Europe 2019

This year my girlfriend Chelsea and I went to Europe with some seat sales from YYCdeals.

October 9-23rd 2019

Calgary -> Dublin for a weekish Dublin -> Barcelona for a weekish Barcelona -> Dublin overnight -> Halifax layover -> Calgary

Finances

In total we spent $2584 CAD (each)

• $1788 on flights (combined)

• $1700 on airbnbs (combined)

• $743 on food (combined)

• $727 on attractions (combined)

• misc for like, taxis, busses and uber; barcelona transit cards

• misc spending cash that wasn't tracked; postcards, snacks, airport food, etc.

If we add those up and subtract from the total that means the misc are ~$105 each.

• I spent $13.50 on an SD card because I filled mine up.

Efficiencies

Both cities had attraction pass cards that worked out really well. They're called, very obviously, The Dublin Pass and The Barcelona Pass and they're a couple hundred euros each person, each city.

We looked at the list and figured out the sum of what we'd spend seeing the things we actually wanted to see and easily broke even on our admission prices.

Plus, and thank goodness, it gets you past the queue for certain places - in Dublin the biggest attraction is the Guinness building and the line snaked out the door and down the street, but we walked right in. Saved over an hour or two of standing, I'm sure, and that pays for itself immediately.

Choosing airbnbs with a kitchenette is nice. Having a fridge for water and toast in the morning and yogurt and snacks and whatever is great and saves money eating out. Groceries in both cities were pretty cheap.

Inefficiencies

So, the night before we were supposed to fly into Barcelona the riots broke out and the airport was informally seized. Seeing it on the news we were nervous about flying into long wait times and general anarchy. As it turns out it was nothing, and cleared up by the time we would have landed, but we were up at 3am reading twitter and such trying to determine how bad it was and ended up making the call to re-book different flights.

In the end we sort of lost that day to be in the city, and while the original flights gave us most of a refund, we did lose $40 for nothing.

The usual stuff, right: airports are expensive. They have you trapped. We had some crappy meals that cost wayyy too much. What can you do.

We also, on the way to airport to leave Dublin took the "airport bus" which is a coach bus instead of the city bus (which seemingly also go to the airport), and that was like 12 euro each instead of 3 or whatever (see below). It's a direct shot and a nicer service, but like, you're sitting on a bus either way. Who cares. To save 18 euro is like $27 CAD.

Transit

Dublin busses are expensive, they have a dumb archaic system where the first 3 stops are X price and any stop further than that away are 3 euros (each). But to get from the main core downtown area to our airbnb (which wasn't even that far, we walked sometimes) out was always 7+ stops so we always paid 12 euro a day to transit. Every time you get on a bus, you pay again.

Barcelona, by contrast, sells you stiff paper cards for 10 euro each that get you 10 'trips' on the transit, and a 'trip' is 90 minutes by any format, so you can take a bus to the train and get off the train to a funicular and then take a bus from there, etc etc.

This is amazing. You can get a heck of a way across town for effectively 1 euro per.

In the end, we bought the 10 trip pass (you can get more for additional discount) and actually used exactly that amount of trips in our time there. The last trip we used was the one to the airport, mostly by coincidence. How perfect!

Attractions

Dublin Botanical Gardens are great, maybe my favourite so far in the world, and free. A+

Barcelona Botanical Gardens are kind of whatever and included on the attraction pass. B

Dublin Zoo is pretty nice and surrounded by gorgeous parks. A

Barcelona Zoo is decent and was surrounded by a park that was closed by the police. A-

Guiness Tour was a madhouse - a zoo in its own right, if you will - and vaguely interesting but mostly just busy and loud and crowded. We skipped the line with our pass, thank gosh, and ended up giving our free drink tickets to some other tourist guys because we didn't want to stand in line at the bar for a beer. C

Jameson Tour was great, although the real manufacturing is done somewhere else now. They take you in small groups through the process and some neat interactive museum-like rooms with a tasting of their own and some other (american, etc) types of whiskeys. They have a bar at the front and you get a free drink ticket, straight or with gingerale. A+

Teeling Whiskey Tour was cool because they actually show you the physical vats and stills and you look inside and see and smell things, more like a brewery tour. The tasting at the end had some fun cocktail variations with their whiskey that were good. A

Vaults Live is a live performance and we had no idea what to expect. It wasn't really on our 'definitely' list but we were walking home from supper one night and walked right past it / the last show of the night was starting soon so like, perfect. As it turns out, sort of fun! B+

Glasnevin Cemetary: okay, so you can just go to the cemetery for free because it's a cemetery and wander around and look at old old gravestones. The tour adds names which I've never heard of as they relate to Irish history that we didn't know anything about. Or at least go to the Post Office museum first which tells a lot of the revolution stories as they fit into these names. As we went, we had no idea who any of these graves were, but it felt rude and weird to abandon the tour group halfway through. It is next to the botanical gardens though, so like, you can see it while you're there.

Just a whole ton of museums. Whew boy we went to so many museums.

Barcelona Aquarium is a decent aquarium. B+

CosmoCaixa is the Barcelona science center and the best one I've ever been to. A++ go do it

Labyrinth Garden (Parc del Laberint d'Horta) is a garden with a hedge maze (not a labyrinth???) and a waterfall and a bunch of smaller gorgeous little garden grove areas. I could live here forever. A+

All of the different Gaudi buildings are super neat, but I'm into architecture. A

Barcelona Pavilion, by itself it's not really anything but some rooms to stand in for 7 euro or whatever, but it's a spiritual mecca for me ever since The Third and the Seventh and my career in 3D. YMMV.

All in All

I'd do it again, of course. Had a great time, and really enjoyed both cities for their unique vibes. I think the Dublin week was about perfect, as far as touristy things - we wouldn't want to have spent more time there. Barcelona feels a lot bigger, we did most of the things on the tourist card, but even just the city itself feels like it's deeper with places and restaurants and malls to explore. I feel like I could live there for a few months very happily.

And thanks to Chelsea, a wonderful travel partner who I'm so pleased to have shared this with.