This report is about the solo travel which i did to Spain in June-July 2018

This is about my dream and desire to travel alone that came true. I started planning to travel alone almost 18 months prior to my departure. Had no idea on where i would go. But had listed out quite a few places and some research on the costs involved and things to do over these places. After much thinking and few months gone, had set my heart on Spain, reasons to choose Spain? Many..

The very first being, one of the best places to travel alone. Then the kind of atmospheric(lifestyle, cultural, infrastructure, people) differences between each of its region. Then the kind of places one can experience, museums, cathedrals, streets filled with colours, colonies.
But in between i all of these reasons, i found that the bull fight which is the San Fermin festival was happening around the time when i intended to travel. So having other few reasons i decided i would go explore Spain all by myself.

Planning phase:
So now the spot was fixed, i needed to work around what places to visit. I was clear on one thing, i am not in a hurry to cover Spain at one shot. So i a had to choose wisely. Two places which i wanted to visit for sure was Barcelona and Madrid.
So my initial days of planning, for places to visit, had these cities: Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Toledo, Madrid.

But later on advice of people and reading a travel report by Deonca(Solo tour of Spain in 16 days - loved it!) on fodors gave me a hint of spending quite a more time in each city to experience its glory and happenings. So i a narrowed it down to these places finally: Barcelona, Seville, Cordoba, Madrid.

Things were set and days in each were set. Next thing was to look at the flights. One best thing that happened while searching to affordable flights was Skyscanner. After much thought i found flying from India-Barcelona and Madrid - India was a better option and price was reasonable. The prices was fluctuating very often, Kept a tab open on my laptop, and every hour or so, i used to refresh and check the prices. After a week or so, i found the lowest possible price i could ever find. It was 38000 INR(470 Euro) (Bangalore(India)- Barcelona & Madrid - Bangalore(India)). So booked the tickets.
By the way, the trip happened between June 26th - July 12th 2018.

The flights were done. Next was accommodation, One thing i was aware was airbnb, i did a quite a time of research on places which would be close to centre of the city. listed down 5 places that was close to the city attractions and lively places. In between these days of planning, my friend who had did his trip year back to Amsterdam/Belgium suggested me to look on hostel world, and choose bunk beds rather than a private room. This could be a much of fun, networking, hanging out with other fellow travellers across the world.

So finally after a week of consideration of few hostels, i had 3 hostels in 3 places fixed, that i was sure of booking. But i delayed this booking by a week, due to which the hostel that i had in mind for Barcelona was full and rest of the hostels had hiked the price due to the demand(i guess it was because, it was summer). So i booked a private room(near Ronda de Sant Pau) in Barcelona through aribnb, Which costed me INR 9000(112 Euro) for 5 days of stay. And i did not waste time in booking rest of the stay, Booked a hostel in Seville, named Black Swan hostel which costed INR 5000(62 Euro) for 4 days of stay and in Madrid, it was Ok Hostel Madrid, that costed INR 13000(161 Euro) for 7 days of stay(This long in a city, will come to this part in the later part)

This is the first phase of plan, research, bookings. The things that happened next would follow in the next post.