Barcelona Part 1: Hell hath no fury like a tourist scorned VS. The best revenge is...

Barcelona: Part 1

Hell hath no fury like a tourist scorned vs. Living well is the best revenge.

Michelle and I have a joke-- she was the one who planned our wedding and I was the one who didn't plan our honeymoon. Do the math on that one for a minute and you can imagine how I might have been eager to line up some goodness for the Barcelona trip. I was on the case, the late-night master of Tripadvisor, Kayak, Expedia, Airbnb, you name it. After some debate about hotel vs. apartment we decided we'd like to get a rental apartment in the up and coming el Born neighborhood. An agent I reached out to through Airbnb didn't have an availability for our dates and referred me to theBestBarcelona.com. I checked out their site, reached out, got an email confirmation on my first choice place and all was well. Looking good.

A couple days before the trip I sent a follow up note to the agency about where to pick up the key. I didn't hear back but since I had already received a confirmation email and I had their office address (right around the corner from our apartment) I didn't worry about it too much. We landed in Barcelona in the early afternoon on a beautiful sunny day and took a taxi to the address on their website. No rental agency. There was a shoe store and a bar, neither of whom had heard fo the business. We were two tired travellers, just off a trans-Atlantic flight with big suitcases and no place to go. Niiiice.

At least it was a sunny day. We put ourselves at a cafe, picked up a wifi signal and started fresh. That's how we learned of the big music festival which sold out most of the hotels in town. No single place would accomodate us for our entire trip. This would be a good moment to give praise to the National Geographic travel book we picked up for Barcelona. It steered us to the upscale Grand Hotel Central (http://www.grandhotelcentral.com/). Full disclosure: I was busy trying to find the office of the apartment rental agency, calling, emailing and eventually resorting to a desperate walk around the neighborhood asking strangers while Michelle quietly pulled our our travel guide. We got lucky. It was on the higher side of our price range. But it was available for a couple days and it was a short walk around the corner.
As you pass from the noise of busy via Laietana through the giant brass doors of the Grand Hotel Central Barcelona an elegant quiet descends upon you. In my weary state I wanted to give a big hug to the courteous people behind the counter as they passed our key across to us. Our room was better than clean and comfortable. The rooftop pool and bar would serve us well for our brief stay. Infinity pools are just cool. And if we could have stayed for the remainder of our trip, we could not have done better.

That evening we met up with our friends Lisa, David and their brilliant son Leo at Santa Maria (http://santarestaurant.wordpress.com/) in el Born for the first of many very fine meals. Their good company and Santa Maria's Japanese and Indian influenced tapas menu helped us settle on living well as the best response to our setback. We had steered away from the rocks and managed a great start. As time passed we continued to improvise well and were rewarded with more pleasant surprises than bad ones.

To 'The Best Barcelona', you horrible lazy slugs, the internet is forever. In particular to Ekaterina, thanks for never once responding to my emails and calls. Everywhere I can find your name, I'll be there letting people know as long as they don't need to count on a place to stay after they travel across an ocean you're the people to work with. Anyone else should go elsewhere.
More to come...