Barcelona retro-blogging
In June 2005 I went on holiday in Barcelona with 4 friends. 3 of them are T-girls like me, one of them is a real girl, but we don't hold that against her. With so many trannies in one place, at least some dressing-up fun was on the cards. While I was there I kept a bit of a diary of events, or a 'blog' if you will.
June 11th 2005 - 11.55pm
Arrival
We've arrived at our apartment in the Raval district of Barcelona. The apartment itself is very nice, but the Raval is distinctly seedy. It's described in one guidebook as "historically a den of thieves, artists, prostitutes and transvestites". So we should fit right in!
June 12th 11.00am
Packing for Two
I've unpacked. There is a slight problem.
I'm used to packing to go away for tranny weekends, where it's essential that certain items are included (boobs, wigs, etc), and normally the only boy clothes I'll need are the ones I'm travelling in. In my determination to make sure I'd packed all the tranny essentials, as well as enough clothes to give Becky at least 4 distinct outfits for going out in, I've forgotten to pack much boy stuff! My boy wardrobe currently consists of 3 pairs of trousers, and 3 t-shirts. This wouldn't be a big problem if I was planning on dressing en-femme full time for the next two weeks, but I really don't fancy two weeks in the sun wearing full slap and the functional equivalent of a woolly hat.
There's a great big pile of guy stuff sitting in my cupboard at home waiting to be packed, but it looks like one of the first jobs of the holiday is shopping. For boy's clothes. Oh the horror!
June 13th 9.14pm
Retail Therapy
The shopping opportunities in Barcelona are superb. The Passeig de Gracia, the city's equivalent to the Champs-Elysée, has lots of the familiar big-name clothing stores. I spent a few minutes in H&M grabbing some cheap t-shirts and trousers to wear in boy-mode.
After that we headed off into the back streets of the ancient Barri Gothic, where there are less familiar shops with strikingly varied and vibrant clothes. The only problem for the tranny shopper is that everything tends to be sized for tiny Spanish girls! Even tops labelled as "extra large" seemed to be the equivalent of a UK size 12!
Later we travelled further to the east of the city, into the Born district. This is the most fashionable area of Barcelona to live, and the stores reflect that! Lots of achingly chic but horrendously expensive jewellers and dress shops.
I was finally tempted by a fab pair of pink camouflage combats back in one of the less expensive stores. Well you didn't think I was only going to buy boy clothes on this holiday, did you?
June 14th 2.07pm
Metro-sexuality
I've just finished a rather late breakfast of baguettes and cheese. We needed a bit of a lie-in after the first Tranny Night Out of the holiday. Well I say "first", but actually Sophie Green's been en-femme more or less all the time since we got here. She's decided to try and do most of the holiday in girl mode, she's a lot more committed than me. I like dressing up to have fun, I'm not really a full-time kinda gal!
Last night we decided to visit a nearby gay club called Metro Disco. Despite it being my first time out dressed this holiday, it's not actually my first time at this club. We went there during a shorter holiday last year and liked it so much we decided a return visit was in order.
Metro was just as I remembered it. The entry price of €9 includes the first round of drinks. So it was vodka and Cokes all round when we arrived, with those 'tip over the bottle and count to ten' vodka measures you never seem to get in UK clubs!
A couple of those and I was ready for anything!
A couple more and everything was kind of a blur.
I seem to remember daring each other to run through the "dark room" in the club (quite why a gay club needs a room for photographic development is beyond me), watching some of a Spanish drag show, and being chatted up by a short fat Frenchman who swore he was an English teacher but didn't seem to speak a word of English. Luckily my schoolgirl French was good enough to make myself clear.
"Non, merci!"
June 16th 23.44pm
In Sitges
We've spent most of the day in the town of Sitges, 30 minutes by train down the coast from Barcelona. It's a really nice resort town, with long beaches and a buzzing club scene. Sitges has been know as gay resort for many years, but apart from the odd rainbow sign and a few well-bronzed gay couples on the streets you wouldn't really know.
It's a shame that the last train back to the city leaves at 10.30pm, as I'd have really liked to have sampled the nightlife in the town. I suppose we could have stayed in-town clubbing and caught an early train back in the morning, but after a day on the beach we were all feeling a bit sun-stroked and weary, and none of us had brought a change of outfits anyway!
If I come back to Catalonia in the future, I think I may use Sitges as a base. If I get bored of the beaches and clubs I can always catch the train into the big city!
