On Barcelona

Oh what’s up homefam!!

We are in BARCELONA. BARCELONAAAAA!! This is my new favorite city.

“I just keep thinking that the days can’t get any better, and they still do you know?” –Alyssa

So we drove. And drove and drove and drove. Drove from the hotel in Valencia, and jumped in until the bus spit us out downtown Barcelona. And Barcelona was jumpinnnnn. Pause momentarily while I reference Wikipedia for this next bit.

So there was a huuuuge festival in town, La Mercè. Here's the wikipedia page for those curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mercè All the streets were shut down, there was a desfile going through town for I think what could accurately be described as “forever”.  Because when we had free time from 3 until 7 the parade was just going and going. There were giants and dancing and all this craziness... it was one of those weird moments where i went home and checked my phone and saw that Barcelona was featured on snapchat literally the same time I was there (for the festival). I know that's not how you should rate days on their importance or pop culture trivia, but it was weird. That's mostly the reason I was bummed I didn't see more haha, ah well!

To start: I had legit paella in Barcelona!!! I’ve actually had paella in Alcalá, but this was official. As in not chicken and rice.  Paella is a classic Spanish dish (I think I can say that since it is sold everywhere) that is usually seasoned rice and seafood. And delicious. Well okay like I said, my host family cooks it with chicken so there really isn’t anything foreign about it haha, it’s hard to not like rice and chicken. All I wanted to do was be able to say I had real paella, so Alyssa and I split a mixed paella with chicken rice and seafood. The rice? Great. Chicken? Oh yeah. Seafood? …Honestly unless it is straight tuna or salmon it takes just so long to eat seafood. That’s probably why the people here are so skinny. It takes them so dang long to eat their stinking crawdad-lookin things they just give up and decide to go to bed haha. But yeah, I gave my best efforts and ate this little bugger and that was an experience (read: I tried really hard to figure out 1. Where the meat is 2. How to eat said meat but … ).

After lunch, we regrouped and since we had so much free time we went to THE PLAYAAA. As I said, I didn’t bring a swimsuit to Spain, and I still don’t regret that. I went anyway in some running spandex and a tshirt, no pasa nada. It was so great. Not really a fan of salt water over lake water, but it was beautiful. I don’t really have any pictures of us at the beach and I’m sure you’ve all been in water before so I’ll spare you the details haha. Oh wait but I do want to mention why my preference is lake water: I’m from the Great Lakes area and can’t remember the last time I actually swam in an ocean, but the salt water is so sticky. The last time we went to the ocean to swim and I did’t get in everyone was so fussy about it (the stickiness) while we were walking back and I just could not understand why. I take back all of my sassy comments and eyerolling because it is genuinely gross and destroyed my hair haha blehgrrglujefh. I just want to live on Lake Superior, is that too much to ask?

Afterwards, we walked back to meet the bus since we probably walked 40 minutes from where we started just to get to the beach. I think I’ve mentioned this before about Madrid or Spain in general, but here’s the thing: anywhere there is tourism or big populations of people, there are always these crazy black market Haitian men selling random things on the ground. No, they’re not always Haitian, but It doesn’t feel PC to say “yeah the crazy black guys selling stuff real shifty-like on the ground ya know” haha. Anyhow, they have these little burlap sacks/tarps laying on the ground and they’re usually selling stuff like fútbol jerseys, nike tennis shoes, jewelry, sunglasses, selfie sticks, little speaker dudes, ugly purses, scarves… collectively: all the things you don’t actually need from Spain. Or life in general. But if you want them… the crazy black guys have got you covered. And will yell at you to buy their things haha. If it surprises you, it’s illegal to sell the merchandise-but also illegal to buy it. The best explanation I’ve heard is because everything they sell is fake, stolen, or both, but I have no idea. They stand around and guard their little tarp of goods and aggressively try and coerce people to just pick one and buy it but the whole time they are holding the corners of their tarp by strings becaaaause they have a lookout man for the police and if it’s possible for something to go down they just sinch up their stuff and book it to a back alley. I just think they’re so funny.

But yeah so we’re walking back to where we were dropped off in the middle of the city, and all the steets are closed for street traffic. And these are big streets! Big streets = big time inconvenience. Because we too, had to reroute… when we finally got where we were to be picked up, we had to walk literally 20 minutes backwards where we came from since the parade took over such a big part of town.

We got back to the hotel, tried to find a little place to eat but the eating times in Spain are so bizarre. In America, a restaurant will open somewhere between 7 and 10 and will close between 9 and 11, generally speaking. In Spain, a restaurant will open whenever the frick it feels like, close in the middle of the day from 3-5, and then reopen and close on a whim some mystical time between 5 and 8. Actually I take that back, I’m forgetting it was also a holiday and they were probably closed for the festival hahahaha. But I still stand by “I genuinely do not understand the ways here” sometimes haha.  Oh man such a struggle.

On the plus side, we found a fruit shop!!! I loooooove fruteriaaaaas. America needs these. Bad. Oh and there were peaches!! Oh baby. I am so sad peaches are going out of season because they’re so stinking good. Okay also it’s like a produce shop, because there are vegetables too. But I’m not going to buy a head of lettuce or other miscellaneous Spanish vegetables to carry around to eat haha. We bought a half watermelon to eat and I bought a peach to eat for the next day, it was great.

End of Day 1 in Barcelona.

I LOVE BARCELONA

Part Two

Barcelona has the two things I for sure for sure wanted to see in Spain. And we did them both yesterday. El Parque Güell and La Sagrada Familia. Yes!!!!!

