View of Barcelona from the hills
It wasn’t that warm, but like going somewhere cooler than Florida in the middle of winter. It was sunny and bright and there were palm trees at the airport and this time they didn’t seem completely out of place. I took the bus to the city and wound my way to the hostel which was pretty nice for a hostel. I was waiting for two of my friends who were already in the city to meet me, but I was starving since by this time it was nearly 2:30 and my flight had departed at 10, so I’d only had an early breakfast.
Statue at the intersection near the hostel. Instead of being square, the intersections were all octagonal even though they were still ordinary 4-way intersections I guess to facilitate turning. It's an interesting aesthetic.
When Noelle and Kayla arrived, we walked to a square to find something to eat. They wanted to go to a sushi buffet, so I grabbed a sandwich and joined them. I ordered water at the restaurant (which you have to pay for) and ate my sandwich (which is fine in Barcelona). However, the lousy waitress who abandoned us after taking our order determined, without asking us, I wanted the buffet too. Mid-sandwich, the head waiter came over to me and explained in Spanish that I’d been charged 10 or 12 euro for the buffet. Since I was clearly not partaking in the buffet, I carefully explained that the lousy waitress had never asked us, had abandoned us, and that obviously I was eating a sandwich and was not going to pay for the buffet. So we argued and turned to arguing in English and eventually he agreed to remove the charge. The food wasn’t very good according to Noelle and Kayla and some of the sushi had a greenish tinge. They also had problems with contradicting claims from the staff and they’re nearly fluent in Spanish so there it was not an issue of misunderstanding.
The annoying thing about Barcelona is they speak Catalan instead of Spanish, which is almost the same except different. Meaning 5 years of Spanish is as helpful as it should be for me to visit Spain. It meant that spellings of words and things were funky more so than causing speaking difficulties. For instance, parking was 'parquing'. They're also not super nice to you in Barcelona, and I think I'm just spoiled by Ireland and Belgium, but maybe it was just the people I encountered.
After the rough patch at the sushi place, we took a stroll along the marina. It was beautiful and you could almost see the sunset. It was the first time in a month or so I had been somewhere that wasn’t overcast in the evening and wasn’t in the middle of a city, so I could see the sky change color and the light change. After our promenade, we went to the edge of La Rambla, a wide pedestrian street usually covered with stands and street performers in the middle of the day. We just covered the edge of it, but it was pretty dead because it was dark.
The annoying thing about Barcelona is they speak Catalan instead of Spanish, which is almost the same except different. Meaning 5 years of Spanish is as helpful as it should be for me to visit Spain. It meant that spellings of words and things were funky more so than causing speaking difficulties. For instance, parking was 'parquing'. They're also not super nice to you in Barcelona, and I think I'm just spoiled by Ireland and Belgium, but maybe it was just the people I encountered.
After the rough patch at the sushi place, we took a stroll along the marina. It was beautiful and you could almost see the sunset. It was the first time in a month or so I had been somewhere that wasn’t overcast in the evening and wasn’t in the middle of a city, so I could see the sky change color and the light change. After our promenade, we went to the edge of La Rambla, a wide pedestrian street usually covered with stands and street performers in the middle of the day. We just covered the edge of it, but it was pretty dead because it was dark.
No seals :(
Weird giant modern art
We then ambled around the Gothic Quarter and took the most confounded root to find the Picasso Museum. We were following street signs which took us down rather narrow and twisty alleyways. After venturing through these well-lit, though deserted alleyways, we found the museum which was really cool. It had a lot of Picasso of course and it also had a pretty neat exhibit comparing works of Degas with similar ones by Picasso. On our way back, which somehow involved much fewer alleys, we stopped for gelato and coffee and then wound our way back to the hostel.
Fountain in a plaza we walked through. Coincidentally, this is the same fountain featured in those anooying camera commericals about recreating a picture, but this plaza is really central and not hard to locate.
Intensely graffitti-ed doors on the way to the Picasso Museum.
A statue on a fancy building we passed.
This is the display of some toy store we walked by. I really liked that the fat Santa rides on a reindeer to deliver the presents.
We were waiting for a large contingent of our party from Scotland to arrive. They were supposed to be in around nine but still weren’t there. Kayla, Noelle, and I walked over to Casa Batlló to kill time. Casa Batlló is a house designed by Gaudí, a really famous architect who designed other houses, parks, and a cathedral we visited the next day. You can see he has a really interesting style. Naturally, we had an animal-themed Christmas photo shoot.
(Sharks)
Leaving Casa Batlló, we went in search of a dinner restaurant given that it was now 10 or 11 pm and the others were still MIA. The waiter kept telling me not to get the dishes I was trying to order, but eventually allowed me to order a dish. Finally, the Scots showed up and we went to a stock-market themed bar that was alright. The drinks were good at least. We didn’t go too crazy because we had a lot planned for the next day.
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