Day 13 - Black Friday in Barcelona

Churros con chocolat
Finally, (after some help from chowhound.chow.com), I managed to find good Churros and Chocolate.

Churros very good, but hot choc not as good as the one I had on my 1st day in Barcelona.



Walked through some markets after breaky, selling all kinds of honey, herbs, spice, cheese, bread:


Lunch and final tourist sights in Barcelona

More tapas for lunch - Chorizo, octopus, stuffed capsicum with smoked cod mix (VERY GOOD!), stewed clams.

More strolling on the Rambla and the Port area:

Mr Columbus, point the wrong way




Paella :)

Did some final shopping and Mrs Chan scored a pair of earrings and a ring.

Black Moment
We then went down to the metro, trying get back to hotel and head to train station.

After we got down to the platform, we sat and waited for the metro to come. When we boarded the metro, 2-3 men/women got on the train with us but they were half blocking my way into the carriage. So I tried to squeeze pass them, but without success. Those men/women then left the train all of a sudden. I checked my pocket, and WALLET GONE! I immediately knew those bunch of ppl were responsible. Before the train door closed, we all alighted the train. We headed back to the platform and we found those men walking out towards another platform. We stopped them and asked for our wallet. They said they don't have it and that a "gypsie woman" must have got it. Those men showed us their pockets, bags etc... no sign of my wallet and I had no proof that they were involved.

There were also no station staff to be seen, so we rushed back to street level and got a taxi to the hotel. Called credit card providers during the taxi and at the hotel. Thank God that no cards were used in the 15mins between the wallet being stolen and the time I stopped the cards. I did lose about 200E equivalent of cash, so hope travel insurance will cover some of the loss.

Mrs Chan helped me to lodge in an online police report, but we still have to hand the report to a police station - this is required for insurance claims. It was 4pm when we left our hotel, and our train to Perpignan was scheduled at 4:42pm.

When we got to the train station, the police there said they can't speak English and won't be able to lodge a statement within 20mins. So our plan was then to get to Perpignan, and then drive our car back down to Spain tomorrow and find the nearest police station.

Train to Perpignan
While I still couldn't believe I got pocket-picked, it was time to recompose myself.

Train took 3 hours to cross the French border and reached Perpignan by around 8pm. Our stopover hotel was only 1 min from the station :) no lugging of our suitcases for once!

After checking in, we walked to a local Italian restaurant. Nice comfort dinner.