I was told to avoid a ‘dodgy’ city. Thankfully, I didn’t listen

“I wouldn’t go to Barcelona,” the backpacker said to me. “It’s so dodgy. Pickpockets everywhere. My friend had his wallet stolen twice. There are way better places.”

When you’re travelling on your own, you look to those people you meet along the way for advice. Good hotels, easy transit links, great day-tour ideas. These are all gold nuggets you tuck into your proverbial pocket to be retrieved and used at a later date.

People tell you about places you should go, but they also warn you about the bad ones, the overrated ones, the ones they have seen for themselves when others maybe haven’t. The intel on Barcelona, as I sat there in a London hostel back in the early 2000s, was: don’t do it. Dodgy as hell.

I’m sure it was meant well, but still, that tip remains some of the worst travel advice I have ever been given.

I ended up going to Barcelona on that trip, because it made sense on my itinerary and I was interested regardless, but I went with trepidation. I left everything of value in my room every day, or I zipped it into the “hidden” travel wallet that at that point I insisted on strapping around my waist everywhere I went.

I spent my days in Barcelona absent-mindedly touching the weird lump around my waistband to make sure all my travellers’ cheques were still in their place. I viewed everyone I walked past as a potential thief, with my own hands shoved deep in my pockets for protection as I trudged up and down Las Ramblas and explored the Gothic Quarter.

Sometimes, you have to realise, the people giving you travel advice have no idea what they’re talking about.

And even still, with all this worry and trepidation, I had the best time. I loved Barcelona deeply and immediately. I loved its cosmopolitan style and its feeling that all of Europe had come together in this place to swap ideas and drink cheap beers and have fun.

I loved the layout of the city, the grid-like pattern of bulky apartment blocks that was forced to part for the tumbledown history of El Born and Raval. I walked those streets and drank in the history and the Catalan culture. I ate, I shopped, I met people, I seriously weighed up the possibility of never leaving.

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been to Barcelona now. It’s one of the world’s great cities (in my view, at least). It’s a place of endless charm and dense culture. It’s old, it’s arty, it really is a little dodgy in some places, though it’s easy enough to stay safe, even without your travel wallet strapped around your waist.

Sometimes, you have to realise, the people giving you travel advice have no idea what they’re talking about. Looking back, I’m not even sure that that person telling me not to go to Barcelona had ever been to Barcelona. Apocryphal stories of friends having their wallet stolen – these are tales that get passed around from traveller to traveller, slowly becoming personal experience.

People usually mean well. Sometimes they really do know what they’re talking about, and still you just disagree. Have you ever read any reviews on TripAdvisor? That website is full of genuinely held opinions from people who have a completely different idea to me of what makes a great travel experience.

I’ve been given plenty of dud tips during my years on the road. I’ve probably passed on what some people would later see as dud tips, too. We don’t all think the same or even experience the same things when we get there.

To the group of Italians on the train with me from Rome to Naples, who advised me to visit what would turn out to be the most touristy pizza joint in all of Italy: grazie mille, ragazzi. Pretty sure you guys did that to me on purpose.

To the friends who told me not to bother walking the Inca Trail because it would probably be covered with dense fog when I emerged at the Sun Gate hoping to finally see Machu Picchu: you were absolutely right about the fog, but still totally wrong about the idea of skipping the whole thing.

To the fellow traveller who told me to save my money on a joy flight over Victoria Falls because it wasn’t worth it: I will never know for sure, because I took your advice. But I saw the photos from the people who did do the flight, and it seems like they might have had one of the greatest experiences of their lives.

All you can do in these situations is weigh things up, consider the person giving you the advice, tap into your gut feeling, think about the cost, financial or otherwise, if things go wrong, and then decide whether to take the plunge.

Though if you’re considering skipping Barcelona: don’t.