Back from Barcelona.

Finally back at my home sweet home, took a shower, ate some dinner and tucked into my own bed with my laptop catching up on things I've missed.

I feel a little under the weather at the moment. I was so glad to come back for a number of reasons, even though the weather was great everyday during my visit, there really is no place like home. Right now, I feel a little sick, I had carsickness earlier due to Dad's crazy driving, he rarely drives at night so he was blaming his bad driving on that. I think he was just tired and hungry to be honest. That carsickness feeling is still in me despite having eaten and washed myself - I still feel a little sick, no fever though.

So how was my holiday? I have very mixed opinions about this holiday, a number of bad things happened that really outweighed the good things about the city itself and my experience of being in Barcelona for a second time. Firstly, my brother got pickpocketed in Las Ramblas on the second day of our stay, this was really distressing and a major negative aspect of the holiday which really affected my opinion of Barcelona as a city. Unfortunately he lost 100 Euros, 2 bank cards and the wallet his girlfriend had bought for him but on the upside he didn't lose anything else that would have been in the wallet since he emptied everything beforehand. Since that day, we all went out worried about our stuff, keeping a watchful eye on our surroundings and just being plain paranoid about safeguarding our belongings in crowded areas (which was in most cases since we were quite obviously tourists visiting crowded tourist-y areas which is usually swarming with pickpocketers). It just dampened the holiday as a whole as when you go on holiday you expect the experience to be enjoyable, relaxing and free from danger - except we all felt the opposite, the holiday was not as enjoyable as it could've been because of the crime in the area, we always felt vulnerable because we stuck out a lot from people that actually lived in Barcelona.

Secondly, almost everything was goddamn expensive, almost everything was more expensive than in London, even McDonald's was £2 more expensive. Although we were willing to pay because when you go on holiday you don't want to be watching what you spend since that's not enjoyable. But £70 for lunch? £90 for dinner? Way too expensive... It really made me miss London. Also, in a lot of tourist destinations, they don't put prices on their menus outside the restaurants and just charge you any number out of the blue after you order. Everytime I ate at any one of these type of restaurants I felt like I was being scammed.

With both things combined, it really feels like some people in Barcelona are desperate for your money. It makes me pity them somewhat, in places where the economy isn't good, they tend to make money using underhanded ways such as the whole menu-pricing thing, pickpocketing, working in groups to steal your belongings. It's really shocking. My brother saw a WAITRESS hand over 7 smart phones to a one of those people that ride around in those bikes with the seats behind them - what does it say about the waitress? She's been pickpocketing customers? It's sickening to see something like this happen whilst you're on holiday. You lose all trust in the people and it makes you just want to leave the country because you feel unsafe.

I guess some upsides of the holiday was the weather itself, we had glorious sunshine and endless heatwaves for all 5 days we were there. I was really sick of it by day 5 though, walking around a park when the sun was at its highest point is really bad. Also, the seafood in Barcelona is delicious, pricey but delicious. The place we stayed at was nice, the apartment was cosy, the beds were a bit rubbish and the service wasn't great because it's not a hotel. But overall, I think I'm glad to be back more than sad to leave. I think 3 days is enough in Barcelona - I never really want to go there again because of all the crime, maybe another part of Spain where crime is less but definitely not going to Barcelona again for a long time.