Barcelona never again

Barcelona is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful city. 

I hate it.

My experiences are almost all negative. It takes about 2.5 hours to drive from Argelès. We took the daughter of a friend there to a hotel so she could make her early morning flight easily. It took us longer to find the hotel than it did get to the city.

Signs are optional. When they are there, they will lead into a roundabout/rotary with 3-5 exits but without any more information. Street signs need binoculars to read.

Then when spending several days there in 2008, I was robbed. I'd been extra careful because so many of my friends who'd been there had been robbed. In fact it's a question people in the know ask when someone goes there: "Were you robbed?" rather than "Did you have a good time?"

When I went to the police station after the robbery, I was one of about 45 people from the same area who had also been robbed in the last hour. The police were set up with desks for Japanese, German, French, Italian and English speakers with phones ready to call credit card companies. 

Robbery is an industry for the city.

And when I was attending a conference there a year later, one of the last speakers said he considered his biggest accomplishment was that he still had his wallet.

Thus when two friends were going down for a P&P trip (Passport renewal and picnic in Guelli Park) I thought time with them would be worth it.

This trip it took us longer to find the American consulate than it took to drive from Argeles. Streets were badly marked etc. I won't blame the city for the fact the consulate was also unmarked. 

One nice man showed us where we could double park (have to report the positive parts) outside the building where he was the concierge and my American friend hot-footed it to the consulate which was where the concierge had shown her. She was only an hour late. We'd only allowed an hour to get lost, but obviously we needed more than that.

We did manage to find the park, which is beautiful, but why have a major tourist attraction with no parking information and perhaps no parking...????? If there were parking it was invisible.

L and I were desperate to pee and we followed the WC signs and walked and walked and walked and no toilets. Then we followed more and more signs for the WC and walked and walked and walked and walked. We were contemplating bushes, when we found the very clean toilets at one of the entrances.

However, we left B with the better bladder illegally parked. We'd expected to be only a short time but the trekking through the park had caused the police to give her a ticket with threats of towing.

And the picnic?  

Since we couldn't do it in the park we found a shady spot at the bottom of a staircase. A bit of trouble to park there because the meter would not accept the French bank cards which allegedly are good all over Europe. I've used mine in several countries. 

We'd each contributed so we had: goat, roasted potatoes, melon, cherries, cheese, good Spanish bread, beer, juice, chirozo, chips, juice. Wonderful,

A definite plus was that when we weren't screaming in frustration (not at each other) we were laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

L wants to go back and see more. B who has been there several times would go back for the sights. As for me? Never, ever again. I don't even think if my daughter lived there and it was the only place in the world I could see her, I would go back. This type of frustration is reasonable in small, undeveloped places, fun even, but for a city that wants to be a major tourist and conference centre???? 

No way.

The day was still fun because of my friends. Time with them is always a pleasure, BUT life is too short to be aggravated when there are so many other places that offer as much or more without the annoyances.