Humbling Experiences in Spain

11:08 PM CEST

Humbling Experiences in Spain

                This morning we made an executive decision to ignore our alarm clock and still sleep until about 11:30 AM.  As mentioned earlier… this is perfectly acceptable in Spain… we’ll save the getting up early for Paris.  We knew today that we wanted to go to Montjuic and then finish the day off at the beach.  Once we finally got our acts together around 12:30, we headed out to our favorite Dunkin Donuts which was right next to La Boqueria! Get this… it was open!!  This market was fantastic.  It kind of looked like something Andrew Zimmern (uh.. bizarre foods? If you don’t know Andrew Zimmern, please go and watch more Travel Channel and then come back!) would sit and eat at! There were lots of bizarre looking fishies and miscellaneous cow, lamb (what have you) body parts to taste test.  In addition to the random animal bits available, there was a lot of delicious looking fruit, chocolate, vegetables, nuts, and much more, to shop for, for very reasonable prices.  Andy says that it still wasn’t as cramped as markets in China but we were still extra careful to not get pick pocketed. Pictures later!!

                After the market we went to a Turkish place recommended by Courtney for lunch called La Turca.  For the record… she didn’t give us that name… she just said “get the doner kababs off of Las Ramblas”!  Okay… that could be anywhere.  But luck would have it, 2 minutes walking distance from our hostel, we found a place advertising something about doner kababs for €3.50. Bargain.  They were delicious too!!  Much better than the majority of the Spanish food we tried.

                Then we set out for Montjuic which is a park up in the mountains where the Barcelona Olympic games had their opening ceremonies and some events, like swimming and diving.  The trek up this mountain was almost as big of a work out as Parc Guell was yesterday, but the gardens along the way were beautiful… there was even a hotel up there that we assume we would not have been able to afford to stay in :P The flowers made me think of my Madre… she loves gardens, flowers and funny looking trees… all of the above were found here!  This park is not only on a mountain, but it’s also a labyrinth of paths and roads and such to get to the sites all the tourists want to see.  After several wrong turns and breaking out into a serious sweat, we finally found what I Really wanted to see: the Palau National, or rather, the Art Museum.  Ever since Courtney lived in Barcelona I’ve been jealous of this particular site from her pictures!  After getting a sangria at the top (yumm) and taking lots of pictures, it was time for the beach.

                At this point, we’re boasting about how great we are about getting around the city, and that we’re clever, and good at figuring things out… etc. etc.  So we figure out how to take the Metro to a stop that we think will bring us close to the beach.  We take the red line to Marina (makes sense right? Marina… beach… we thought so too.).  But as soon as we get off we know we’ve done something wrong.  After consulting the map, we find out that we’re actually several blocks north of the beach in a neighborhood called Poblenou.  Not all sections of Poblenou are bad, but had we known this walk to the beach would have been the way it was, we would have gotten right back on the train and gone back the other way.  This section of town (again, Red Line towards Fondo, stop: Marina) looked like the projects of Barcelona.  It was mostly run down... and although there were cars parked almost everywhere, there were no people… and especially no tourists with cute Barcelona bags.  These 10+ blocks or so, south to the beach were the quietest and fastest that Andy and I had had yet in Barcelona.  We passed by lots of run down buildings, car repair shops, dodgy alleys, vans, and things we feel like we weren’t supposed to see at all (including two passed out people in a large van with some guy just standing by… were they sleeping? Were they passed out? We don’t know).  This walk was absolutely terrifying and we’re only glad it happened in broad daylight and not at night.  The lesson learned here is always ALWAYS verify the Metro stop you’re using on your actual street map.  The train maps shrink everything down and make things look closer together than they are.  We thought this stop was closer to the beach and we didn’t actually check where it was on our street map.  If this happens again we’re marching our asses right back on the train. Nothing is worse than feeling unsafe.

                Once we finally made it to the beach, we strolled around for a bit, but we had awful blisters and aches from practically sprinting ten blocks through the projects.  After walking around, we rejoin a gaggle of tourist on their way to Las Ramblas (ie, our home for the past 3 nights) and check out another place that Courtney recommended called Can Paixano.  She warned me that it was tiny with no room to sit but it was still worth it… for €6.90 we got two sandwiches and two glasses of pink champagne (rosado!!) and it was definitely the best bang for our buck we’ve had so far! Even though it was jam packed and everyone was pushing each other, this place was well worth it!

                Finally back on La Rambla, we stroll into our favorite Temple Bar (pub off of Ferran) for some “snakebites” (½  beer, ½ cider) and €3 Estrella drafts at happy hour.  The music there played everything from The Cure to Kylie Monogue to 50 Cent.  Naturally I love it.  About an hour in, a giant group of old people starting marching the street with signs and loud bomb-like noise makers.  The only reason this wasn’t terrifying was because the bar tenders looked so not surprised by it.  When I asked one of them, he said in his broken English: I don’t even know why they protest! They do this every week on the same day… they are pretty old… maybe they just don’t like the banks and pensions.  L.O.L.

                So that’s the end of our Barcelona adventure.  I’ve been bugging Andy to write something because he has a different take on everything (ie, what he thought of the terrifying neighborhood of Poblenou and how he saw some restaurant worker put meatballs off someone’s old plate back into the platter…) but we’ll see if that actually happens.  He’s snoring again.