At 11am I left The Loft Hostel and took the metro to Mellow Hostel up in the hills of Barcelona.
The man at the reception was less than accommodating, and indulged himself in a 10-minute business call in the middle of my check-in, leaving me standing there trying to figure out if he forgot that I'm literally directly in his line of sight. I ended up asking some guests where I can put the groceries I had brought with me. It was still an hour or so before check-in officially opened, so I kept my backpack with me for now.
The guests I had had to ask about food storage, WiFi, and bathrooms were finishing their breakfast and about to stroll up to "the bunkers", literally a bunch of old bunkers sitting atop a hill, now a park. I joined them.
As high up as Mellow Hostel seems, Parc del Guinardó is another 100m or so gain in elevation. But the views from the top are great.
We sat and chatted there for an hour or more before returning to the hostel.
After making myself lunch, I took the metro as close as I could get to Park Güell and walked into it from the backside (the best way to do it, in my opinion, since then you get to walk downhill to see the rest of the park).
Park Guell was originally planned to be a housing development, in the style of a garden city, where each house takes up no more than one sixth of its plot. In the end, only two houses were built, one of them being occupied by the Catalan architect Gaudi for the final 20 years of his life. What I'd heard about Barcelona was true here: you need to pay for everything. It was 8 Euros to go out on this dirt area, and into the lower complex with the Gaudi buildings:
Which I didn't see a reason to justify paying the price, so I didn't. I did dredge up 5.5 Euros in change from my pocket to see the nearby Gaudi House Museum, located in the house that Gaudi had occupied. It was lackluster.
I always feel obligated to go to museums or see inside historical monuments when I visit new places, but 4 times out of 5 I feel like it's an experience that I didn't really need to have, even if it was free. In the specific case of Park Güell, unless you are short on time and long on money, you don't really need to pay to see anything to get the general experience of the place. But even if you pay, they ration tourists out onto the dirt viewpoint in 30 minute intervals, so there's an additional inconvenience factor to playing by their rules.
From Park Güell I walked downhill towards the ocean. At this point all I had was a 50 Euro note in my money belt, and I HATE breaking notes like that at restaurants when a meal and drink will cost you 5 Euro. So I tried my hand at a few ATMs to see if they'd give me four 10 Euro notes. None of them would, without a flat 5 Euro fee, and there was no way I was going to pay a 12.5% withdraw fee. By the time I passed through Sagrada Familia Park I was about to collapse from hunger so I sat down at a restaurant where I was sure I could get at least a 10 Euro meal.
When my 8 Euro, snack-size meat lasagna came out I was in such a hurry to eat it that I spilled a chunk of cheese all over the tablecloth. I felt shitty about that, and was still hungry, so I decided to order more overpriced food. At the end of the meal I forgot that Spain is a tipping country and the waiter asked me if I was going to leave him a tip after he saw me quickly shoveling the change into my pocket.
So 20 Euros got me an absolutely abysmal dining experience. But at least I broke that 50.
The metro was only a few blocks away and I took it back to the hostel for the night.
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