Visitors are exhausting.
You walk around all day, spend more money than you normally would on entrance fees and metro passes and you eat constantly, and I mean constantly, just so that they can have the best possible experience in Barcelona.
Over the last few weeks, I have had three visitors. I have re-visited all of Barcelona’s major sights, from Sagrada Familia to Park Güell, I can recite Antoni Gaudí’s life story by heart and I have perfected a Barcelona sightseeing itinerary, which I am more than happy to share. Also, I have been to Brunch & Cake, a local bistro, four times this week with my visitors. That means I have eaten brunch four times in a week.
That is not okay.
Well maybe it is okay, because as tiring as it’s been, I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up my semester.
You see, visitors are actually the best.
They allow you to experience your city in a fresh way, as if you were discovering it for the first time.
Once you’ve been living somewhere awhile you tend to forget the city’s magic. You walk past the same things every day and they become mundane even if they are really special. Parisians walk past the Eiffel Tower daily, unfazed, and Romans apathetically speed past the Colosseum. And here I am, strolling down Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona, absolutely oblivious to Gaudí’s Casa Batlló or Casa Milà because I see them practically every day.
The joy of showing someone around is that you can actually look at what you’ve been seeing this whole time; you pause and you think,
“Whoa. How lucky am I to be surrounded by something this beautiful?”
