Tuesday 04th July 2006 11:30:00 PM DAY 1: London Heathrow airport -> Barcelona It turned out that the BA staff did not lie (I would write a complaint letter if he did~~) and gave me an EMERGENCY EXIT aisle seat on the wing! Wow I thought, an emergency exit aisle for a long haul flight: it means plenty of leg room to stretch for the 10+ hours flight... °õ¨ì°Õ! At that moment I thought BA is the greatest airline of the world, until..... It seems that the plane I was on (Boeing 747-400) was a little different from what I have expected. The emergency exit seats on the wings actually had a stupid partition right in front! That means the leg room ahead was even worse than the normal seats (For normal seats, you can tug your legs under the seats in front) and so for the whole flight I had to put my left foot out on the aisle to get the leg room, and at the same time (unintentionally) try to trip over the not-so-pretty BA flight attendants as they passed by; or being run over by trolleys or stamped upon by passengers trying to go to the toilet... There was no Miss beautiful and available girl/lady/female sat by my side during the flight to UK so I basically dozed off during the entire flight. Arrived in UK at ~06:35 local time and I had to wait for the connecting flight to Barcelona leaving from London Heathrow (same terminal) at 09:25. There was nothing thrilling in terminal 1 except that there were many passengers there (who got there earlier than i did) "sunbathing" inside the terminal on those "comfort/stretching" chairs with a panoramic view of the airport and the aircrafts outside. The sun was good "outside"...I must say it was very comfortable to lie down but the cost of a nice nap would be either 1) missing the connecting flight or 2) losing all the belongings.... (not something you would want right at the beginning of the journey)
Touched down at Barcelona at 12:25. Passed the immigration with no hassle (at least no such interrogation like where are u from, what are you doing here, are you going to spy on us, or are you going to earn our money, create unemployment and decrease our GDP etc...) Armed myself with a comprehensive but incomprehensible barcelona map (courtesy of the tourist office in the airport), I decided to head out to the city by train. You couldn't go wrong with a train, I thought. Well, not so true... 1. The train station was quite far from the airport, and there was no information kiosk and only one non-English speaking staff was selling tickets inside the kiosk; Conclusion: You had no clue where this train would take you to the place you wanted... "Luckily", everyone was just as clueless as I was so at the end we all decided to take the chance... So we hopped on the first train and there were plenty of EMPTY seats.. I thought at last I could relax a little! (I was not used to the weight of the backpack yet!) And.......the problem came real soon.... the train stopped at the first stop and everyone else (except those clueless backpackers and tourists) hopped off the train. My mind was "15/16" whether to get off or stay put until finally some kind soul came and told us (in English!) to get off and change train if we were to reach the city by the end of the day.
Finally another train came (a double decker) and took us to the city. Never underestimate the capacity of a double decker train! Even with capacity twice as large as a normal train we still couldn't find any seats and I had to sit on the stairs for the whole hour... so much for my first train experience in Spain. The morale of the story: if the train was going to the city during the day, there was no reason why there were so many empty seats and so few passengers... ie WRONG train! Finally reached Catalunya station and changed the metro to Liceu station where my hotel was. It turned out the hotel was very near to Las Ramblas and the street had many street performers standing there waiting for your incoming cash flows... the one near my hotel was the Grim Reaper... and I used him as the landmark for locating my hotel for the rest of the stay. Nearby there was another performer... must be a fan of Man Utd... the Red Devil. 
Having SMS-ed Vicky and Kit (a HK couple I met on the web), I finally "made" contact with them in the tourist information office in Plaza (pronunced Pla-tha) de Catalunya at 17:00. It seemed that they really had a good time in Spain. (Originally I was supposed to meet them at Madrid a week ago, now they had almost finished their trip) I was "kindly greeted" with a complaint on how badly the hotel I "recommended" for Madrid was... (Luckily I changed my Madrid hotel booking before I came over during the re-booking... so I didn't have to go there, he he! Btw the hotel was called Jamyc Hostal Madrid, don't go there!) Anyway it was also their first day in Barcelona, they arrived in the morning and took the airport bus instead of the train (wise choice!) but they spent tons of time sorting out their sleeping arrangement in their hostal in Barri Gotic area. So we toured together the Las Ramblas area, went right down to the Colon of Christopher Columbus (on the way down we saw a few naked men walking .. by naked I mean fully naked... well why can't they be naked pretty women instead??) 
Dinner was settled with style on that night! My first meal in Spain was buying Frozen Spaghetti Carbonara, Frozen Tortilla and some other pasta from the local super market, microwaved and dined in their hostal common room WITHOUT aircon at over 30C....... man that was a real experience as the rate of sweating was greater than the rate of liquid in-take during the meal. A good thing about dining in that youth hostal was you got the chance to meet interesting ppl. The person I met there was actually a solo comedian-to-be who came all the way from Belgium to Barcelona to pursue his dream. He worked in the hostal to get free accommodation while he was preparing for his first show... too bad we couldn't stay long enough to watch his first virgin show. At around 10pm I have reached my melting point and said good-bye to the nice couple and walked all the way back from Barri Gotic area to Las Ramblas area... I have heard stories about how bad the crime rate was in Barcelona before but I could not feel anything while I walked back... possibly because everyone (including the bag snatchers) were still indulging in the World Cup at that time.. My original plan to watch the world cup from a local pub was er... shattered as the pubs were so full of people that the crowd actually spilled out on the street and could merely take a peek at the small TV the pub had... still the spirit was good if you didn't mind joining the standing crowd (make sure you stood on the right side!)...... however, my mind was willing but my flesh was weak... jet lag got me on that night pretty quick! Italy beat Germany 2-0! My foot prints: Liceu, Las Ramblas, Palau Guell (closed for renovations), Placa Reial, Monument a Colom (Colombus's Monument), Port Vell, Gothic Point Hostal Stay: Opera Hostal, Barcelona (EUR 43, single room) 
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