My sibling is an avid Final Fantasy fan, or at least of the concerts, and they usually ask me to prepare a trip when there is one in Spain. They tend to be in Barcelona, which has a love-to-hate relationships with tourism. Short-term letting apartments to tourists is more profitable than renting to residents, which is (allegedly) one of the causes of the current housing crisis. Finally, it has one of the highest criminality rates in Spain, and the epicentre of the secessionist movement. Thus, I’ve not planned much the last couple of times we were there, just enough to fill the days. It does not help that my sibling is a cosplayer and we have to haul a suitcase with the outfit.

This time, however, the Final Fantasy Rebirth Orchestra World Tour concert was on a Sunday. I have no faith in the public transport system any more, and Monday had to be requested off anyway, so we ended up looking at Saturday-morning to Monday-evening trip. Thus, I decided to fit in a bunch of Modernisme and other stuff that had been on my list for a while. Also, friends! Because friends are extremely important, especially when big changes are on the way!

I bought tickets for the concert in June 2024, when they went on sale. I booked the hotel in November, but I refused to pay for breakfast, because it was 20 € per person and day, and I was not going to pay 40 bucks for weak coffee and stuff I don’t even eat… And then I did not do much planning until February. However, I knew that at some point I needed to get things organised, else we would spend the weekend queueing to enter places. I’ve seen it happen before…

The train tickets only came out 90 days in advance, and I got them in early February. They were expensive – I had hoped to catch one of the new low-cost trains, but paying for the cosplay suitcase would push it to normal ticket prices. I found an outbound direct train, bit the return one that I wanted was not running, so we had to take a connection – which meant going to Madrid, then backwards on our way back. Oh, well. And on top of that, construction on the tracks triggered delay warnings – which did not come true in the end, good thing I insisted on being at the stations for the earlier time, whether it was the old or new one.

I put together a tentative itinerary waiting for the weather forecast, and the week of the trip itself, I booked tickets, including the transportation card – which was a nightmare. I really don’t understand how or why cities have decided to get rid of regular transport tickets. The ten-trip ticket has disappeared, and buying a one-way was prohibitive. Considering how many trips we would get, it made sense to get a 72-hour tourist ticket, since it was impossible to register to get a normal card… I also organised where to leave the luggage, since the hotel is next to the venue, and that is more than a bit out…

Spoiler alert though: we did not get pick-pocketed nor robbed, unless you count the insane tourist tax at the hotel, and we did not take forever to do the check-in.