1st Day In Barcelona – Things Are Looking Up!

After the way things turned out in Madrid (with the unhelpful people, the crappy hostel, and the pickpocketing), I wasn’t particularly optimistic about Barcelona.  But after our first day here, it looks as though Spain might not be so bad after all!

When we arrived at the hostel, we were happily greeted by a staff member who spoke English (yay!).  She explained that the private rooms in which we were booked were located in a different building than the dorms/reception but they had a map with directions and it was only a block away.  We were required to pay a 50 euro damage deposit (which will be returned at the end if we follow the rules such as not letting non-guests into the building, not damaging the room, etc.) and then she asked if we wanted to join in their “Welcome Dinner” which takes place every Friday evening.  For 6 euros/person they serve you a salad, a Spanish omlette, a vegetarian pasta and wine.  We had done this at the hostel in Lisbon and it turned out quite well, so we figured we might as well sign up for this one!

We headed over to the flat where the private rooms are and were pleasantly surprised to find a nice room with an actual double bed (not just two single beds pushed together like in Porto or two terrible bunk beds like in Madrid). There are a total of 4 rooms in the flat and we share a bathroom with two toilets and two showers and a small kitchen.  Unfortunately, their free Wi-Fi is only available in the main building so we’ll have to walk over whenever we need Internet, but it’s a small price to pay for a nice private room!

At the dinner we met four people from the US, one girl from South America, two people from Spain, one person from Scotland and one person from England.  The food was decent (those of you who know Paul will be surprised to hear that he ate a completely vegetarian meal!), the wine was quite nice and we’ve quickly become friends with Jill and Micah from Philadelphia so we’ll have someone to go sightseeing with tomorrow!

Now that we have better accomodations, more helpful people and friends to sightsee with; things should definately go much better than they have been!