Today, I began my holiday and cruise to Rio de Janeiro. I set off from Los Alcazares to travel to Barcelona.
My friend June picked me up at 1 pm, and we had an uneventful drive to the airport at Alicante, where she dropped me off. As I went into the airport, I couldn't find my check-in desk, but I thought it was the one right in front of me.
I still had 40 minutes before the check-in opened, but as there were staff at the priority desk, I asked a lady there if this was where I would have to check in and what time I should come back. She told me that I was at the right desk and to save me from coming back, she would check me in straight away. She took my luggage, put tags on it, sent it down the conveyor belt and wished me a pleasant trip. It was still only about 2:15 pm, and the only thing to do was to go through to departures, find a bar and get a beer.
I went through departures but was stopped when I set the alarm off on the metal detector. After making me take off my belt, watch, etc, I think he decided it was the metal studs on my shorts and waved me through. I got my belongings back and continued to the bar.
I ordered a beer, and it arrived in a plastic cup and cost €5.51. This seemed an odd amount, and I ended up with a pocket full of change to take with me. I sat at the bar to wait for my friend Gail. An hour before boarding, I decided to walk to the gate because I hadn't seen Gail. As I walked towards the gate, Gail saw me and called out to me.
We waited in the queue and were soon onboard the flight, me in row 6, Gail in row 23. I sat next to a nice Canadian couple who were halfway through a 57-day cruise themselves. They had been around the Greek Islands before visiting Barcelona for a couple of nights, then headed to Alicante for a couple of nights and were now heading back to a cruise ship to go around the Greek Islands again. After this cruise, they would be cruising back to Canada.
The flight was late leaving by about 20 minutes, but we made time up and arrived in Barcelona about 40 minutes after taking off. We had gotten off the plane by the rows you were sitting in. I was in the second group off but then had to wait for Gail as she was one of the last off.
Once off the plane, we had to make our way to baggage collection. Barcelona airport is enormous, and it seemed we had walked around most of it before we found baggage collection. We had to wait for around 10 minutes for our bags but were soon headed outside to catch a taxi to the hostel on Barcelonas´ Rambla.
We went outside to where the Cabify app on my phone told us to collect the Cabify taxi we had ordered. Unfortunately, we were two floors too low, and when the driver called us to say he was there, we had to make a mad dash up a steep, broken-down escalator to get to the right floor. The driver waited and helped us with our bags, and we headed towards our hostel.
When we got to the hostel, checking in was easy. I only had to pay local taxes as I had pre-paid, whilst Gail had to pay in full at the desk. I did notice that I had got the room around €33 cheaper. It pays to book ahead of time.
We went to our different rooms and met up in the reception 15 minutes later. We walked down through the Rambla to the port area. We had a walk around but couldn't see anything we wanted to eat, so we walked back to the Rambla. We went into an Irish pub where I had a chicken and bacon toasted sandwich with a mojito cocktail. I was, after all, on holiday now and would have to get used to cocktails. We chatted for a while and had another drink. I had a pint of Guinness whilst we listened to the live music and watched people being checked for ID at the door before entering and tripping up a loose floor tile as they came in. After finishing our drinks, we returned to the hostel and headed to our rooms to get some sleep.