since it is de-li-ci-ous.

That night we wanted to go to some place a bit more underground. We wanted to see some cute guys and since pushy and smooth Spaniards are definitely not our type, we figured we had to look for them in a place other than exclusive clubs. So we approached some alternatively looking girls that afternoon and asked them where we had to go. They gave us the name of a club and so that's where we want that night. Unfortunately, it wasn't a big success (music was lousy and there was very few people over there) and so we asked for a place where they played techno.

Thursday we got up early again, since we didn't want to miss the free breakfast. The few hours of sleep every night began to take its toll. And my entire body was hurting but that didn't keep us from walking to the Sagrada Familia, which is still worked on but the process is a bit further than the last time I was in Barcelona. Did I already mention the sun was shining and it felt like summer that day? All days we were in Barcelona actually. You could already smell spring in the air, I love that feeling. I could wear my summer jacket the entire time, I didn't even bring my fur coat!

After a short rest in the hostel, we went to El Born, a student and vintage area. We went to Parc Ciutadella and visited Musée Picasso. I only knew him from the work he's famous for, with the absurd forms and faces. It turned out he made some very realistic and impressionistic work as well, when he was only fifteen years old! Unfortunately, they were working on the museum, so we could only see the beginning and the end of his work.


































That night was the most amazing night of all. Yeji's friend had arranged we could visit a Burlesque Dinner Show in the same club we were Tuesday night. We were eating with the owner of the club and a friend of his. I didn't know what to expect, but they turned out to be very nice and funny. The food was a-ma-zing. We had sushi first, then the best salmon I have ever tasted and some caramel dessert. The show was even better. The girls wore great outfits, not trashy at all, very sexy. They performed songs like 'Fever', 'Candy Man', etc. The lead singer sang 'And I'm telling you...' from Dreamgirls and she almost did this as good as Jennifer Hudson and that means a lot! They were pole dancing as well, including a guy. We were completely blown away, he had so much power in his body, he was almost floating through the air. We stayed a while to dance that night until our feet couldn't keep up, cause we wore our high heels ;)
 
Friday was our last day and we had a check-out at 10 o'clock, which was pretty tough. That day we didn't do that much. We went to the beach in the morning, which was fabulous. It was 24 degrees, we played music and really enjoyed this, since it was raining in our home town! We strolled through El Born the rest of the day and had a lovely meal that night. We concluded our trips with drinks at a cocktail bar and went to our hostel to wait till we could take the bus back to the airport.

 

A tradition definitely is born. For not a lot of money, a few days in sunny Barcelona, it's the best idea we had in a long time. Barcelona, we'll be back.