In January Teddy Lewis, Rob Loeber, and I booked our flights for a 10 day vacation to Barcelona to ride bikes and drink sangria. Everything was going perfectly smooth until about 15 minutes before we were meant to board the plane there. Our flight had been cancelled because air traffic controllers in France had gone on strike. We soon found out there were no more flights available to anywhere in Spain until nearly a week later but luckily the girl at the desk was super helpful and after a lot of searching, we found ourselves on a flight to Rome, Italy the next morning.
The first day riding around the city was pretty disheartening. We rode for a few hours and didn’t find a single thing to ride. All of the buildings in the city centre have massive gates outside of them that go directly up to the sidewalk. Back at the hostel we did some Internet research and found a skatepark online. We figured that maybe there would be some riders there so we conned our way onto the Metro and out into the suburbs.
It was one of the best decisions of the trip. There were no riders there but the park was incredibly fun and we quickly discovered that all of the spots were going to be hidden outside of the city. Everyday after coffee and wifi we headed out in a new direction and everyday we found something that had never been riden before and a new joint to grab a slice from.
While Barcelona would have been amazing, I have to say that our surprise adventure ended up being an incredible success. It’s hard for things to go wrong when your holiday consists of BMX, pizza, coffee, pizza, beer, pizza, untouched spots, pizza, incredible friends, and pizza though.
