So I adore Dublin, but I haven’t had the opportunity to see nearly as much of it as I’d hoped. Despite my grand plans to sleep on the plane, and to compensate for this failure by taking a nap, my “nap” was actually four hours long, and then I had to spend another hour and a half or so dealing with business back home. All in all, I didn’t make it out of my hotel until about five (I think? My cell doesn’t like this time zone, and isn’t keeping time properly at all). So I got to walk around the immediate area and take a few pictures of the loveliness that surrounded me.
I also had a really, really, really delicious dinner at a really cool restaurant called Church (it’s actually in a converted church):
(Also, I got to sample real Irish draught Guinness, and let me confirm that the rumors are true. It’s a different beer entirely in Ireland, and where I’ve never liked it when I’ve tried it in the States, I could drink gallons of what they served me here in Dublin.)
But then there was some drama.
So, I came back from the restaurant, full as a tick (again) and wholly content, and decided to take it easy, since I was still exhausted (I was falling asleep at the restaurant). While chatting with buddies and enjoying the intarwebs, I got a call from my “Check-In Manager,” Ahmed – who was neither of the women with whom I had corresponded via e-mail about the arrangements for this apartment. I hadn’t thought anything of it when I was given his name and information as a contact in Barcelona – I figured he’d be a super, or a property manager, or whatever. Well, whatever he was, he called me and told me, at about 11:00 PM or so Dublin time (which means about midnight Barcelona time), that the apartment I had booked and confirmed by making an initial payment of $600+, was having a “water problem,” and that it wouldn’t be available for a few days – but that they were going to put me somewhere in the “city center.” When I asked him for the address of the new apartment, he told me he’d tell me when I got to the airport tomorrow.
Hmm.
Now, this whole situation really bothered me – but whatever, I needed to go to bed, I needed to sleep, I needed to get up the next day (today) at 5:30 to make my flight. So I went to sleep.
And woke up at about 2:45 Dublin time.
I couldn’t get back to sleep – I didn’t want to. I didn’t like that he hadn’t told me the address of the apartment, and I tried calling him – to no avail, of course. Beyond that, when I’d first booked the apartment, I’d arranged to stay in one spot, and after I’d booked it, they wrote me to tell me that the landlady had booked it – and they offered me several other options at higher prices. I told them that I was on a budget, and that I needed to pay what I had originally been going to. They then offered me the apartment that many of my friends have heard about – an adorable little studio in La Barceloneta, perfect for my needs, a two minute (seriously, Google Maps said so) walk to the beach, ten minutes into the heart of Ciudad Vella, an area of the city densely packed with many of the things I want to see there. It was originally priced at about 700 Euro more than I’d booked the other room for, but they cut it down to only about 100 Euro more – which was awesome for the location and space.
At the time, I’d thought I’d just lucked out – but upon receiving that call from the “Check-In Manager,” I began to see it in a different light entirely. I’d been warned by a friend that I ought to just stay in a hostel for a few days when I got into town, so I could actually see the apartments I was considering, meet with landlords, and ensure that the situation was legit.
Of course, I didn’t listen; I was worried about staying in a hostel, I didn’t want to schlep, I just wanted to be settled as quickly as possible. I figured since I’d found the place in the comments of the NYT travel section’s article on staying Barcelona, it must be okay. (This was a naïve mistake on my part – the age of the Common Man Internet has made me forget the extreme paranoia I had back in the days, when it was only nerds, freaks, and liars on the ‘Net [remember when we actually called it that? HA!].) Of course, it never occurred to me that someone from the company itself may have written a bogus recommendation. I don’t know if that’s the case, but really, a little more info should have been considered.
In any case, (oh, look, there’s England! :D), when I woke in the middle of the night, my stomach clenched, my teeth grinding, about this situation, and I didn’t hear back from Ahmed, I wrote an e-mail to Alba, the woman I’d been corresponding with. I told her I was very distressed about the situation, and wanted the address of the place. But the more I thought about it, the less comfortable I was. I felt more than a little stupid, naïve, and helpless. Here I was, not even at home so that I had some kind of recourse, so that I could just say, “Well fuck you then,” or at least feel like I had resources at my disposal to fix this somehow. I was across an ocean, in a hotel room, in a place where everything is more expensive and my money is worth less than at home. The idea of being adrift – of having no place to stay, of having to spend hundreds of dollars on hotel rooms and losing the money I’d already put down – had me near hyperventilating.
This was why people had been so impressed that I’d gone by myself; or at least, it was what they should have been thinking about. Loneliness, okay – make a new friend, or make a phone call, or get drunk. Being in a foreign place when shit goes south, all by yourself? It’s strange – when someone else is with you, you’re in together. Whatever goes wrong, you have each other – to blame, to reassure, to talk and figure it out. There was no one to blame or reassure but me.
Well, that’s not exactly true – granted, there was no one to blame but myself (and maybe Ahmed), but there was reassurance to be had.
Now one lesson here is this – if you’re going far away, to another country, on vacation, make sure you either have a plan B or enough backup capital to make one on the fly. Also, a netbook and making sure wherever you stay has internet access is immensely helpful. With the help (and invaluable moral support) of my dear and infinitely smart and practical friend Leez, I researched hotels in Barcelona, checked them against my Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, and booked a room at a four-star hotel at an insanely cheap rate until Friday. When Ahmed called this morning, I went with my gut and told him I wasn’t going to be taking the apartment, and that I wanted my deposit back. He said that was impossible, and I told him that I was not going to pay for goods and services I had not been received – that since I wasn’t going to be provided with the apartment agreed upon when I paid, I was not going to let the charges stand. He said there was nothing he could do, so I told him that I had family in Barcelona (I did not mention that they’ve been dead for hundreds of years, and that my nearest live relative is in Mallorca), and that I was sure they could have their lawyer handle the situation, if that was what he wanted – but that I’d prefer not to have to go through the trouble.
Anyway, writing this entry has become exhausting - I'm in Nottingham now, and they're letting me into the departure area. YAAAAAY!
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