Viva Barcelona!

Looks like the last REAL travel blog I wrote was Oktoberfest! I can't believe that was a year ago at this point! What a great time! Shortly after Oktoberfest, we headed to Barcelona for Chris & Kialee's Euro Stag and Hen Parties. I'm not sure if you can call it a party with only Mike and I as attendees, but we tried to make the most of it! Duff and Larissa were supposed to come along, but Larissa came down with some nasty sickness and decided to stay put in London, and Duff decided to stay with her.

Kialee and I arrived in Barcelona on Friday morning. After a little debacle with Kialee's checked bag (we couldn't find baggage claim) we jumped in a taxi. I was really excited to use all those years of Spanish (8 including 2 semesters of college)and was even practicing what I needed to say to the taxi driver in order to get us to the hotel. "Por favor, necesitamos que ir a la Hotel Universal de Barcelona." The driver was polite, corrected my school book Spanish, and transformed it to the Castillion Spanish they speak in Barcelona. After he said it in Castillion, all I could think of was my HS Spanish teacher, Senor Fuller, overpronouncing things, and making a big deal of teaching us the castillion version too. "In Barthelona, you would say,..." If only I'd remembered! We checked into our hotel and proceeded to Las Ramblas, the main drag in the city. We didn't get very far when we saw a sign at a street-side cafe' advertising the best sangria in BCN. We looked at each other and knew we had to sample it if they were claiming to be the best! We wound up getting 2 pitchers and some cheesey snacks before Mike called and told us he was on his way to the hotel. Looking back it seems silly that we just didn't take the same flight as Mike since he only got in a couple of hours later than us!

Mike came and joined us. We walked around Las Ramblas where there were lots of street performers, artists, cafes, and pickpockets. Mike and Ki are super estute at finding the shady characters looking for your wallet, so they were always on the look-out for oblivious me!

Chris rolled in around 9PM, poor guy had to work a full day! When he finally got there he was pretty tired and we were 3 sheets to the wind, but we made it out for some paella and rioja. The paella was marginal at best, but then again, I don't think I've ever had paella before, so who's to know what's good. After dinner, we just went back to the hotel, the next day was going to be a doozy!

We're big fans of "Fat Tire Bike Tours" and knew that Fat Tire did tours of Barcelona, so we were all over it! I must admit, it wasn't as good as the Paris tour since Barcelona is a bit more spread out than gay Paris. The bike tour hit most of the major stops in BCN, the highlight being La Segrada Familia. We didn't have time to climb to the top, but that wasn't really my bag anyway. The bike tour finished at the beach. Barcelona is the only city I've ever been to that butts up to a gorgeous beach. I guess you could argue that LA has a similar effect, but downtown LA is a bit further out, I'd compare it to Hermosa Beach maybe. Anyway, we found a nice waterfront/beachfront cafe and had some beers and food and decided to walk back to town to head out for the "Stag/Hen Party" combo night. Along the way we saw a pirate looking ship in the marina that had little table on it, and decided to stop for a drink and maybe a snack. Well, one turned into several! Needless to say, we never made it out for the Stag/Hen Night! It was fun though and finding all of these niche places allowed Mike and I to really use those years and years of school Spanish (now with my Castilion accent), albeit poorly, but at least we got our point across!

Mike had been to Barcelona before when he was in college. He said there was a MUST see park at the top of Barcelona. She we started out bright and early. It was quite a hike and took us over 3 hours to get there on foot. I was EXHAUSTED and cranky. The Gaudi Park really was quite beautiful. The whole city boasts the work of Gaudi and his architectural style really comes through in the park. We climbed up the hill to get there, so we had to climb back down to get back to the hotel and catch our flight home.

It was a real whirlwind trip to Spain, but I loved it. The Spanish way of life is really a "Hasta manana"--Until Tomorrow kind of attitude. I'd love to spend some more time there and experience more of the food! So good!