As a continued tangent on Spain’s languages, in Barcelona they speak 1. Castellano (Spanish) and 2. Catalán. I keep expecting to run into these languages and have it be like “ye olde English” where it’s just spelled weird but is fairly obvious what is being said, but thus far I can read about as much Catalán and Valenciano as I can Portuguese. It’s odd because I was expecting also that it’d be like a small thing that you wouldn’t run into too much, but really almost all of the signs are in Catalan unless it’s an advertisement or something a little more “needs to be understood by everyone”/has a bigger audience. And our tour guide Jordi said that nearly 95% of Barceloneses speak the two fluently. No big deal.

Anywho, we went to the Park first. And oh my freaking heck, I can’t believe Barcelona is a real city! I found a camera store in Alcalá but I’m a huge chump because I keep forgetting to go. So the battery issue is still on hold. I’m super grateful that I have my phone here.  Park Güell is an art park of sorts around Gaudi. I wish I had more cool things to say about it that are factual, except that I was so overstimulated by the sights that I was dipping in and out of actually listening to Jordi. But I can tell you what I know just off my own head with a few bits from Jordi, prepare yourselves haha.

So Gaudi is an artist known for his architecture but mostly the curvy quality of his work in pretty much every way imaginable. There’s an overlook of the city we went to see, it’s incredible. But if you want to see why you should probably google it because I have a picture of me, but it doesn’t really do it justice. Thus you see my plight haha. It was funny because it’s such a highly trafficked area that I’m pretty sure we had to pay ahead of time to go as a group and we only had 30 minutes to take a few pictures and have Jordi tell us about it. Like they actually had a line we had to wait in to walk to see the city. “Oh yay, just like Disneyland… nothing gets the blood pumpin’ like waiting in lines...” –Jake

As an artist, I’m not really a fan of the curvy architecture and always thought it looked silly. But after seeing it in person, my heart may have softened just a tinch. It’s just so different. And now I just really want rounded benches.

After the park, we jumped back on the bus and were spit out at La Sagrada Familia.

Every thing I write from here on are understatements of the century.

La Sagrada Familia is incredible.

I’m not a nut for architecture or old historical things,

but I could go back again and again and again.

It is quite literally: stunning.

New life goal: one room in my house modeled with the mosaic windows.

So I have some photos, and I’m sorry that they’re just average cell phone pictures. I felt pretty lame not having my nice camera, but I know even if I had it with me it wouldn’t’ve done what I wanted. SO I’m happy with what I have to prove I was there for just a second, and I have the memories! But yeah when I’m a millionaire I’m going to rent the whole thing out, La Sagrada Familia. And we’ll either have a wedding or a service, but I just cannot deal with these tourists. I totally acknowledge that I’m no better and am also a tourist trying to get the same photos that already exist in millions of places online, but Spain is full of 3 things:

1.     1. Asian tourists

2.     2. Selfie Sticks

3.     3. Asian tourists with Selfie Sticks

The only way I can deal is by laughing. Because it just blows my mind. Mostly their commitment to the selfie stick and some of the poses they make both taking the picture and having a picture taken of them. But forreal, Madrid? Check. Segovia? Check. Burgos? Check. Valencia? Check. Every city! BAM. Asian tourists!! How is the continent of Asian surviving if half of it’s population is in Spain?? Madre mia…

                              

Haha oh man, so after La Sagrada Familia we went to a legit tapa bar!!! Tapas in short are little plates of food. Not like a china saucer and three little weinies, but a small bocadillo (sandwich) or some egg tortilla (which is egg and potatoes) or something like that. Actually it is almost always a sandwich-it’s just a small amount of food that isn’t a Texas Road House meal. BUT this place was sweeeeeet. The tapas are super random and there were literally 50 of them to chose from for €1.95 !! Haha except it was such a struggle to feed 13 people 3 different tapas each so by the time I got mine I inhaled them.  And then I ate my peach since the tapas were pretty much as filling as a gust of wind. Imagine like three, perfect, professionally made.... triscuit-sized things. That's what I ate. Woman s'gotta eat too, y'all!! That is not real food. Which is why it's popular to go "tapa-hopping" from bar to bar. A little here, a little there.... drink here, drink there... goodness.

After lunch we split up because some wanted to go see the National Art Museum and Olympic something or other (Barcelona held the Olympic games in ‘91 I think? Somethin like that). We wanted to go shopping.

Shopping in Spain is actually really fun because there are a lot a lot of options, but it’s also overwhelming some times. And if it isn’t overwhelming by the sheer amount of things there are to buy, it should be overwhelming by the amount it costs to own said things. So to say I went shopping meant we walked into a lot of stores and touched a lot of things. And then we kept walking.

Lastly before we jumped on the bus we went to (haha…guess) this darling little cathedral!! Okay no jokes, I’ve seen a junnnkload of cathedrals in the 4 weeks I’ve been in Spain, but this is one of my favorties. Besides La Sagrada Familia because that can’t be topped. This one was little and quaint and honestly felt like an actually spiritual place. Most cathedrals we’ve seen are beautiful, but feel more like a landmark or a museum- this one had the ambiance and just the right amount of charm. Perfect end to a great day!!

We came back to the hotel, went out to get something to eat, and then went hotubbing. I lasted about 25 minutes. And either the salt water or the hot tub water has successfully turned my black shirt brown haha oh dear.

So that is a play-by-play of Barcelona. I’m impressed if you’ve made it this far.

Love you all, I think about you every day! Pray for ya too

Peace,love & peaches

Jessie