Travel Writing

Considering it's the holiday season, I figured that travel or holiday writing is the way to go.
We all have some quirky holiday experience we often share with people. It would be great to read about yours.

What can you do?
Write about an experience that stands out in your mind about a holiday or time of travel. Take us on the journey with you so we feel like we were there too.

An example

Barcelona Girls

I think someone is yelling at us in Spanish, I whisper in a groggy voice to my girlfriends. We are in a one bedroom apartment in Barcelona. It is about 10 in the morning and we have not long been asleep after another night of hedonism in the vibrant, party city. The girls are apprehensive about investigating the source of the voice. It’s quite angry, bordering on violence. I go outside onto the balcony to inspect. Our balcony looks onto other balconies separated by a thoroughfare. Below are shop fronts and people walking by and riding pushbikes, chatting to each other.  A man is waving his hands about, irate, yelling out the same incomprehensible sounds. By this time the girls have joined me on the balcony.

Our ignorance only serves to fuel his anger. He disappears and soon we hear thumping on our door. Jen runs into the bedroom and hides in the wardrobe, Michelle locks herself in the bathroom and Rach toughs it out with me. We hear scuffling outside as more men join our distressed neighbour. We presume it’s the police and freak out even more, despite our innocence. Jen rings the owners of the apartment, attempting to tell them what is happening, but their English is not good all of a sudden. She informs them that the police have been called and the phone drops dead.

The man hurries back downstairs and confronts us again on the balcony. A lodger in the apartment block joins the fray with her dog on a leash and begins to translate for us. She tells us that, as we expected, the police have been called and that our air conditioning is leaking and dripping down onto the entrance of the man’s shop. Right, now we understand. A Caucasian man appears in the balcony next to ours. He has dreadlocks and looks like he’s been out partying all night like we have been. ‘He just called you stupid bitches,’ he tells us blankly.

The police bang on the door and we open it this time. They inform us that an infringement notice will be issued to the owner, who incidentally is not licenced to accommodate tourists or travellers. Someone rushes to find our receipt.  We are frantic now that we will have to leave. Our time in Barcelona had just begun and none of us wanted it to be cut short. There were barmen to continue flirting with, bar front display boxes to pose in, paella to be eaten and dancing to the wee hours of the morning to be done. The police reassure us that we can stay. We all let out a collective sigh of relief and laugh in a kind of shocked excitement.