Barcelona New Year's Eve

Here is the belated report of Moo Cow's recent excursion and after I shall be almost up to date with current events! Along with a few mates from my old school, the illustrious DGS, I spent a week in the capital of the Catalunya and Spain's second-biggest city, Barcelona. There were five of us in total and it turned out to be an interesting experience in several ways.

Arriving there in the fume-spewing airborne hamster cage that is a Ryanair £36 return flight, we were greeted by a smiling Sun and a surprising 18 degrees Celsius: cue jacket-removal and pleasant mutterings by all Brits present. However, Spain once again lived up to its potential as the bearer of the most weird-and-wonderful smells known (and unknown) to man. The entire week managed to demonstrate to my associates that time spent in Spain is akin to a game of olfactory Russian roulette. The spectrum of possible odours ranges from the "Wow, this restaurant smells incredible! The chef must be cooking little bits of rainbow mixed with kisses from Lindsey Lohan out there" to the more harrowing "Has there recently been an ethnic cleansing in this vicinity or is it just that the local sewer has been made redundant from his job and spent the last 6 weeks without a shower watching daytime TV and eating microwave meals?".

With 18 degrees C and clear blue skies on the 31st of December, we soon managed to forget that we had been awake since 3am and that we actually had no accommodation for the first night. It also helped us to remain light-hearted after one of our party's cards was swallowed by a cash machine almost as soon as we arrived. We left our suitcases in the station, ignored the bad omen and sallied forth into the unknown city. We spent several hours exploring the centre, targeting possible points for festivities, admiring the scenery and desperately trying to seek some available accommodation. Alas, there was none (as if that was a surprise 6 hours before New Year's Eve in one of the most highly rated cities in Europe). Prior to flying out to Barcelona, we did have the sense to book a flat for the other four nights there, so we knew we were only homeless for NYE itself.

Back in the station, we got changed into our glad rags and ventured out to meet 2 of my mates from Erasmus in Santander, each of whom had a friend over from France and the States respectively. The party that night was awesome; we did the countdown in Plaça Reial in the midst of hundreds of people and then proceeded to spend the majority of the rest of the night touring the Plaça's bars and wandering around La Rambla searching for a club until the early hours. We got the Metro back to the station where some lovely benches were awaiting our weary selves. In fact, one of my favourite moments of the week when two English ladies were chatting up my mate on the Metro and it was obvious they were cracking on to him to everyone else except the silly sod himself. So when they asked "...So where you heading off to now?", he came out with the awe-inspiringly suave reply: "I'm going to the train station to sleep!!!". Nice one, Heemy, at least you gave me a laugh!

After five hours of intermittent dozing in the station's chilly conditions and two hours waiting in a café near our flat whilst the lazy Spaniards took their time in cleaning it, we finally moved into our pad for the remainder of the week. Turns out it was an awesome little place on Caller D'Avinyo right in the heart of the Barri Gotic (the city's centre). It was better than staying in a hostel or similar as it was awesome to have a place to host pre-parties for all my Santander mates that were there. We sat down and took stock of the night before and heard that one of our mate's phones had been pick-pocketed and someone tried to take one out of another mates hand whilst he was using it!

The first visited location we headed to was, of course, the world-famous stadium of FC Barcelona, Camp Neu. We did the stadium and museum tour and realised what a shame it was that it was the winter beak of Spanish football and thus we wouldn't be able to see a game there. No trip in Barcelona would be complete without investigating the art and architecture. So cue visits to the Cathedral, Museu Picasso and Gaudí's La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell. It was mind-blowing to finally get to see some Gaudí in person, as I am a bit of a fan and have been for some time.

We also had another brilliant night out on the bar strip next to Port Olimpic which was eventful to say the least. As we left, two of my mates had their wallets lifted straight out of their pockets in the crowd, one of them being the poor sod who had his phone nicked only days earlier. The title of Europe's pickpocket capital seems to be a deserved one. We returned to England on the 5th a little older, a little more culturally informed, and more importantly a little wiser about which pocket our wallets and phone should be located in! The motto of the week was "Triumph over adversity" without a shadow of a doubt.