June 18th 2:15pm
VIP Treatment
Another late breakfast after another night on the tiles. Actually "on the tiles" is apposite for Barcelona, as there are tiles everywhere. From the big hexagonal ones with sea-life patterns that pave the entire Passeig de Gracia, to the millions of colourful mosaic tiles that encase some of Gaudi's edifices.
Last night we decided to try another club, the Arena Classic in the city's gay district, sometimes called the "Gayxample". There's no real gay village in Barcelona as such. The Gayxample is a large and ill-defined area, and the city's gay and straight club clientele seem to intermingle quite freely. One big happy family!
It was fairly quiet when we arrived at the club, but the music and venue was promising. We'd been there about 10 minutes when I was approached by a friendly local called Olga, who must have thought we were looking bored. After getting over the initial language barrier, she explained that the club she was heading to soon was a lot busier, and free to get in. Did we fancy tagging along?
I was unsure about the "free" bit, but she explained that the club we were in was just one of the Arena chain of gay clubs in the city. If you get your hand stamped in one of them you get free entry into all the others. Apparently we weren't in the Arena Classic, we were in the Arena Madre. The Arena Classic was next door. She was heading to the Arena VIP, a couple of blocks away, and for some reason only known to herself she'd decided to take a bunch of English trannies with her!
The Arena VIP was a lot busier than the Madre, and seemed a lot more mixed than the rather macho-feeling Metro earlier in the week. It still felt very tranny-friendly, as has everywhere we've been on this holiday. In fact, I can't imagine anywhere in Barcelona being particularly tranny un-friendly.
We've tended to stick to mostly gay venues for our tranny adventures, but that's mainly because a T-girl is more or less guaranteed a safe night out in a gay venue. Sophie and Shannon have both been out dressed during evenings when we've gone to regular bars and restaurants, and apart from the occasional bemused look, we've not had any negative reactions. I'm sure that once I got a better feel for the place, there wouldn't be many places in Barcelona that I wouldn't be comfortable going dressed.
June 21 st 2.17pm
Levels
It's remarkable how everyone in the group has had a different frequency of dressing en-femme. We're each at different "levels", but that just makes the group dynamic more interesting.
Sophie H, as the group's token "real girl", has (hardly unsurprisingly!) spent the entire holiday as a woman. You could say she has the least amount of effort to make to look girly… but not in earshot while she's getting ready in the morning or you're likely to get a slap.
Next there's Sophie G, who arrived at the airport dressed and, apart from some odd moments when it was impractical to stay en-femme, has remained Sophie throughout.
Then there's Shannon, who similarly to me tends to dress up for special occasions. It's just that she's less picky than me as to what occasions count as "special"! She's been dressing up every other evening.
Then me, Becky. I often just can't be arsed to make the effort of femming-up. I'd count myself as the laziest T-girl in the world if it wasn't for…
Jessica, the youngest tranny in the group. Often to be found snoozing on the bed while the rest of us run about primping and fussing over makeup. She seems equally happy heading out to a club in boy or girl mode. It's not really laziness that stops her from dressing all the time, she's just got a clear idea of how often she wants to dress, and doesn't tend to dress up just for the sake of it, which I admire.
Last night, however, Jessica did dress up, which made it the first time all the girls have been out at once. We headed back to the Metro club, as it was nearby and we didn't feel like a long walk.
After a slow start the evening picked up nicely. There was even another young T-girl in the club, which was nice to see. She seemed quite shy though, and I didn't pluck up courage to say hello.
It was exactly a week since we'd last visited the club, and so it was drag-show night again. This time we all sat down to watch it properly, and I loved it. Trust me, you've never truly heard Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" until you've heard it sung at breakneck speed in Spanish by a big black drag queen!
June 23rd 4:30pm
Meeting the Locals
We have to tidy up the apartment and head home tomorrow, so yesterday evening was our last opportunity to have a night out and not have to worry about an early start the next day. We were tired, and Jess and I didn't feel like dressing, but we decided a quiet drink in a bar couldn't hurt. So Sophie G, Jess and I ended up retracing our steps from a year ago and finding the gay bar we'd visited one night on our last Barcelona trip.
After a long walk through the grid-like Eixample district, we tracked it down, a swish cocktail bar called Z:eltas. We'd been sitting drinking a little while when an English guy came up and asked if we happened to know of any good clubs in the area. It turned out that he and the group he was with were English teachers living in Saudi. They were all gay, except for the one who looked like Jimmy Somerville, who was apparently straight. I gave them directions to the nearby Arena Madre.
After a drink or two, the tiredness had vanished and it seemed like a much better idea to actually take them to the club!
