Last week, we took a road trip to Barcelona.
Yes, after a year living in France, the novelty of being able to drive into other countries shows no sign of abating.
We booked a hotel on lastminute.com (because if there was a documentary about our life, that would be its name), loaded up the car, filled the tank, and took off on the autoroute for a not completely unreasonable six hour jaunt.
Only one wee niggle: as we crossed the border into Spain and my phone buzzed alight with excitable texts from Orange and their exorbitant international calling costs, I realised I was going to have to turn my data off.
Shit.
Hadn’t thought about that, you see. And I had done literally ZERO research on Barcelona since my last trip there a whole five years earlier – where to eat, what to do, where to go…we were effectively flying blind.
No Foursquare, no TripAdvisor, no Google Maps.
I couldn’t see what was trending nearby, how other travellers had rated the seafood restaurant down the road, or which attractions my friends had been to before.
Seriously, we may as well have been part of Christopher Columbus’ entourage.
Thankfully, I was able to gather our bearings somewhat once we made it to the hotel – which basically amounted to ‘La Rambla that way, the Gothic Quarter that other way and the beach that way’.
Awesome.
So we wandered. And attempted to find good spots I’d checked out on the net at the hotel. Over the next few days, we made the best decisions possible with the information to hand, including several breakfast stops at Milk, lunch on the go from both Wok to Walk and Butifarring and trips to Sagrada Familia and the National Art Museum.
But of course, without ‘shit service’ and ‘terrible food’ comments loaded up on TripAdvisor and Foursquare, we had no way of knowing to avoid Sotavento or Les Quinze Nits like the plague.
The sting of paying for a sub-par meal in a city full of fantastic food is a sting like no other.
Don’t worry – I won’t be making the same mistake anytime soon. If anything, being informationally impotent during my time in Barcelona was motivation enough to never let it happen again.
I took care to leave reviews on TripAdvisor, and checked in on Foursquare, doing my bit to help others, and remind myself; should I visit Barcelona again, where I need to be at. A digital breadcrumb trail, as it were.
And next trip – whenever and wherever that may be – I’ll be prepared.
A little research goes a long way, and I plan on doing it well ahead of time. Not desperately half way out the hotel on the way to dinner.
TripAdvisor remains my favourite go to for the scoop on what’s hot in the city, Foursquare for a second opinion, and maybe I could do with broadening my horizons a little. WAYN.com just arrived on my radar today (ten years after it launched, finger on the pulse obvs) and it might be worth checking out.
Biggest travel social network in the world, yada yada…helps you connect with people in those places to ask them questions and what have you…tips and photos from locals etc, etc. Oh, and cool guys like Xavier and David. Who don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of travelling in between taking topless photos of themselves. (Apparently they have a dating section on the site, which makes sense, but no please thank you)
Worth a crack? Have you used WAYN? Or do you have another go-to for travel research?
UPDATE: Godddddammmmn WAYN is spammy. I browsed around for a while longer after writing this post, and eventually decided it was worth a shot (despite the kinda shitty Pinterest look of the site, oldish and weird users and underlying ‘I’m here for a hook-up’ vibe; so against my better judgement, basically) so I signed up.
Boom go the notification emails, flashing icons on the homepage and random friend requests.
Let me cut a long story short – I had to spend a good five minutes rifling through privacy and notification settings just to get things at a level I could stomach. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I had traveled back in time to when websites didn’t care about user experience and spam spam spam spam, also…that I was just in the wrong place. WAYN is not my kinda joint.
So far, someone’s asked me about hotel recommendations for Barcelona, but if I were to answer them, I’d likely suggest they try TripAdvisor. I only stayed at one hotel, it was allllright, and even then it just might not be right for them. What’s the point? They’re better off finding something in their price range on Lastminute.com, or Hotels.com, then doing their own research based on multiple reviews.
Yeah, so where’s the delete account button?
