"2001 - Motorcycle tour to Barcelona" Spain Travelogue by ant1606

- coming soon -

WARNING - try something else!

Not only we love to stay at campsites for it's easy to chat and make friends with neighbors, but also because our motorcycle is safer. Not all hotels have a private parking and there's always a good chance to find available place at campsites.
Barcelona was our destination and we went on "at sight" until we found one. This was "La Ballena Alegre", located past the airport. We hit the line at the check-in booth to find they had the last bungalow available, so we decided to spare the use of our own tent and secured it for three nights before it was gone, and without seeing it.
Well, I have recently checked the webpages of some campsites around Barcelona and I admit they look quite good. Our experience at La Ballena Alegre was definitely not the best and we suggest visitors to try other places.
Masonry bungalows were lined up and much similar to toolsheds, ours was #46. If the exterior sight was not inviting, we found the interior to be even worse. The window transparency was prevented by a curtain of natural dirt that would have required hard tools to be scraped and chipped away. The wooden beds were old and dacaying, as well as the broken table. Two greasy plastic chairs had probably seen their best days two decades before. Stables are definitely a cleaner place to spread out sleeping bags, but at least this bungalow gave us the immense pleasure to share it with two colonies of red biting ants.
The space in front of the shed was more of a junkyard and nearly totally occupied by our neighbors' stuff. It was a family of 6, including kids and a baby, of which a few used to sleep inside their car parked in front. By the way, the picture was taken after they left for good the day before we did. Every night, upon return from downtown Barcelona, if we wanted to park the bike in "our" space, we had to clear a sufficient portion from kids' bicycles, floating toys, empty bottles, diapers and other garbage. When our neighbor left for good we were curious to check how many people were in there, so we watched the event and we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the family man struggling to get a huge TV set and a VCR through the door. Then we immediately understood why a couple of people were sleeping in the car!
What an experience....