We'd been told by a local at Z:eltas that Wednesday nights were always quiet, but the Arena Madre was still buzzing. After only a couple of weeks in town I was already starting to see familiar faces, including the Spanish T-girl from Metro two nights earlier!
This time I did pluck up the courage to say hello. It took a little while to explain who we were, as I looked quite different to two nights ago. But luckily Sophie looked the same, and although Jess was in boy mode, she was still just as tall! She smiled when she realised that the lanky guy I was with was the statuesque tranny she'd seen in Metro! We chatted for a while, she told me her name was Sara, and she was thinking about going full time soon. She'd seen us at Metro, but had been too scared to come over and say hi, so I guess shyness is a universal trait in trannies! We exchanged email addresses, Sara's coming over to London later in the year so maybe we can show her something of the UK scene.
June 24th 11.50 pm
Going Out with a Bang
We're flying back to the UK, and everyone's a little subdued, especially after a rather fraught final night in Barcelona. I can only describe it as my first experience of cross-dressing in a war-zone!
Last night was the Festival of Saint Joan, which Barcelonans celebrate by setting off fireworks and partying until dawn. I'd fancied a reasonably quiet night out watching the celebrations, and maybe a meal en-femme… but we emerged that evening into a city gone mad.
Everyone seemed to have bought a hundred firecrackers each, and was going about making as much noise as possible. Even small children were brandishing lighters and fireworks given to them by their dads! We'd planned to watch the display at the famous Magic Fountain in Montjuic, but teenagers were setting off large bangers only feet away from the crowds, and it all got rather hair-raising. After I'd taken a few pics just to prove I'd been there, we headed back home. The back streets of the Raval were just as nerve-janglingly noisy, and we started to get really scared when we saw a guy firing what looked like a very real hand-gun! It seems that to stop us falling too much in love with her, Barcelona had saved her scary side until the end.
June 25 th 11.00 am
Homecoming
We're back in the UK, tanned and exhausted. It feels like the holiday is over, but there's still one more leg. We're heading off to Sparkle in Manchester this afternoon! The last two weeks have been fantastic. Barcelona is fashionable, fun-loving, cultured, dangerous, colourful, crazy and filthy-gorgeous. This just about makes it the perfect holiday destination for any T-girl!
(The above article was originally written for Repartee magazine, I dug it out today when someone emailed me for advice on trannying in Barcelona. I figured that as the issue that featured it came out over a year ago I'd not hurt their sales by using it on my site now!)
June 11th 2005 - 11.55pm
Arrival
We've arrived at our apartment in the Raval district of Barcelona. The apartment itself is very nice, but the Raval is distinctly seedy. It's described in one guidebook as "historically a den of thieves, artists, prostitutes and transvestites". So we should fit right in!
June 12th 11.00am
Packing for Two
I've unpacked. There is a slight problem.
I'm used to packing to go away for tranny weekends, where it's essential that certain items are included (boobs, wigs, etc), and normally the only boy clothes I'll need are the ones I'm travelling in. In my determination to make sure I'd packed all the tranny essentials, as well as enough clothes to give Becky at least 4 distinct outfits for going out in, I've forgotten to pack much boy stuff! My boy wardrobe currently consists of 3 pairs of trousers, and 3 t-shirts. This wouldn't be a big problem if I was planning on dressing en-femme full time for the next two weeks, but I really don't fancy two weeks in the sun wearing full slap and the functional equivalent of a woolly hat.
There's a great big pile of guy stuff sitting in my cupboard at home waiting to be packed, but it looks like one of the first jobs of the holiday is shopping. For boy's clothes. Oh the horror!
June 13th 9.14pm
Retail Therapy
The shopping opportunities in Barcelona are superb. The Passeig de Gracia, the city's equivalent to the Champs-Elysée, has lots of the familiar big-name clothing stores. I spent a few minutes in H&M grabbing some cheap t-shirts and trousers to wear in boy-mode.
After that we headed off into the back streets of the ancient Barri Gothic, where there are less familiar shops with strikingly varied and vibrant clothes. The only problem for the tranny shopper is that everything tends to be sized for tiny Spanish girls! Even tops labelled as "extra large" seemed to be the equivalent of a UK size 12!
Later we travelled further to the east of the city, into the Born district. This is the most fashionable area of Barcelona to live, and the stores reflect that! Lots of achingly chic but horrendously expensive jewellers and dress shops.
I was finally tempted by a fab pair of pink camouflage combats back in one of the less expensive stores. Well you didn't think I was only going to buy boy clothes on this holiday, did you?
