Ok so continuing my blog. Call it a travel blog if you will. I haven't been here for a while - sorry about that. Again, I'm hoping someone reads about my adventures, if not its a cool way to remember where i went and what I did.
So I went on my first official sales trip to attend the annual tradeshow called EITBM. No idea what it stands for.
My awesome boss gave me a few days headstart so that I could explore.
A friend from school, Hilde, met up with me for the weekend. We rented an apartment in the gothic neighbourhood for the weekend. I arrived on the Friday morning and took a train to some station to connect with metro line three to Liceu on La Rambla. I was supposed to meet the landlord there for the keys but he was in a meeting so I set off to find the laundromat where he left the spare set of keys. It was actually really close to the metro stop but a slightly panicked and tired me walked for probably an hour (with my suitcase) to find the place. Ended up in the right street in front of a very dodgy black and graffiti'd door. I opened the door only to find the most frightening staircase of my life. My first thought was, o my fuck, I'm gonna get raped or robbed in my sleep. I managed to drag my suitcase up three flights of stairs to the apartment. The apartment is great though. It felt relatively safe, was beautiful though small. It was clean and ridiculously central so who was I to complain?
I took to the streets to shop my heart out only to be super disappointed. I was craving H&M and a proper Zara, but could not find anything. I walked and walked and walked exploring and ended up at a little tapas place on Las Ramblas to drink sangria and write post cards.
Hilde arrived just after midnight, it was so good seeing her and catching up. We went looking for a bar after we got her settled at the apartment but couldn't find anything close by that was open.
Saturday morning we woke up to a huge storm, thunder and all! We were extremely tempted to stay in bed all day but eventually set out to find some breakfast. After buying umbrellas we went to the food market and got some breakfast followed by delicious wine.
Thereafter we did the heaviest tourist thing and got onto the red hop on hop off bus. The bus took us to La Sagrada Familia which was ridiculously cool! Unfortunately the line was so long it went right around the church so obviously we couldn't get in. Always leave something to come back to right? We continued on the bus a little bit and then got sick of being stuck on a bus and got off at Tibidabo to have coffee and catch the metro back to La Rambla. Did i mention that it was super cold?
Instead of getting off at la Rambla we continued to Port Vell for some shopping. Up until this point it was pouring with rain and we were frozen so we opted for some indoor shopping goodness. Two hours later we left the mall with various purchases and went home to deposit our new goodies.
My main shopping mission for Barcelona was to buy a nice pair of leather boots. After we left the apartment the boot search continued in the pouring rain. Wet feet is a great incentive for buying boots :)
Literally five minutes before we had to meet the girlfriend of Hilde's cousin we found the perfect pair of boots.
Marga (the girlfriend) took us to the most amazing little tapas place. It was a bit of a wait but soooo worth it. The place was super nice and crammed with locals. We fought our way open to the bar and took our seats to start our tapa and wine feast. I cant even describe the food we had, but it was out of this world delicious! Marga took us to a bar close to our apartment for some late night sangria. We were met by a transvestite and a cross-gender cow person/thing. It was such a creative and awesome place and we literally just sat in a corner people watching.
What an amazing day!! I havent even told you yet, Marga is a big time celeb in B-town. She is on the Spanish olympic synchronized swimming team. It was so interesting and amazing listening to her stories and experiences. She is such a nice person and we are really lucky that our paths crossed with hers.
My last day with Hilde was also spent in the rain but we had so much fun! We woke up late and headed out for breakfast. A breakfast of champions. A chocolate croissant and a late. We walked a lot (in my new boots) and accidentally ended up at Barcelona's own Arc d Triomph. What?! Yes thats right.. If im not mistaken it was for some world show thing (i cant remember the name, but will post as soon as it comes to me). We took a couple of jumping pictures in front of the fake landmark and missioned on. We landed up on a bus making our way up to Tibidabo. Tibidabo is sort of a mountain and a lookout point over the beautiful city. Once the bus drops you, you board an ancient funicular ( more scary than cool old!) to the top. Ed and Tyler shared the funicular with us - fantastic meeting these two actors from Canada land (?) - they were great photographers and even posed on a few pics with us. Hopefully somewhere around the world we'll bump into them again.
