On my final day in Barcelona I had to check out at 9am. I was partly annoyed because it meant I had to be up early and I was partly grateful as it meant that I had to be up early. Given that my flight wasn’t until half six that evening I decided to head into the city and check my suitcase into one of those storage locker things, so I didn’t have to drag it around with me all day, before heading out to see a couple of museums.
The first museum I went to visit was one I had seen earlier that week, the Erotic Museum of Barcelona. I thought it would be pretty interesting, and I’m trying to own my own sexuality a bit more and be more sex positive. Did it take me at least two walk pasts for me to build up the courage to go in there, and did I feel slightly uncomfortable being there on my own? Oh god, yes. Am I glad I went? Hell yes.
The slightly uncomfortable feeling I got going in there (and as I was looking around to some extent) is the same one I get when I go into a shop that sells lingerie and sex toys. It’s mostly a fear of judgement from other people, which is kind of ridiculous given that I wouldn’t judge anyone else for being there. Plus, if there’s one thing that the museum did teach me it was that people have been obsessed with sex, even the less than vanilla variety, since the dawn of time. It’s actually pretty damn normal.
Day 7 must have been a day for pushing myself well out of my comfort zone, because the second one I went to was an attempt to face a fear I had. On my previous visit to Barcelona I had seen the Wax Museum advertised, however it had been closed when I’d gone to check it out. I’ve had a fear of wax models since I had a bad experience when I was around 8, and I’d avoided them ever since, so this was a challenge to myself.
I’m actually really glad I went because I really enjoyed it, and I didn’t have any nightmares afterwards. They had a mixture of historical figures, from Henry the VIII and Anne Boleyn to Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and pop culture icons, such as R2-D2 and Princess Leia from Star Wars. I also managed to learn quite a bit about Spanish history and culture which I always find pretty cool, but I’m a bit of a history nerd.
They also had a pretty macabre section about different ways people had been executed in the past, a really cool section in part of the building that had been the actual vault of the building when it was a bank that had been set up like a bank robbery, and a really cool room that made clever use of mirrors to make it look bigger than it was.
However, my final day in Barcelona wasn’t all fun and games. At the airport I went to check in at the self-check-in desks, having been unable to do so online, and couldn’t check in there either so I was directed to a desk with a very long, slow moving queue. I got to the desk and was informed that the flight I was supposed to be on was full and that I might not be able to fly. I had to go through security and wait until the plane was boarded and if there was a free seat I could fly.
Unfortunately for me, there were seven people who didn’t have seats, and only two spare seats, so I had to wait the until the next day to fly home. On the plus side, the airline I flew with put me up in a very nice hotel for the evening, paid my meals, put me in the nicer seats for my return flight, and gave me compensation for my troubles.
However, the flight the next day was over an hour late, and I once I arrived back in the U.K. there was a fault with the trains which meant it took me an extra hour to get home. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing me for spending time in the Erotic Museum.
A Place of Mine 