Deals in Barcelona during the GSMA Mobile Congress

The way to discover a city can vary depending on how many days you are visiting, what is the purpose of the trip…whatever it is, taking the most advantage of the trip with previous information, but..what happen when the city you are visitng offers  really good deals!!

Hurry up because  Barcelona has deals for you!! ans some of them are finishing soon.

So, if you are in Barcelona during this week for the GSMA Mobile World Congress or just visiting the city, don’t forget to download the free Barcelona Lonely planet application. Lonely planet tweeted it today and it will be available until midnight Thrusday the 17th. During that days, you can also have free wifi acces to Skype Acces-enabled Wifi hotsports in cafés, hotels and airports across Spain.

But Barcelona doesn’t offer only this city guide for free, with your mobile device you can get some discounts with Facebook places. You only have to log in on Facebook places, and check in at:

• Starbucks and you will get a Free TALL hot beverage (until the end of the month)
• El corte Inglés 50% off onall their products. (Also until the end of the month)
• H&M: 20% off on whatever you buy until today
• Futbol Club Barcelona store: You get a 2X1 when you buy a ticket for a soccer game. (Also until the end of the month)
• Sol Melià hotels: 50% off in the restaurants, breakfast buffet and Spa of this hotel chaine
• BBVA: if you check in any ATM or office, they give Red Cross 2€
• United Colours of Benetton: if you checkin in a store,they give Architecture for Humanity 2€

Good luck!!!

Blog Day 2009. Traveler Recommendations

Today, all the bloggers around celebrate the Blog Day. This consists giving  5 recommendations of new blogs that you have just discovered. This way, your blog readers wil

l find  other interesting stuff to learn about it and will have the opportunity to follow th

em.

My recommendation for today are different blogs I’m following throught my Reader. Some of them are in English or in Spanish. Use google translate if you are in trouble with the words or the whole text.

So, here is my recommendation for this day:

• Go Green, travel green.  Everyone should think in green. Always and more when we travel. Really interesting blog with travel tips for eco-conscious travelers.
• Blog de viajes. An argentinan blogger who shares almost everyday interesting things about travelling, tourism and . This blogger was awarded as the Best Spanish Language Blog by the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards 2009.
• La volta dels 25. This blog has 2 special things for me and just found it looking for some links. These special things are: It’s in Catalan, the language of Catalunya and of course, my language. The secong one, he’s 25, like me. He decided to take 1 year off and travel the world. He’s interviewing 25 young people from 25 years old around the world and write a book about it. Also awarded as the Best non-english  travel Blog by the Lonely Planet Travel Awards 2009.
• The practical nomad. I guess that if you just wanna travel and love international travel, this blog is the first stop you have to do before start planning anything. He’s an expert on airfares and how to get the best deals on the Internet and updates a lot of information and resources.
• Comer y tapear bien barato en Barcelona. This one is not about travelling throught the world, is about another trip to one city and its food. If you are in love with Barcelona, and you like the feeling of a good meal. Don’t miss this update with the best places on where to eat and for how much, from the most visited places in the city to the most hidden ones.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!!!

Who should you travel with?

Before or after making a decision on where to travel, depending on so many factors of course, you have to decide the most important question: travel alone or travel with more people.

It’s always a hard decision to say: I’m gonna travel by myself, but what about the question of traveling in group? Sometimes it’s harder, I swear.

There are plenty of different things which can create more confidence between the travelers, but also you can have different objectives of the trips and also more conflicts.

This post is based about some of my past experiences, and i’d like to share with you that it’s so important who are you going with, make sure you know them and check if your personalities fit  together, because if you don’t do that, you’ll have to find other alternatives or decide to go just by yourself (what I did last year for 2 months, meeting people on the road and in different houses)

So, before traveling with a friend, make sure:

• What is the aim of the trip: sightseeing, relax, partying, museums and architecture, escaping from the big cities and see surroundings. Make sure you know what everyone hope to experience.
• What is your budget? how many days?  this seems obvious, but it’s super important. It’s crucial to make sure your travel partner has a similar budget and days than you: a taxi is faster than the metro sometimes, and a fast food is faster than a restaurant. Both examples with different prices and more days also increase the prices.
• What type of personality you guys have: if you are dependent of people, independent or a mix. Sometimes opposites attract, but make sure this is not gonna break any plan in the trip.  I’m not a pro-tests person, but maybe this can help.
• How social you are? Depending on what activities you wanna do in the trip, or if it’s a trip to a country that you know people, make sure everyone understand what you wanna do and meet. Also, there are so many people traveling alone, would you able to fit them in your plans?
• How flexible, patiente and tolerant you guys are. Sometimes the route is stablished and your travelling companion doesn’t want to stop and spend more days in one place and you do.
• How positive and open-minded you guys are.  What happen if your reservation in a hotel is not the one you had, or that you are gonna end sleeping in a bus station somewhere filthy.
• What facts/actions can end the trip before starting it: make sure that if one of your travel friends decide finally not to join the group, the other people won’t make the same and let you without your holidays. Then you’ll have to change your plans too and if you don’t do it fast, maybe you’ll end at home during holidays.

Tip: Having conversations about travel plans before the trip. This can be challenging but you can realize if it’s a good decision to start with the trip and how.

and remember: traveling is like a test for any relationship and a way to discover yourself. You can realize and learn new things and behaviours of people you’ve know your whole live or you are just discovering. Every travel teachs, even you travel with (your)people or alone, so learn a lot and safe trip!

McDonalds’ index

Summer vacations are comming,  people are starting to think about where to go and when (a lot of people have their days off in august, 2 or 3 weeks…) For the ones with a restrictive budget, or people that don’t wanna spend a lot of money travelling and they wanna go to a different country, for travelers, families that wary about the cost of taking a vacation this summer, some economic relief may be in the offing, it’s just checking….thousands of good deals are around!

I wanna share with you what we were talking about with some friends last friday in Sant Cugat. As they are preparing their holidays (which I’m thinking on joining them depending on my family), and we all wanna save money.

We were checking the prices of the possible countries to travel (going to Japan is totally different that spending 20 days in India in terms of money) with the Big Mac Index, a new way that the Economist suggested to measure the purchase power in different parts of the world taking the cost of a BigMac hamburger and the exchange rate of every country.

It’s kind of funny to see the comparison but there are some limitations with this index, as in many countries, eating at international fast-food chains is quite expensive and if you wanna save money it’s better to stop by a local restaurant, and of course, the demand for Big Macs is not that large in countries like India as in the United States.

So, we’ll continue checking what will be the closest and cheapest escape for this summer with this type of tips, the Big Mac index was a good idea, but we need more tips!!

To finish, I truly believe that eating in McDonalds with a small budget and being full is past…it’s time for Dönner Kebabs , althought the ring-shaped pastry + cofee + 30 minutes wifi at McDolands is a really good deal.