So, we made it to the airport and past customs. Alan and I asked Ezeibe multiple times what happens next and the response was always “We call the place and they come pick us up at the airport.” That was until Ezeibe actually read the confirmation message and saw that we had to find our own way there.

Cool Things of Day 1:

-Our Barcelona apartment was pimpin’. Extremely well-decorated, a Top Chef worthy kitchen, and this awesome sun room that looked out into the street. Ezeibe got his own bedroom, while Alan and I shared the second bedroom with two twin beds. Our room had a balcony overlooking the street. We were only a block or two away from Placa Catalunya, which is a busy part of Barcelona. It’s where Las Ramblas kind of begins. Apartment came with a bunch of city guides and we would be attached to the hip to our Time Out Barcelona book and our City Walk cards.

The perfect chair for contemplation

-Las Ramblas and especially the La Boquiera market. It was quite an orgy of dead animals and fresh fruits and vegetables. I wish we had something like that in Connecticut. Everything looked so fresh. We had our first Barcelona meal at Ra, a small restaurant behind La Boquiera. We had a breakfast.

This little piggy went to market...

Yumm...

- While we’re on the subject, the Old Barcelona districts were pretty stunning (Barri Gothic, Born, etc.). You didn’t really have to go inside of anything, just the windy streets and old Spanish houses were pretty cool to look at. Plaza Real off the Las Ramblas looked like it was a Hollywood charicature of a Spanish square, but it was the real thing.

Plaza Real

- Random churches, seemingly on every corner. All of them very old and medieval.

- People-watching in front of a random church. A true “Holy shit, we’re on vacation…in EUROPE” moment. There was a small Christmas market in front of the church. Alan and I got some coffee and tapas. We just sat there for a long while as we tried to adjust our bodies to the time difference. A crazy guy with an accordian was being mad enthusiastic about his accordian Christmas music in the church square. I would internally declare him my BFF.

- Barcelona is CLEAN. And very green. A lot of quiet buses that probably use some alternative fuel, human street cleaners on every other block, and these well tiled sidewalk streets. It’s definitely no NYC.

Not-So-Cool Things of Day 1:

- Late lunches and dinners. I just got off an eight hour flight. I’m hungry. But alas, lunch isn’t until 2PM and dinner isn’t until 9 or 10PM. And that would lead me to…

- Les Quinze Nits in the aforementioned Plaza Real. Totally a Ruby Tuesdays in a cool setting. People lined up for this stuff. It was a total tourist trap. No one in queue was a local.

Downright Disasters of Day 1:

- Jetlag. And then walking for miles when you’re body is jetlagged. And you have to stay up for dinner because you don’t want to be further jetlagged the rest of the trip. Ezeibe was about to drop by breakfast, and only held out a few hours longer. I held out until 10′ish and then crashed pretty mightily. Alan would stay up even later as we had left Ezeibe to pass out in the apartment in the afternoon. Ezeibe would wake up at around 10PM and had gotten hungry. After walking for miles while he was sleeping, I was not about to join him. Alan was nicer, but he was dying inside.

Picture of my house

Eating breakfast, about to head to JFK in about three hours.

I had a video journal ready yesterday, but then I got mad self-conscious about my facial hair. It was that horrifying look of “I shaved, but clearly with an electric razor, which is fine, except I clearly missed significant patches of almost-hair that made me look creepy.” I tend to have this look two out of seven days a week.

Books I’m taking along: Blink (thanks Leslie!), Renaissance Art: A Short Introduction (thanks Becky!), and a book on Gaudi and his works (thanks again Becky!). I hope to pick up some magazines or fiction on the way.

I had a horrible fight with my 2GB SD card and getting the Canon CHDK firmware to autoload on my camera starting up. Sadly, it does not, so I have to install it every time I start the camera. I must be stupid. I’m still not sure if I’ve figured out how to play with the shutter and exposure settings with the new firmware hack.

I now have routine panic attacks that occur every 5 minutes that I’m going to run out the door and forget something major I intended to bring. Suspects are Passport, digital camera, charger, or my backup spare clothing.

I have no fucking clue what we’re going to do when we land in Barcelona.

Why Europe? Why now?

Why not?! There’s never a good time to travel, so now is as good of a time as ever. In fact, there are a lot of positives for the timing of this trip. Winter is off-season, so less tourists and wait times. The economy sucks, so strong dollar versus the Euro. And, I’m in between job rotations, so I don’t even have the stress of work lingering over me. As much as I’m against it, I’m still that guy that would be sending out work emails all day. That’s just my hard-working tendencies.

You’re going to blog and stuff while you’re on vacation?

Um…yeah. Got a problem with that? Listen, I don’t intend to be totally lame and spend my entire trip on a laptop screen. My -3 regular visitors sure don’t expect any constant updates or anything anyways. I hope to be as disconnected as possible from my regular world. But writing, photography, video journals, it’s all very therapeutic for me. So let me do my thing and enjoy the rants as they get published…

Aren’t you making this a bigger deal than it is?

Yes, I’m being mad overexcited for a two week holiday in some very ordinary destinations. Forgive me. The reality is I never had that life-changing study abroad. While I consider myself well-traveled, I don’t really venture far and away that much. No money, no time, too much going on, etc. I think all young, new working professionals need to take full advantage of their very limited time off and do something amazing with it. There’s nothing wrong with a little excitement in life.

Months and years of this grind has caused me to yearn to travel more often. Last time I was out of the country (besides Canada, which should never count…) was high school, and that is now 6 years behind me. I’ve barely made it out of the east coast since then.

So this December, one week after my 23rd birthday, I’m taking whatever money I have left in my savings and going on a soul-invigorating trip to western Europe. Not the most original trip for a 20-something out of college, but it will do. Hopefully, this lights the fire to more adventurous and exciting locations in the future. I was supposed to travel alone, but I found two friends to tag along who share my basic tenants of travel: total independence, good food, careful but inevitably naive planning, and museums. Lots of museums.

This trip has invigorated my blogging a bit. Hopefully, you’ll see more posts, pictures, and thoughts on here as I take the travel opportunity for content and inspiration.

So, how stupid is it that I’m traveling in the worst economic crisis of modern times? Contrarian genius (“the euro has never been lower…”) or just impulsive idiot (“i can live off 5 euros a day, right?…”)?