Tibidabo was gorgeous and the views over the city beautiful, but unfortunately we had only a few minutes at the top as we had to rush back home to get Hilde to the airport. We made it home just in time.
We said our goodbyes and Hilde headed off to the airport, and i took a cab to my hotel. The hotel, Murmuri is just up the road from the awesome tapas place Marga took us to. Its a beautiful boutique style hotel located very centrally and close to amazing shops.
Monday morning started early as i got back into work mode. I met Yolanda and Rupert for breakfast and chatted through the day's happenings. We went to the convention centre to go and check our stand and headed home to prepare for our meetings for the following three days.
For those of you who dont know, i work in sales and marketing for a destination management company. We sell southern and east africa as destinations for international corporate incentive groups. We attend various international trade shows all over the world to market our product - gorgeous dark wild africa. In conclusion, this is how i found myself in Barcelona. Barcelona is the host city to the annual EIBTM show in November. In feb 2014 we are heading to AIME in Melbourne, Australia.
Ive heard many things about these shows and to sum it up i was warned that im going to talk a lot, walk a lot, smile a lot and be exhausted after three days. Well they were right. However they made it out to be a bad thing. Yes i was exhausted, but i honestly enjoyed it. It was so empowering telling people about our amazing country and refreshing that most of them actually showed a real interest. I was so psyched up half way through the first day i couldve danced circles around the entire conference centre.
During the show days we visited amazing restaurants; i had an apple and basil martini, saw a dj in a unisex bathroom, had delicious spanish ham, beautiful white wines and moody spanish waiters. All in all Barcelona was one hell of an experience!
The trip back home was not so much fun. I flew back on Egypt Air - a dry, boring and slightly creepy airline. I really wouldn't recommend this, but it was cheap and the food was sort of edible :) ag no worries, i got to go to Barcelona and got home in one piece so all good.
Stay tuned for New Zealand and Australia.
Lots of love,
Netta
So I went on my first official sales trip to attend the annual tradeshow called EITBM. No idea what it stands for.
My awesome boss gave me a few days headstart so that I could explore.
A friend from school, Hilde, met up with me for the weekend. We rented an apartment in the gothic neighbourhood for the weekend. I arrived on the Friday morning and took a train to some station to connect with metro line three to Liceu on La Rambla. I was supposed to meet the landlord there for the keys but he was in a meeting so I set off to find the laundromat where he left the spare set of keys. It was actually really close to the metro stop but a slightly panicked and tired me walked for probably an hour (with my suitcase) to find the place. Ended up in the right street in front of a very dodgy black and graffiti'd door. I opened the door only to find the most frightening staircase of my life. My first thought was, o my fuck, I'm gonna get raped or robbed in my sleep. I managed to drag my suitcase up three flights of stairs to the apartment. The apartment is great though. It felt relatively safe, was beautiful though small. It was clean and ridiculously central so who was I to complain?
I took to the streets to shop my heart out only to be super disappointed. I was craving H&M and a proper Zara, but could not find anything. I walked and walked and walked exploring and ended up at a little tapas place on Las Ramblas to drink sangria and write post cards.
Hilde arrived just after midnight, it was so good seeing her and catching up. We went looking for a bar after we got her settled at the apartment but couldn't find anything close by that was open.
Saturday morning we woke up to a huge storm, thunder and all! We were extremely tempted to stay in bed all day but eventually set out to find some breakfast. After buying umbrellas we went to the food market and got some breakfast followed by delicious wine.
Thereafter we did the heaviest tourist thing and got onto the red hop on hop off bus. The bus took us to La Sagrada Familia which was ridiculously cool! Unfortunately the line was so long it went right around the church so obviously we couldn't get in. Always leave something to come back to right? We continued on the bus a little bit and then got sick of being stuck on a bus and got off at Tibidabo to have coffee and catch the metro back to La Rambla. Did i mention that it was super cold?
