So I just got home from a long weekend in Barcelona with Ali and it was amazing. Well, other than spending the night at CDG in Paris without being able to go through security which meant no sleep because a)it was freezing and b)there were tons of creepy homeless people walking around with large jugs of "milk" and trying to touch people. I mean I have no problem with you sleeping in a warm public place but really, I don't know why it looks like I want to be approached by people. But anyways, I put this time to good use by attempting to learn spanish! Turns out Spanish is a lot easier than French and I actually made a lot of headway in the food department which meant upon arrival I could read some menus, unless they were written only in Catalan (which most were), and somehow ordered a Shandy (beer and lemonade) while trying to ask what kinds of beers they had (not a bad decision, really). Not that I could understand anyone speaking or respond without blurting out something in French, but that is beside the point.
I landed in Barcelona Thursday around 10am, found Ali, found the train to the city, and wandered around til we found a tapas bar. This was the beginning of Ali's obsession with tapas since you get to choose lots of dishes and he therefore doesn't have to make any real decisions. Interestingly, I'm pretty sure we ordered the same tapas we would get the rest of the weekend anyways which consisted of Patatas Bravas, fried calamari, and some sausage thing. And lots of sangria.
Next we ventured to Camp Nou which is the stadium of FC Barcelona to take a tour. This was Ali's Christmas present but it turned out to be pretty cool actually because they had a multimedia room with all that cool technology from James Bond with Daniel Craig where the table is like a piece of paper and you can slide stuff around on it plus you got to see the away locker room, the field, and the press box. You also could take pictures to be superimposed with your favorite player which I did, with Messi, of course.
We could finally check in to the hotel so we found it and took a much needed siesta. We had to eat dinner early for Spanish standards because we had tickets to see Barca B play at the Ministade next to the real stadium at 9pm so we had tapas yet again and then went back to the stadium to watch the game. It was a really good game that ended Barca B 3-3 Almeira which meant lots of goals and lots of action. There were some really good players also that I hope get famous so I can already have seen them play and have pictures.
The next day we woke up and realized there was no clock in our room so we turned on BBC on TV and it said it was already 12pm! So we jumped out of bed and headed out to Las Ramblas which is the main touristy street and walked along, shopped (well, I did), went to DUNKIN DONUTS (!!!), and then found a real place to have lunch/breakfast. We ate lunch and ordered some sort of special Spanish beer which made the waiter give us really weird looks and then found the metro to go see La Sagrada Familia, the cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi that looks like it's melting (more on this later). As we sat on the metro looking at what stop we were on, we looked at the clock which said it was 12:20. So, utterly confused, I turned on my phone and it apparently really was 12:20. So I don't know what country BBC news was airing from or why, but that could explain why the waiter thought it was strange that we were ordering beer at what must have been 10:30am. Or it could have been because I drank it with eggs and (gross/european) bacon. But whatever.
We found La Sagrada Familia which was cool and really does look like it's melting and walked around it to get a good look. It kind of looks like a grotesque version of Dr. Seuss in that it's weird and whimiscal but kind of creepy at the same time. Since Gaudi lived and worked in Barca there's lots of his work around the city so our next stop was Parc Guell which is a gigantic park with lots of his architecture and sculptures. It also happens to be at the top of the biggest hill I've ever walked up which no one warned me about (yeah, you, Grace and Arielle) so that was kind of a surprising hike. They even had escalators as the sidewalk part of the way because it was so steep. But it did have an awesome view of the city and really cool buildings and the famous statue of a lizard.
After this unexpected hike and how confused I was about it being two hours earlier than I thought it was we decided it would be best to have another siesta. We woke up in time to go to dinner before the Barcelona-Real Madrid game began at 10pm (yes, and the game was played in their time zone..Spain runs on a weird schedule). We meant to head to George Payne's which is a huge Irish bar as recommended by Arielle but we had to stop on the way to Ali could have tapas and we ended up not finishing dinner until too close to game time. So instead we stayed at the bar/restaurant we ate at and were shortly joined by lots of eager fans who even brought their own drums. The game started out a little rough with Madrid scoring in the first couple of minutes (first minute?) but Barcelona recovered and eventually won 3-1. This was good as all the crazy fans were happy.
Sunday morning/afternoon was devoted to Montjuic which is an ENORMOUS park that made Park Guell seem tiny in comparison. It's also up a huge hill but we took the funiculars this time which made it a much easier walk. We wandered around a while and saw an old Greek theatre, lots of great views of the city and the Mediterranean, the Olympic stadiums and museum from the 1992 Olympics (where Ali bought the most expensive Fanta ever that cost like 4Euros), and finally the Castell de Montjuic which is an old Spanish (obviously) castle complete with cannons that overlook the Mediterranean Sea. We somehow wandered our way down the side of the gigantic hill and came down some old-looking steps that had a sign with their name on it which must mean they were important but I have no idea why. Next we walked along the Port Vell, past the giant column with Christopher Columbus standing on top, and found some little place to have paella and (more) calamari. Finally we found our way to the beach so I could stick my feet in the Mediterranean! Disclaimer: there were other people out on the beach and in fact the water wasn't really that cold. We also saw lots of intense sandcastles complete with lit candles that were super cool.
We siestaed encore, and then went out for a final meal of, you guessed it, tapas and a really good dessert of profiteroles. Then we returned home to sleep before leaving early Monday morning for another long travel day back to Creutzwald.
