Getting
from Turkey to Barcelona was a fairly unremarkable day.
Highlights
included: Seeing the sunrise and some beautiful views as we caught the bus to the airport at stupid o'clock:
...the little kitten that kept us company while we waited for the bus:
...and also me managing to order a coffee and
understand how much it was at the Denizli airport, totally in
Turkish. Was a good coffee too, but for 6 lira I should think so!
Other highlights was finding a Turkish souvenir shop at the Istanbul
airport so I was able to get a little Turkish tea light lamp to
remind me of the bigger, pretty ones I liked so much, and also (most
importantly) another last minute box of lokum! Yum yum! We copped out
and had Burger King for lunch at Istanbul airport (but the options
were that or similar). It was blimmin expensive!
Shame!
The flight went
smoothly – after three flights with them we can't complain about
Turkish airlines, they provide a good standard of service.
The view from the plane coming into Barcelona
Arrived in
Barcelona and successfully managed to find the right train (I had
looked up how to get from the airport to our accommodation
previously)
Greg looking smug that we had made it to onto the right train so easily (I was also feeling quite smug).
From the station in town we made our way to our B+B without too much faffing. I'll say it again - hooray for cellphone GPS!
Barcelona is hot! Especially when you're carting your bags four or
five blocks!
The accommodation,
Nisia B+B was fabulous. Just north of the old city (so close without
being annoyingly and expensively in it) it's front door is just a
little non-descript black iron gate between two shops on a main
street. We buzzed for our room and “Hola?” came back at us. We
were let in and clambered up four short, narrow flights of stairs
with our stuff. Alex one of the managers appeared to help us. At the
top we discovered the B&B to basically be a little Barcelona
apartment with three bedrooms for guests, and a nice living area with
couches, kitchen, dining table, TV, stereo and balcony. Alex and
Carina the managers are a couple and they live a few floors up,
appearing in the morning to prepare breakfast and clean, and to
welcome new guests.
Alex gave us a map
of Barcelona and marked the areas of interest out to us and told us
how the B+B worked. He also recommended that we buy our tickets to
popular places like the La Sagrada Familiar online in advance to
avoid the queues and said we could print them out on his printer.
Then he showed us our room and left us to it.
The only weird
thing amongst an otherwise beautiful place was the mattress on the
bed, which was extremely thin and hard. Otherwise the room + ensuite
was lovely and since the owners don't hang around all the time it was
basically like we were living in our own apartment in central Barcelona (in a flatting situation with other foreigners, obviously).
Mattress: Not a lot thicker than the pillow...
Kooky bathroom.
We went out for tea
once we were settled. We were so tired! Trying to speak Spanish after
so long tackling Turkish was a bit much so we found a restaurant with
a picture menu which turned out to be Lebanese! The waiter had some
english anyway, which turned out to be the case in most places.
Greg's beer had Essence of Down To Earth as it's aftertaste. Not that fab.
(Basically Lebanese meat pies with yoghurt. Not a lot of green stuff on the plate, but filled the gap for cheap!)
Overall the food was fine
and the price was right. So it was home to crash, early on a Saturday
night...
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