BARCELONA

Whenever I get to go somewhere, I’m always soooo grateful and feel so lucky. I wanted to show you some of my pictures from Barcelona, where I WENT BY MYSELF AND DID NOT DIE. OH HEEELLLLL YEAH. I sort of panicked towards the end of summer after realising I spent a good portion of it in my pants drinking rosé, so I booked to shoot off to Catalunya and embark on my first solo trip eveeeeer!

The pictures are quite self explanatory; a hot dogs or legs pic, an I’m-drinking-a-mojito-hahaha-nanana-and-you’re-not pic, obligatory paella shot, you get the jist. If you do want an in-depth walk through of each day, then my VLOG will be at the bottom of this post.

But there’s something else I wanted to address in this blog post. Although I had a lovely time, I had an incident on my second day in Barcelona. Again, this is better explained in the video, but I wanted to follow up after a couple of weeks have passed so I could say a few things about it now I’ve had a chance to reflect a bit.

I was on the beach sunbathing, and reading my book and had a bit of an incident with those guys who walk along the beach trying to sell you stuff. They basically realised I was alone and decided to come and sit down on my towel with me and, to be honest, it was all fine and friendly at first (well, if you can ignore the fact they intruded on my personal space and came uninvited onto my towel, but you get the drift). I’m never really stand-offish or cold, and probably to my detriment, always like to be friendly. So that was my first mistake.

Anyway, after a while, the conversation moved on to one of the older men offering me drugs and sex, for some reason. I was invited back to his flat, and obviously said no a good few times, trying to laugh it off because I don’t like a confrontation. But by this point I was worried and I was aware that I was probably in a stupidly dangerous situation. So I agreed because I thought it’d make them go away, and it worked. Well, he left me alone at least and walked up the beach a bit. I’d said I was going to go back to my hostel and come out to meet him later, which OBVIOUSLY I had no intention of doing.

Then a really kind couple who were sitting quite near looked round over their shoulders, and I went over to ask if they were English. They said they’d heard what was being said and were worried, and asked me if I’d like to walk off the beach with them and back towards the city, and I said yes. Walking off the beach though, the guys were still looking and I ended up walking quite far away with them until I felt safe.

Anyway, I got back to the hostel and called my friend because I felt bad after what had happened, and I felt worried. I had a bit of a cry and as I was on the phone, one of the guys I’d met on the first night in the hostel came over. His English wasn’t very good, but he put his arm round me and asked if I wanted to go up to their room. I’d met this group of lads on the first evening and most of them spoke English well and to be honest, after the day I’d had, I really wanted company. THAT. WAS. LITERALLY. THE. BIGGEST. MISTAKE. OF. THE. TRIP. ABORT. MISSION. ABORT!!!!!

So yeah. I went up to ‘their’ room, to find it empty and to have this guy practically launch himself at me. I found out he was a French-speaking Algerian on the first evening when I met them all, and I can’t speak any French and he was a massive guy obviously intent on one thing. I managed to get out of the room, cutting my hand on the bunkbed in the process, and ran down to reception where they weren’t really able to do anything. Looking back, I should have pushed harder for a resolution. The girl on reception was really nice though, she asked if I wanted to get a beer with her and her friends after her shift, but I was exhausted and said no.

I’m sure some of you reading this will be seasoned travellers and are probably shouting at your laptop screens about how stupid I am. And yeah, I agree. I was very stupid and very naive and far too trusting of people. Not everyone wants to be nice. My friends and family have been really good about it, and they’ve made me believe its a learning curve and something to think about on my next trip. As a lone female traveller, you really shouldn’t advertise the fact you’re by yourself, and I’ve learnt that the hard way. As my friend said, “always assume that people are going to try to do you over in the worst way they can”, which is an awfully pessimistic approach, but I know I won’t be getting myself into that situation again. I just always heard stories about people meeting incredible people while travelling and I thought I might be able to do the same. Who knows. I’d love your opinions if you can share them.

The day after, I felt really defeated and I just wanted to do something where I felt safe, so I booked a tour bus to go round the city, which I really really enjoyed. It’s so frustrating because it was two separate incidents which, if they’d have happened at different times, it wouldn’t have been such a terrible day. But two things like that in one day really burst my bubble and I felt too unsure to go off exploring how I’d have liked to.

I don’t want to act all doom and gloom and negative, because of course I’m sooooooo glad and grateful and thankful and all the rest of it for the fact that I went to this amazing city. It just made me wake up a little bit, and in case any of you were planning a solo trip, I wanted to share this story to help us gals be more aware.