So after arriving in Barcelona in the evening, we headed off for our hostel, which turned out to be quite charming. We stayed in Rambla's Home, a hostel past La Rambla, one the liveliest streets, if not THE liveliest street, in central Barcelona. Our hostel actually looked like a home and the staff were very nice. It looked EXTRA comforting because for some reason it took us an hour to navigate our hostel, despite the fact that it was close to where we were dropped off. :-/ Nonetheless, it was a great hostel. Probably one of the best I've stayed in all year. I recommend it.
First of all, let me tell you: I LOVE the Spanish accent. The simplest way I can explain it is that their 'j' sounds isn't like the Mexican 'h' but more gutteral... YouTube it. They also speak with a lisp. So it's not "barr-sa-loh-nah," it's "bar-theh-loh-nah." :) Muy adorable! Did I mention that a huge part of my Easter trip was to learn some lingo? As a good ol' Californian (or as some say, "Mexifornian") I know a wee bit of Spanish so I tried to practice as much as I knew how. Of course, my vocab mostly consists of gracias, por favor, hola, donde esta...?, hace frio, and as an avid shopper, who could forget?: cuanto cuesta (rough translation of "how much does this cost?").
On our first whole day, we set out to explore the city; what made such a huge difference was that we were traveling with our friend that had been to Barcelona 3 times prior to this trip, so she knew her way around and even got to finding some hidden jewels of Barcelona, including restaurants, bars, and sales! The weather was mostly overcast, but we had an occasional spot of sun and a drizzle of rain. It was warm enough for me to walk around in a t-shirt and flip flops, and you won't believe how exciting this was for me, having lived in and survived an unusually snowy English winter. Our first day, we visited one of Barcelona's most famous landmarks, La Sagrada Familia. This Roman-Catholic church has been under construction forever and still is. So many styles have been mashed onto it's structure that it's impossible to label its architecture. It's a Frankenstein of works that's quite a magnificent site.
For lunch, we visited a little restaurant behind La Rambla called Romesco and tried our hand at some local food, which included rabbit, salmon, trout, and sheep's brain. Yes, you heard right. (I'll cover more of this on my food blog over the summer.) Afterwards, we went for a stroll to find L'Ovella Negra, a bar that was said to have amazing sangria. And BOY was that true. As one that doesn't like the taste of alcohol at all, I have to say this was easily the best sangria I've had and the fruit was delicious! :) Naturally, I turned just as red as the sangria...
While we were still set on food, we decided to crash the local market, which was gorgeous! One of the most beautiful markets I've ever seen; the fruits, vegetables, sweets, breads and fish and poultry was laid out so tantalizingly. However, this was not what we came to the market for... we came for the freshly squeezed fruit juices. In the late afternoon, these juices went on sale for less than half price. A cup would normally run for 1-2€ each, but in the early evening the prices could drop by half easily. These aren't your normal fruit juices either... Some of the flavours consisted of coconut-blackberry, mango-passion-fruit, strawberry-papaya, guava-coconut, kiwi-banana, etc... I'm a sucker for tropical fruits! Some of us got as many as 8 cups that day. :P
For a night out in Barcelona, we went to see was a bar called Chipito, where they served all sorts of crazy shots. All of their recipes are secrets; the bottles behind the bar have their labels covered by number placards. For example, one was called the "Harry Potter" and they poured the shot, put a slice of orange on top, chucked a LOAD of sugar on top, sprayed the entire thing with something edible, yet flammable and lit the whole shot on fire. The bartender then took a shaker and ignited little sparks all around the shot, blew the flame out, had the customer eat the orange and then drink the shot. Another, called the "Boyscout" was similar, but instead of adding an orange slice, they gave a skewer with a marshmallow that could be roasted over the flaming shot glass. I wasn't allowed to take pictures here, but it was quite a fun place.
The next day we all met up at Mc Donalds. I know, all Mc Donalds' are the same around the world... but no! They aren't... My favourite difference between some of those in Europe and those in America are the "gelat cafes," which is coffee with soft serve in it! Amazing. Anyways, while a couple of us were ordering these, one of our friends' entire bag got nicked! She didn't get pickpocketed, her bag was lifted without notice. Throughout my travels, I've noticed that whenever "Barcelona" or "La Rambla" is mentioned in hostels or amongst fellow travelers, there is always a groan, maybe a chuckle and a shake of a head. The mere mention of either names always triggers memories of gypsy* theft. Despite the setback, we headed for the American Embassy where she was able to get a replacement passport within a couple hours.
After all that, we headed for Park Guell, a park full of architecture designed by Gaudi. Even his house is there. Anyways, it looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Honest. It was pretty wicked.
I apologise for the significant lack of photos here... lo siento! I did not format my memory card before I started snapping and ran out of space just after Barcelona... oddly enough a 4 gig memory card was only 12€. I don't know how much it should be, but where I'm from, that is DEAD CHEAP. Onwards!
It was our last night in Barcelona so we decided to go all out on some snack-age. We went to a restaurant and ordered some churros con chocolate and the Spanish version of creme brulee. We headed back to our hostel just in time for free paella y sangria night! Yes, every Thursday, Rambla's Home does cooks paella and makes sangria for her guests. Awesome. We had a hankering for more of L'ovella Negra's sangria, so back we went and toasted to a good trip in Barcelona!
At about 4AM, we woke up to get to the bus station; flying budget airlines boasts one addition disadvantage to the obvious ones... they always fly out of airports that aren't really in the city's main airport. We were to fly out from Girona instead of Barcelona. Getting to the bus station, we made our coach by God's grace. Due to unfamiliar metro lines and poor planning, we arrived late to the bus station and missed our 5:45am bus. The next bus was at 7am and we were going to be late for our flight. Now, I don't know where this bus driver came from, but around 6:11am, he came up to us and asked us if we were headed for the airport. Si! Oddly enough, there was no bus scheduled for 6:20am, but because of this miracle, we made our Ryanair flight to Rome! PTL!
