A mix of anxiety, excitement, and running around crossing off my to do lists led me to begin to feel a little under the weather a few days before setting off. Who doesn’t love a lack of voice and sniffling before spending hours on a plane?
Luckily, packing was a breeze and I was more than happy to put both my pack and backpack on and walk to the sky train, as Vancouver’s weather became more and more dreary with rain in near sight.
I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure the cure for how I was feeling is Spanish sun.
Because the travel time is quite long from Vancouver —> Seattle —> Amsterdam —> Barcelona, my mind focused more on how I was physically feeling and less on the fact that I was actually heading to Spain. Unfortunately, that meant absolutely no sleep, so I was beyond happy to finally make it to my destination. However, that meant waiting a few more hours until Kez’s flight (delayed flight) made it’s way here. Even just waiting in the arrivals terminal gave me the sense of what Spain was truly about. A few friendly folk even sat next to me and started up various conversations on travel, their great country Spain, and thoughts on Canada while I waited.
Seeing a familiar face when Kez arrived made the trip feel even more real (leaving the airport terminal also helps) and then we were on our way to the hostel. Every transit system takes a little getting used to, and the train into the city seemed to move at a particularly slow pace (much like this wifi). We decided to do the walk from the station to our hostel rather than figure out a bus.
One of our first encounters walking to the hostel really opened our eyes as to how different it was here and that we really needed to be aware of our surroundings. We almost believe we were lucky it happened right away so we could really smarten up for the rest of our trip. Disclaimer to our ‘rents, everything is all good.
While we we were walking, a man informed us that there was something all over our back pack, and I turned to see Kezia’s pack and back of legs were covered in a beige, paint-like substance. The same man, in Spanish, offered us napkins and tried to describe it coming from the trees and birds (this was accompanied by him flapping his arms like a bird). He walked ahead, but not too far until Kezia noticed that my stuff was covered as well. He came back and handed us more napkins (which seems suspicious in itself… who carries that many napkins?) and it became aware that he was hoping the next series events would include us taking our bags off, and his accomplice being able to swipe them. We realized the next course of action for us was to just take everything, ignore them, and walk away.
We’re still not sure if this is their tactic or exactly what happened, but it made us realize that we really need to be aware of our surroundings and belongings. Luckily from there, we made our way to the hostel and did the one thing I’ve been waiting to do for literally days, catch some zzz’s.