Instead of getting off at la Rambla we continued to Port Vell for some shopping. Up until this point it was pouring with rain and we were frozen so we opted for some indoor shopping goodness. Two hours later we left the mall with various purchases and went home to deposit our new goodies.
My main shopping mission for Barcelona was to buy a nice pair of leather boots. After we left the apartment the boot search continued in the pouring rain. Wet feet is a great incentive for buying boots :)
Literally five minutes before we had to meet the girlfriend of Hilde's cousin we found the perfect pair of boots.
Marga (the girlfriend) took us to the most amazing little tapas place. It was a bit of a wait but soooo worth it. The place was super nice and crammed with locals. We fought our way open to the bar and took our seats to start our tapa and wine feast. I cant even describe the food we had, but it was out of this world delicious! Marga took us to a bar close to our apartment for some late night sangria. We were met by a transvestite and a cross-gender cow person/thing. It was such a creative and awesome place and we literally just sat in a corner people watching.
What an amazing day!! I havent even told you yet, Marga is a big time celeb in B-town. She is on the Spanish olympic synchronized swimming team. It was so interesting and amazing listening to her stories and experiences. She is such a nice person and we are really lucky that our paths crossed with hers.
My last day with Hilde was also spent in the rain but we had so much fun! We woke up late and headed out for breakfast. A breakfast of champions. A chocolate croissant and a late. We walked a lot (in my new boots) and accidentally ended up at Barcelona's own Arc d Triomph. What?! Yes thats right.. If im not mistaken it was for some world show thing (i cant remember the name, but will post as soon as it comes to me). We took a couple of jumping pictures in front of the fake landmark and missioned on. We landed up on a bus making our way up to Tibidabo. Tibidabo is sort of a mountain and a lookout point over the beautiful city. Once the bus drops you, you board an ancient funicular ( more scary than cool old!) to the top. Ed and Tyler shared the funicular with us - fantastic meeting these two actors from Canada land (?) - they were great photographers and even posed on a few pics with us. Hopefully somewhere around the world we'll bump into them again.
Tibidabo was gorgeous and the views over the city beautiful, but unfortunately we had only a few minutes at the top as we had to rush back home to get Hilde to the airport. We made it home just in time.
We said our goodbyes and Hilde headed off to the airport, and i took a cab to my hotel. The hotel, Murmuri is just up the road from the awesome tapas place Marga took us to. Its a beautiful boutique style hotel located very centrally and close to amazing shops.
Monday morning started early as i got back into work mode. I met Yolanda and Rupert for breakfast and chatted through the day's happenings. We went to the convention centre to go and check our stand and headed home to prepare for our meetings for the following three days.
For those of you who dont know, i work in sales and marketing for a destination management company. We sell southern and east africa as destinations for international corporate incentive groups. We attend various international trade shows all over the world to market our product - gorgeous dark wild africa. In conclusion, this is how i found myself in Barcelona. Barcelona is the host city to the annual EIBTM show in November. In feb 2014 we are heading to AIME in Melbourne, Australia.
Ive heard many things about these shows and to sum it up i was warned that im going to talk a lot, walk a lot, smile a lot and be exhausted after three days. Well they were right. However they made it out to be a bad thing. Yes i was exhausted, but i honestly enjoyed it. It was so empowering telling people about our amazing country and refreshing that most of them actually showed a real interest. I was so psyched up half way through the first day i couldve danced circles around the entire conference centre.
During the show days we visited amazing restaurants; i had an apple and basil martini, saw a dj in a unisex bathroom, had delicious spanish ham, beautiful white wines and moody spanish waiters. All in all Barcelona was one hell of an experience!
The trip back home was not so much fun. I flew back on Egypt Air - a dry, boring and slightly creepy airline. I really wouldn't recommend this, but it was cheap and the food was sort of edible :) ag no worries, i got to go to Barcelona and got home in one piece so all good.
Stay tuned for New Zealand and Australia.
Lots of love,
Netta
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