So back in the post about my 2024 travels, I mentioned a trip that didn’t happen re: medical emergency. The refunds that I managed to get for that trip involved a roundtrip ticket to Barcelona that needed to be used before June 2025 and had to be on a specific airline, despite booking/getting the refund through Expedia. (Y’all, I had so much trouble with Expedia that I will never, ever trust them again. I even bought insurance for my hotel rooms and such, and they still refused to give me any money back!) In the late fall, when Rainstorm and I were just starting to flirt and almost-date, we talked about possibly meeting up in Barcelona. Then our friend Roxy, who is from Italy, said that she and her family would be in Barcelona for one day in late April – literally the day after Rainstorm’s birthday.

So Rainstorm and I booked to be in Barcelona for a week together that would cover both the birthday plans and the meetup with our friend. We booked a single hotel room/bed in that whole flirting-but-not-quite mood, with excuses of it being cheaper (did I mention we are basically living out a fanfic?). And of course, we officially started dating not long after that, and had our first together-in-person dating in February 2025. There was about two months between those first two trips, and they were AWFUL to wait through! One week together was NOT ENOUGH. (Long distance dating is HARD, y’all.) Eventually, though, we made it to Barcelona!

The first 75% of this trip was great. We had the greatest balcony off our room, and it was the perfect temperature to keep the windows open whenever possible. We walked and walked and walked, seeing as many of the sights as possible. I hadn’t previously been to the Basílica de la Sagrada Familia, so that was a fun new-to-me place to go. We took the bus up to Park Güell one day, but sadly, discovered that it was now ticketed (this wasn’t always the case) and everything for the whole week was sold out. Apparently it was a holiday week, as evidenced by a few things we saw over our days there, including the roses-and-books festival for St George’s Day. But our day up to Park Güell wasn’t wasted, as we walked down the long hill back to our hotel, meandering miles throughout the city in places we had never been to before.

The food was great almost everywhere we went. We tried out “Barcelona’s most instagramable brunch location” (it was not only not terribly photogenic, but probably the worst food of the trip, minus a particular incident that I’ll get to) and a hipster brunch place with delicious vegan bacon (not words I ever thought I’d say). Our hotel was near Casa Batlló and only a few blocks from the gay district, so we went to the gay book store and multiple gay bars, including one where we happened to arrive on a night with live music. We had cocktails in so many places, and probably definitely drank way too much alcohol (especially as the hotel kept delivering bottles of sparkling wine as perks of membership/birthday rewards). We spent dinners and lunches exploring new places, and had amazing Indian food, great vegetarian paella, and a giant spread of Greek dishes. (Did I mention the food was amazing?)

Rainstorm went swimming in the rooftop pool even though it was far too chilly to do that. Later, we looked out over the city from the same rooftop and cuddled under the sunset. A few days into vacation, I stayed at the hotel as jet lag crashed over me, napping all afternoon, while Rainstorm walked down to the beach, rented a bike, and explored a crazy-beautiful cemetery (one day I will go back and see it in person!). Can I just take a moment to say how wonderful it is to have a relationship where you’re so in-sync that you can either do things together or take time apart while on vacation, according to both of your needs? Both of us loved that day in particular, because neither of us had to feel guilty or neglected because we were alone and tending to ourselves. It was so, so, so very lovely!

And then came the bad part of the vacation. And OF COURSE it happened on Rainstorm’s birthday, because when else would you expect the bad things? We had Plans. We had breakfast at their favorite brunch place we’d discovered, explored the gay district, had that lovely Greek food I mentioned above. We decided to go back to the hotel for a bit after that, with plans to go to another of the gay bars that night after I treated them to a lovely dinner at a fancier restaurant. On our way back, we stopped for gelato. And this is where we made a misstep. It was the one place we didn’t share food, because I wanted gelato and Rainstorm wanted sorbet. We each tried a bite of the others’, but mostly stuck to our own. And something was apparently very, very wrong with my order.

I’m pretty sure that the bits of candied orange were rotten in some way. It could have been the gelato itself, but the gelato tasted fine. The candied bits tasted off, but I’m not a particular fan of candied fruit (I hadn’t known that’s what I ordered) and so I thought the bitterness was intentional. I thought the bitterness was normal. It’s candied fruit peel, after all. But by the time we reached the hotel twenty minutes later, I was on the edge of being violently sick.

Y’all. I have never had food poisoning in my life that I know of, but I basically spent the next twelve hours locked in the bathroom. And yeah, this means that my poor girlfriend of five months was stuck with someone who was desperately ill in a small hotel room, instead of going out for dinner and drinks for their birthday. UGH. I will not go into detail, obviously, but I had no idea that a body could be that sick and in so many different ways at one time. Rainstorm had a bit of a grumbly stomach and digestive issues as well, but it was only mild and over quickly, which makes us almost 100% sure that it was the gelato that fucked me over, as they’d had the single bite of mine.

Long story short (too late!), we spent the last two days of our time together taking it easy because I could barely walk around the block without feeling completely worn out. Thankfully, the actual illness portion subsided after twelve hours, and I could start to eat a tiny bit after about 36 hours, but I was in no shape to do anything more in Barcelona. Also thankfully, Roxy and her family visited Casa Batlló, so they could walk the three blocks to our hotel to meet up with us, since I couldn’t go meet them. Not exactly how I wanted to meet her in person for the first time, but she understood. And it was absolutely so great to meet her, for both of us. Another forever-friend. 🥰

Rainstorm had to leave the day before me, so I spent my last day in Barcelona living on room service and sleep. Then I was awake for 24 hours of travel home, unable to sleep on the plane and still unwell. Jason picked my severely-jet-lagged ass up from the airport and drove me to our house. Five minutes before we arrived, he announced that he’d moved out, was filing for divorce, and had frozen all our accounts. It was “not the best time” to tell me, he said, and he wanted everything to be amicable. Well. Draw your own conclusions from words vs actions. 🙄

So in the end, Barcelona was a mixed bag. I don’t regret it, minus the food poisoning of course. I still think of the city very fondly, especially after loving my time there in 2023 and also having another go of it in October 2025. But that’s for a future post!