11:00 PM CEST Monday May 20th
Every day is a vacation day in Spain
One
thing that we couldn’t help but notice is that we’ve been here all day Sunday
and all day Monday and there was hardly any difference in what stores were open
and what stores were closed… with that being said… 90% of them are just always
closed? We knew of the Spanish siesta
(you know, the two hour lunch break they take in the middle of the day and all
the shops and restaurants closed) but just the whole country deciding not work
two days in a row? Not sure about that one. Okay… SOME things are open, but La
Boqueria has been closed both days we were here (that’s the huge open air
market right off Las Ramblas) and there’s a a very wide road that seems to be
geared towards shopping called La Gracia that was kind of like Michigan ave
(for all you familiar with Chicago) in that it had pretty much every designer
brand store on it you can think of.
Stores ranging from Jimmy Choo to Louis Vuitton, to Tiffany and Co , to
Chanel, Gucci, Cartier, so on and so on… all closed. On a Monday. At 4. What?!
Andy said, do you think anyone ever told them about the business they were
missing out on? Granted, the United States is one of the hardest working
countries in the world, but Spain… do they work at all?
Okay,
back to the things that WERE open that we DID see! This morning we slept in super late on
accident… and by late I mean 1:30 in the afternoon. We thought we had beaten the jet lag by
staying up for 24 hours straight, but as it turns out, our systems are still
pretty messed up. Tonight I am setting
an alarm so we don’t sleep past ten! Even though we slept late, it works out
with the Spanish lifestyle because most people sleep pretty late, take a mid
afternoon siesta, have dinner around 10PM and then do whatever else until 4 in
the morning. We finally got out of the
hostel around 2:30 and set out for Sagrada Familia which is the most famous
church in Spain, design by architect Antoni Gaudi. (Note, the Barcelona Cathedral that we saw
yesterday was done by him as well.) I
REALLY wish we had Rick Steves Barcelona, but because we were short budgeted, I
just know that it’s Gaudi’s main work and it’s actually not even close to being
completed. (Pictures later!) It’s not expected to be finished until 2027. We didn’t go inside because the line looked
horrendous and we were starving.
I
really wanted to go to Parc Guell, so we headed north even further in search of
something to eat. We ventured off the
main road a bit and find a very small bar/diner/billiards type place owned by a
Chinese family that only speaks Chinese and Spanish. So the food must be food, right? I manage to
order us something in broken and pathetic Spanish. We got this flat bread that was cheesy and
meaty and came with an axe to cut it… I WISH I had pictures of the axe cutter
but this is when my camera died. The
damn thing didn’t even tell me it was low battery!! Then I proceeded to give
myself excellent second degree burns on my fingers. See, the pizza/flatbread thingy had been in
the oven and she just transferred it’s mini oven sheet onto a wooden panel… not
realizing it was sitting on the sheet it had just baked in, I seared two of my
fingers on it. Typical. The food was good though! And the Chinese lady
was super nice. I’m pretty sure she would have chatted with us if we all spoke
a common language; she kept pausing by us and smiling. Ha.
After
the Chinese owned diner, we made our way to the top of the hill that is Parc
Guell. The whole park (except for the
two houses in it) was design by Gaudi and it really is a shame my camera died.
I was pretty upset. But I’ll describe and include some pictures from the
internet so you get what I’m talking about J
The whole parc was situated at the top of a very steep hill (or mountain…
honestly that’s how it felt!) and it was a serious work out to get all the way
up to the park. Once in the park, it’s a
labyrinth of paths and stairs with gardens with pretty roses and cacti. I’ll
include the parts designed by Gaudi as well as the one picture I managed to
take of Andy before my camera was just not having it anymore.
The top
of the park was absolutely gorgous. You
could see all of Barcelona from up there… all the way over the city and to the
ocean! At the top there was a man only a
little older than us playing a Spanish guitar.
He was really good, actually, and Andy bought his cd for 5 euros. Which I thought was pricey, until we climbed
back down to the middle of the park and there was an older guy playing and
singing and selling cds for 10. We thought the younger guy was better anyway!
We
walked back down the fancy strip and got gelato from a different place off Las
Ramblas. It wasn’t as good as
yesterday’s but mine did have a giant chunk of ferrero rocher in it! We got
fish and chips for dinner at a place that boasted “tex mex” … lol. Okay, for the record, we walked all over
looking for a decent, authentic Spanish place to eat. There were some good deals, ie, paella and
sangria for €9.95, but we’ve been having awful luck with Spanish food. The
Chinese owned place was pretty decent… but I still find it hard to believe that
that’s authentic Spanish food! This is
another reason I wish I had had time to do some more research beforehand. All these tourist trap tapas and paella
places are NOT that good and VERY expensive! I’ve had better tapas in
Naperville… so before you get all omg you
went to a stanky American style pub in Europe?! on me, I’ll just have you
know that, this place had €3 Budweiser drafts (big ones!! Not just a 14oz, a
full pint ) and decent food in our budget.
We’ll save the money for places that are actually known for food… like
France and Germany. The “tex mex” boasting on the menu was definitely a joke
though. This was not tex mex! ;)
So
ends day two. We walked a good amount of
miles today… can’t wait to actually map it out on google pedometer. We have impressive blisters to show for it
The park sounds absolutely beautiful! Too bad about the camera. That sounds like something I would love to see!
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