Before we left for Spain we had already booked up as much as we could including the flight, the train tickets to Benicassim and the Hostel. Booking the train tickets was a really good idea because their were gigantic queues at Barcelona Sants full of people trying to get the train down to Benicassim.
Our flight went smoothly and we arrived in Spain, in lovely hot sunshine, at around midday. Our hostel, Gothic Point was more or less right next The Rambla and in the dead centre of Barcelona nightlife and easily accessible on the wonderful Barcelona Metro system.
We had read a wide range of reviews of this hostel on the Internet before we left and were quite curious to see what the hostel was actually like since the reviews fell into two broad categories; the first complemented the excellent showers and atmosphere at the hostel whilst the second warned against the lack of privacy and high noise level in the dormitories. Both of them commented on the rather eccentric layout of the dormitories which are essentially large rooms filled with twin beds seperated by some fairly useless curtains, the rooms also have two levels of beds, the second level is built from wooden boards held up by scaffolding which you can reach by climbing up ladders bolted to the scaffolding.
I found that in fact all the reviews had an element of truth to them, the powershowers are really excellent and because you can clearly hear anyone snoring, talking or moving about ( especially if they are moving about above you ) it can be quite noisy in the dorms. Overall though the Hostel is a good place for sleeping and showering provided you wait until you are so tired before you try and sleep that you will fall asleep instantly regardless of the noise. They also had a free internet room which would have been great if it weren't located in a sauna, it was only possible to spend 10mins or so in this room before you had sweated all the liquid in your body and were beginning to drop from heat exhaustion.
We found the hostel easily enough and were shown to our small cubicle at the end of the dorm, it was on the bottom level and contained two beds and two small cupboards with a very ragged, dirty looking curtain which we could pull over to gain some privacy from the other 30 or so people sharing the room.
Once we'd dropped off our bags we immediately set out to have a look around and find a hat shop so Richard could buy a hat to cover his large bald head.
We didn't find any hat shops although there were a lot of shops with hats in them, unfortunately Richard has very strict criteria for choosing hats and none of the thousands we looked at and he tried measured up to his mental model of the perfect hat. Most were too small, some were too smart, others were the wrong colour, a few had the wrong type of brim and a dozen had innappropriate logo's or insufficient air holes. After 3 or 4 hours we gave up and went back to the hostel to freshen up before hitting the town for something to eat and a lot to drink.
I can't remember what we had to eat, or where but we whatever it was we finished it early and immediately hit the bars. Most of the bars we were in seemed very empty for a Saturday night which we later realised was because no one in Barcelona goes out much before 11PM. By 11PM we were both quite drunk in ( I think ) a bar called "The English Bar" where Richard had met a Canadian English Teacher who was telling Richard all about how he liked Spain because the young women were all so lovely and easy to chat up. He also said there was a band on later so we waited for them to arrive which they did several beers later.
The band were pretty dreadful, boring and dull so we left shortly after they began and made our way back to the hostel for some sleep. Most of the rest of Barcelona were just getting ready to go out.
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