Adventure Preparedness

Good morning from Barcelona! You may be looking at the time stamp on this post and thinking, “N, it’s 2:30 in the morning. Don’t the adventure partners sleep?” Well, yes. Yes we do. However, we got stupid drunk off of sangria and took a “siesta” from 7:00 pm until I woke up looking for Motrin, so here we are. It wasn’t even good sangria; it was the 3 euro plastic bottle from the liquor store and it would’ve been the 1 euro bottle had the clerk not persuaded me otherwise. My Spanish may be crap, but I understand a head shake and a “No no no!” when I hear it.

See all of those natural ingredients? Yeah, ours had none of that.

Normally when I wake up in the middle of the night, I would be upset and wondering how I could possibly go back to sleep. Then I realized that as a newly unemployed individual, I don’t have to maintain any sort of “normal” schedule. My commute involves rolling over and plugging in the laptop. I’m like a call girl for words.

But I digress. Back to the original point of the post, which is preparing and arriving in Barcelona.  I tried to pack several times. "Packing" involved standing in front of my closet, looking at my new backpack, and realizing that everything I needed was not going to fit. Then I’d distract myself by watching back episodes of Californication.

The day before our trip I decided it was time to get serious. I moved everything I wanted to one side of the closet. Then I looked at the backpack, realized it wouldn’t fit, and got a pedicure instead. My bag may not have been packed, but my toes looked fabulous, and that’s good enough for me.

I didn’t actually pack until an hour before we had to leave for the airport. It started out something like this…

Then I tried to walk around with my overloaded backpack. I couldn’t have carried it to the check-in desk, let alone the rest of the trip.

I pared everything down to 2 skirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 pair of capris, 3 tank tops, 3 T-shirts, 2 pairs of sandals, and a swimsuit, as well as essential undergarments, toiletries, and a bandana. For a month. All told, my luggage weighed less than 20 pounds at the airport, so I’m quite proud of myself. (We won’t discuss the weight of the carry on…)

One of our friends was kind enough to drive us to the airport, all while giving us restaurant recommendations for our trip. Italy sounds delicious.

After a rousing trip to the airport bar to celebrate our new found freedom, we successfully made it to Spain and took the airport shuttle to the metro.

The Barcelona metro is super clean and easy to use. I may have lived in England for too long because I was shocked by the lack of garbage and the fact that it didn’t smell like piss. Thank you, Spain. It’s the little things that count.

Look how clean that is!

We chose the T10 metro card, which is an excellent deal. Each trip costs us less than a euro, more than one person can use the same card, and it doesn’t expire for a year. You just swipe the card for your adventure partner and after they figure out how to use a turnstile, you swipe yourself through. It works out to being more than 50% off the normal price of 10 rides.

We finally made it to our hostel and checked into our dorm. We’ve been exploring the sights and sounds of Barcelona ever since, but that’s the topic of another post. Gracias for reading!

The Perfect Packing Technique

If you're not a frequent traveller, packing for a trip can be a bit of a hassle. You'll inevitably end up packing way too much or the wrong things entirely. There's the stress of feeling as though you've forgotten something important. Then you have to cram the whole pile into a suitcase and hope that if it arrives, it's not a wrinkled mess and that your shampoo hasn't leaked onto everything.

The most difficult thing after figuring out what to pack (which I will cover in a later post) is knowing how to pack. As someone who's packed a lot of bags and made even more mistakes, I was trying to write a post that accurately describes how I've learned to pack. I prefer a combination of laying my easily wrinkled clothes flat, stuffing the middle of the suitcase with my rolled clothes, and then folding the bottom layer over the top.  I realized that pictures would be necessary for this post to make sense, and then I came upon this slide show from The New York Times.

Brilliant.  This technique is exactly how you should pack a bag. For toiletries, know that if it can leak it probably will, especially if you check a soft-sided bag on your flight. Always put your liquids in a plastic bag, whether it be a commercially available waterproof travel bag or just a Ziploc freezer bag. I recommend bringing along some extra plastic grocery bags as well, because if your shoes get wet or dirty you won't want to put them in with the rest of your laundry. Happy packing!