"If you haven't lived at the W, you haven't lived at all!"Where do I start.
No, really, where do I start.
Let me just start off by saying I haven nothing against tourist blogs, the tourism industry, or luxury hotels. Lord knows I'd love to be able to live in the lap of luxury for even just one day out of my entire life. Lord knows I'd love to be pampered, even if it's for the last time ever. Lord knows I would love to stay at the W in Barcelona. That's clearly not the issue.
The issue is that the two people quoted here are claiming (or at least inferring) that staying anywhere other than the W Hotel in Barcelona is a wasted experience and that you haven't actually been to Barcelona until you've experienced the cool luxury of this hotel. And that, that my friends, is what I take issue with. Because there are around three million people in the Barcelona area (El Prat, L'Hospitalet, Cornellà, Barcelona capital, Sant Adrià, Santa Coloma, Sant Gervasi, etc.) who have never been to the W and who experience Barcelona more than the rest of us because it is their city and they live in it 24/7. They love their city, they hate their city, they are the real experts here. And they don't need to sleep in a luxury hotel to experience life, or their city.
Attitudes like this bother me. Attitudes of those with money claiming that they have experienced all that life has to offer because they have the money to spend on expensive hotels, or those who have been given the opportunity to spend time in expensive hotels with expensive travel packages, who look at everything that's not luxurious or expensive as "quaint". It's aggravating, it's annoying, it's frustrating. It's obnoxious. Oh, I'm sorry that we're not all as rich as you/haven't been given an all-expenses paid trip to wherever. We have experienced life just as fully, thank you very much, and we don't have to stay in luxury hotels to do it.
I absolutely love the hostel I stayed at in Barcelona the two major trips I took. It was far away from the tourist areas, it was in a working-class district where most people tend not to meet people who don't live in Barcelona, a block away from the subway, and it's a relatively short walk from Camp Nou. It costs $230 for six nights over no holidays, and the staff is incredibly friendly. There's no room service and your bed is only touched after you've checked out. But it's clean. And, most importantly, it's cheap. I like cheap. I love cheap. Cheap works. It leaves you more money to spend in other places, and allows you to not have to worry about going broke. Considering that the W charges probably around $250 a night, I'll take my little hostel in Sants with access to the subway and within walking distance of Camp Nou and a thirty-minute
I refuse to be told that I haven't lived life until I've stayed in a luxury resort hotel. I refuse to believe that I should stay in a luxury resort hotel in order to fully experience a city. A hotel is not a city. It's a building where people can sleep and that provides certain amenities for people who are staying somewhere where they do not have residence. Some people want to be fully pampered when they visit a place that's not their home, or sometimes they want to be pampered in their hometown but without traveling to get pampered. And that's okay. But again, a hotel is not a city. You only experience a city or a place by going into that place, not by staying inside the walls of your hotel and claiming that that is the city you visited. You cannot judge a city based on the quality of its luxury hotels. If anything, you judge it on the quality of its hostels and inns. Its hovels, if you will.
But maybe I'm just bitter because I'm broke and can't afford to go anywhere at all.