June 14th 2.07pm
Metro-sexuality
I've just finished a rather late breakfast of baguettes and cheese. We needed a bit of a lie-in after the first Tranny Night Out of the holiday. Well I say "first", but actually Sophie Green's been en-femme more or less all the time since we got here. She's decided to try and do most of the holiday in girl mode, she's a lot more committed than me. I like dressing up to have fun, I'm not really a full-time kinda gal!
Last night we decided to visit a nearby gay club called Metro Disco. Despite it being my first time out dressed this holiday, it's not actually my first time at this club. We went there during a shorter holiday last year and liked it so much we decided a return visit was in order.
Metro was just as I remembered it. The entry price of €9 includes the first round of drinks. So it was vodka and Cokes all round when we arrived, with those 'tip over the bottle and count to ten' vodka measures you never seem to get in UK clubs!
A couple of those and I was ready for anything!
A couple more and everything was kind of a blur.
I seem to remember daring each other to run through the "dark room" in the club (quite why a gay club needs a room for photographic development is beyond me), watching some of a Spanish drag show, and being chatted up by a short fat Frenchman who swore he was an English teacher but didn't seem to speak a word of English. Luckily my schoolgirl French was good enough to make myself clear.
"Non, merci!"
June 16th 23.44pm
In Sitges
We've spent most of the day in the town of Sitges, 30 minutes by train down the coast from Barcelona. It's a really nice resort town, with long beaches and a buzzing club scene. Sitges has been know as gay resort for many years, but apart from the odd rainbow sign and a few well-bronzed gay couples on the streets you wouldn't really know.
It's a shame that the last train back to the city leaves at 10.30pm, as I'd have really liked to have sampled the nightlife in the town. I suppose we could have stayed in-town clubbing and caught an early train back in the morning, but after a day on the beach we were all feeling a bit sun-stroked and weary, and none of us had brought a change of outfits anyway!
If I come back to Catalonia in the future, I think I may use Sitges as a base. If I get bored of the beaches and clubs I can always catch the train into the big city!
June 18th 2:15pm
VIP Treatment
Another late breakfast after another night on the tiles. Actually "on the tiles" is apposite for Barcelona, as there are tiles everywhere. From the big hexagonal ones with sea-life patterns that pave the entire Passeig de Gracia, to the millions of colourful mosaic tiles that encase some of Gaudi's edifices.
Last night we decided to try another club, the Arena Classic in the city's gay district, sometimes called the "Gayxample". There's no real gay village in Barcelona as such. The Gayxample is a large and ill-defined area, and the city's gay and straight club clientele seem to intermingle quite freely. One big happy family!
It was fairly quiet when we arrived at the club, but the music and venue was promising. We'd been there about 10 minutes when I was approached by a friendly local called Olga, who must have thought we were looking bored. After getting over the initial language barrier, she explained that the club she was heading to soon was a lot busier, and free to get in. Did we fancy tagging along?
I was unsure about the "free" bit, but she explained that the club we were in was just one of the Arena chain of gay clubs in the city. If you get your hand stamped in one of them you get free entry into all the others. Apparently we weren't in the Arena Classic, we were in the Arena Madre. The Arena Classic was next door. She was heading to the Arena VIP, a couple of blocks away, and for some reason only known to herself she'd decided to take a bunch of English trannies with her!
The Arena VIP was a lot busier than the Madre, and seemed a lot more mixed than the rather macho-feeling Metro earlier in the week. It still felt very tranny-friendly, as has everywhere we've been on this holiday. In fact, I can't imagine anywhere in Barcelona being particularly tranny un-friendly.
We've tended to stick to mostly gay venues for our tranny adventures, but that's mainly because a T-girl is more or less guaranteed a safe night out in a gay venue. Sophie and Shannon have both been out dressed during evenings when we've gone to regular bars and restaurants, and apart from the occasional bemused look, we've not had any negative reactions. I'm sure that once I got a better feel for the place, there wouldn't be many places in Barcelona that I wouldn't be comfortable going dressed.
June 21 st 2.17pm
Levels
It's remarkable how everyone in the group has had a different frequency of dressing en-femme. We're each at different "levels", but that just makes the group dynamic more interesting.
Sophie H, as the group's token "real girl", has (hardly unsurprisingly!) spent the entire holiday as a woman. You could say she has the least amount of effort to make to look girly… but not in earshot while she's getting ready in the morning or you're likely to get a slap.
Next there's Sophie G, who arrived at the airport dressed and, apart from some odd moments when it was impractical to stay en-femme, has remained Sophie throughout.
