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"You'll have to wait here on the side until I can verify with the computer that you do exist"

I knew that this worst vacation ever had finally broken me down.  I had been sitting at the Barcelona airport for four hours, waiting to check in to my flight.  The Ramblas, Barcelona's main promenade was buzzing with summer energy.  Street performers were everywhere, vendors were peddling all sorts of goods.  I had decided to go 5 hours early to catch my flight and miss the fun.  Why? My wallet had just been stolen and with it all my money, credit cards.  Fortunately, I'd been smart enough to carry my passport in the inside pocket of my jacket, so I still had that.

It seemed at this point that not even my passport was going to be enough to get me out of the worst vacation ever.  The Spanish ticketing agent was clicking wildly at his keyboard.  When I'd stepped up as the first person in line, I could feel him carefully looking over my clothes, the same shirt and shorts I'd been wearing all week, and with a practiced sneer he set down to the task of getting rid of me as quickly as possible.  

He began typing more quickly, looking up at me every so often.  Then, he informed me: according to the Alitalia computer, I was never born.  I did not exist.  They were not in the habit of issuing tickets to people that did not exist.  My only reaction? Of course... How could I have thought that this trip would end without one more problem?

I had arrived in Spain a week earlier.  I had planned to meet up with a girl that I had come to know during my first year in College.  She and I would be roommates the next fall with two other friends, and she was going to be backpacking all over Europe for the summer.  We'd find eachother at the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona and spend the week exploring from there.

When I got there, I was there, but my suitcase was missing.  I was lucky on two accounts: I'd packed many essential items in my carry-on including medications that I was taking at the time.  I was annoyed, but ready for my adventure.  I had no idea that this was quickly going to become my number one worst vacation ever.

I'd made no plans for where I would be staying when I arrived.  I knew that people like me used hostels, but I had no idea what one would cost or that advance reservations would be a good idea. I certainly didn't know that I could use hosteling international's website to reserve a bed online.  I was travelling in August.  Hostels were booked solid.  I went to 23 hostels before I found one that would give me a bed in a dorm room.  For security, each room was caged in.  It felt like a jail.

The next day, I met up with B. at the Sagrada Familia.  This work-in-progress was designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí.  I cannot get enough of Gaudí's architecture.  His buildings are scattered throughout Barcelona and make me think of lunar landscapes, acid trips and slowly melting stained-glass.  I was ready to pay the €11.00 entrance fee when B. notified me that she had a slight problem.  She only had about €20.00 to get her through the rest of the trip.  Since I didn't have it in me to just ditch her and get on with my own vacation, I was going to be paying for both of us.  It took more than a year for her to pay me back... Any holiday that leaves you still trying to recover money a year later counts as a worst vacation ever to me.

We went back to the train station, where she had left her backpack in a day-locker and considered our options.  She had a Eurail pass that still had several days of travel left on it.  We decided that we would make it our goal to get to Morocco before we had to turn around so that I could catch my flight back to Boston.  It was one of the few interesting things that we could think of to do that would not cost her any money.

Of course, by that late hour, there were no trains to Algeciras.  That was the only place we could go to in order to catch the ferry to Morocco.  So, without looking carefully at the map, we decided to go as far along the coast as we could and jumped on the train to Alicante. Little did we know that our worst vacation ever had just begun.