BARCELONA, HERE I COME!!!!

Follow along MadridMan’s… err… BarcelonaMan‘s travels to BARCELONA on the Barcelona Blog (on Blogger) spanning 6 nights in Barcelona from 19-25 March.

Today has been a busy day in preparation for my 6-night trip to Barcelona; printing out emails, maps, directions and specifics about my visit to Barcelona, Catalonia’s capital city go Gothic Goodness. My correspondence with the Barcelona Tourism Office has also been very active this past week.

So I leave on Friday,. 19 March on the bullet-train AVE from Madrid to Barcelona – traveling FIRST CLASS, don’tchaknow, (“Club Class”, they call it) so that’ll be an interesting experience. They say breakfast will be included. Can’t wait to rub elbows with the high-and-mighty and corporate leaders of Spain. And there’ll be lil’ ol’ me, MadridMan, on his way to personifying BarcelonaMan once again.

While there I already have reserved a flamenco show in Barcelona, a “Gourmet Barcelona Tour”, and a “Gothic Barcelona Tour”. There’ll also be a jaunt to Sitges for a tapas lunch with old Madrid friends and, hopefully, a daytrip to Montserrat Monastery. Oh, and did I mention the point to going to Barcelona was to attend the Alimentaria Barcelona 2010 Food and Beverage Expo? Already got my press pass for that.

Speaking of press passes, the Barcelona Tourist Office has been so kind as to provide me with the Barcelona Press Card during my stay there. That’ll get me into a number of museums and other attractions and, no doubt, save me a lot of money. The Barcelona Tourist Office will be my first stop in Barcelona upon getting off the AVE train at Sants Train Station. My Lonely Planet Guide Book for Barcelona will also accompany me but I’m sure the tourist office will be insightful as well.

The only logistical challenge is that I’m changing “hostales en Barcelona” every 2 nights, making the days of check-out and check-in somewhat complicated. This will require me to plan my mornings of Sunday and Tuesday carefully. This also complicates daytrips so I’ll have to plan these on the off-days and schedule my days to Alimentaria after noon.

The hostal for my first two nights thankfully has Wi-Fi Internet but the last two pensiones do not so then I’ll be in search of cybercafes and locutorios to upload my day’s activities. That also means I’ll have to save the info on a pen-drive and take it along for upload. One must be careful doing this because sometimes the cybercafe computers A) don’t allow the use of pen-drives and B) are notorious for security issues and viruses on their computers so I’ll avoid accessing bank accounts.

I’m now choosing my clothes, charging digital camera batteries, and putting things aside for packing. They say it’ll be raining this weekend. Bummer. So I’ll have to go buy a new mini-umbrella to take along. So many plans for an intense 6-night in Barcelona! Can’t wait. Should be a lot of fun. Wanna come?

Follow along MadridMan’s… err… BarcelonaMan‘s travels to BARCELONA on the Barcelona Blog (on Blogger) spanning 6 nights in Barcelona from 19-25 March.