Then there's Shannon, who similarly to me tends to dress up for special occasions. It's just that she's less picky than me as to what occasions count as "special"! She's been dressing up every other evening.
Then me, Becky. I often just can't be arsed to make the effort of femming-up. I'd count myself as the laziest T-girl in the world if it wasn't for…
Jessica, the youngest tranny in the group. Often to be found snoozing on the bed while the rest of us run about primping and fussing over makeup. She seems equally happy heading out to a club in boy or girl mode. It's not really laziness that stops her from dressing all the time, she's just got a clear idea of how often she wants to dress, and doesn't tend to dress up just for the sake of it, which I admire.
Last night, however, Jessica did dress up, which made it the first time all the girls have been out at once. We headed back to the Metro club, as it was nearby and we didn't feel like a long walk.
After a slow start the evening picked up nicely. There was even another young T-girl in the club, which was nice to see. She seemed quite shy though, and I didn't pluck up courage to say hello.
It was exactly a week since we'd last visited the club, and so it was drag-show night again. This time we all sat down to watch it properly, and I loved it. Trust me, you've never truly heard Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" until you've heard it sung at breakneck speed in Spanish by a big black drag queen!
June 23rd 4:30pm
Meeting the Locals
We have to tidy up the apartment and head home tomorrow, so yesterday evening was our last opportunity to have a night out and not have to worry about an early start the next day. We were tired, and Jess and I didn't feel like dressing, but we decided a quiet drink in a bar couldn't hurt. So Sophie G, Jess and I ended up retracing our steps from a year ago and finding the gay bar we'd visited one night on our last Barcelona trip.
After a long walk through the grid-like Eixample district, we tracked it down, a swish cocktail bar called Z:eltas. We'd been sitting drinking a little while when an English guy came up and asked if we happened to know of any good clubs in the area. It turned out that he and the group he was with were English teachers living in Saudi. They were all gay, except for the one who looked like Jimmy Somerville, who was apparently straight. I gave them directions to the nearby Arena Madre.
After a drink or two, the tiredness had vanished and it seemed like a much better idea to actually take them to the club!
We'd been told by a local at Z:eltas that Wednesday nights were always quiet, but the Arena Madre was still buzzing. After only a couple of weeks in town I was already starting to see familiar faces, including the Spanish T-girl from Metro two nights earlier!
This time I did pluck up the courage to say hello. It took a little while to explain who we were, as I looked quite different to two nights ago. But luckily Sophie looked the same, and although Jess was in boy mode, she was still just as tall! She smiled when she realised that the lanky guy I was with was the statuesque tranny she'd seen in Metro! We chatted for a while, she told me her name was Sara, and she was thinking about going full time soon. She'd seen us at Metro, but had been too scared to come over and say hi, so I guess shyness is a universal trait in trannies! We exchanged email addresses, Sara's coming over to London later in the year so maybe we can show her something of the UK scene.
June 24th 11.50 pm
Going Out with a Bang
We're flying back to the UK, and everyone's a little subdued, especially after a rather fraught final night in Barcelona. I can only describe it as my first experience of cross-dressing in a war-zone!
Last night was the Festival of Saint Joan, which Barcelonans celebrate by setting off fireworks and partying until dawn. I'd fancied a reasonably quiet night out watching the celebrations, and maybe a meal en-femme… but we emerged that evening into a city gone mad.
Everyone seemed to have bought a hundred firecrackers each, and was going about making as much noise as possible. Even small children were brandishing lighters and fireworks given to them by their dads! We'd planned to watch the display at the famous Magic Fountain in Montjuic, but teenagers were setting off large bangers only feet away from the crowds, and it all got rather hair-raising. After I'd taken a few pics just to prove I'd been there, we headed back home. The back streets of the Raval were just as nerve-janglingly noisy, and we started to get really scared when we saw a guy firing what looked like a very real hand-gun! It seems that to stop us falling too much in love with her, Barcelona had saved her scary side until the end.
June 25 th 11.00 am
Homecoming
We're back in the UK, tanned and exhausted. It feels like the holiday is over, but there's still one more leg. We're heading off to Sparkle in Manchester this afternoon! The last two weeks have been fantastic. Barcelona is fashionable, fun-loving, cultured, dangerous, colourful, crazy and filthy-gorgeous. This just about makes it the perfect holiday destination for any T-girl!
(The above article was originally written for Repartee magazine, I dug it out today when someone emailed me for advice on trannying in Barcelona. I figured that as the issue that featured it came out over a year ago I'd not hurt their sales by using it on my site now!)
Labels: barcelona, holidays, transvestism
Thanks for sharing.
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