Hola España!

I have been meaning to write some more blog posts for ages. Something happens in our Frenchified life and I think "I really should write a quick blog about that". Sometimes I even take pictures with my camera phone thinking, "This will be perfect for a blog post" but then life takes over and I forget or sit down and watch TV instead. I know, I know I'm such a lazy bum. But, FINALLY, we have done something exciting AND I have some time of from work...so I thought I'd try and put together a little post.

I was so excited to go to Barcelona, Spain. I have been hearing from everyone whose traveled there what a fantastic city it is and they were right. It is a great city. I have to say it is a truly unique European city. With all it's moderniste buildings mixed with Gothic cathedrals and typical narrow winding streets it is a city unlike any I've been to before.


La Ramblas, is the main street in the old part of town leading down to the port. This is like the nerve center of Barcelona tourism! The large walking mall down the center of the road is filled with street performers, people handing out flyers, souvenir kiosks, and much, much more. The tourist flow along stopping to drop coins in the street performers buckets, or to browse through tacky Barcelona souvenirs. The massive crowds make it easy for pickpockets to make a living. All guide books and even our hotel concierge warned of the prevalence of pickpockets, often pairs or groups of people working together. As the concierge said, "There is no need to worry about your safety, they will not be violent you won't even know it is happening." They are elegant thieves, not thugs. We ran into a group doing the shell game- you know where they have 3 boxes and a ball and you have to guess which box the ball is in after they've shuffled it around. We stopped to watch the action and, naturally, the guy running the game drops a 50 Euro bill on my purse and tells me to chose the box. He had of course just flipped the box up so everyone could see where it was. I wasn't exactly sure what to do. I said, no I don't want to play and tried to just put the money on his table. What I should have done was put the 50 in my pocket and walked away...not that they would have actually let me walk away. As soon as I stepped forward I was surrounded by people. All of them apparently in on this scheme. Some woman immediately went to the hubby and tried to engage him in conversation about where he was from, blah, blah, blah. As I tried to move away from the table they started saying "You won! Lady, you won! Show him your money" I was very confused. I hadn't even picked a box. Some man grabbed my arm and tried to pull me forward. My darling husband looked like he was about to punch the guy who grabbed me. I just pulled my hand away and said, "No thank you" and purposefully walked away leaving the man his 50 euros. I was a bit shaken, but they were just trying to get me to play their game and give up some money. I checked my purse and Josh checked his pockets all was still there. I did find the whole thing a bit confusing. Did that really work with people? You hand them 50 Euros and then tell them they've won, now show them your money? I mean if I had just won then shouldn't that 50 Euros be mine? Why would I have to get out any money at all if I had supposedly just won? Oh well, no harm done and it makes for an interesting story. My heart was slamming against my chest as I walked away. For a moment I had just felt surrounded and pressured and not entirely sure what was happening. Now that that was over we could concentrate on exploring Barcelona!

We headed down to the harbor, stopping to take some photos of the Columbus Monument along the way. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we wandered along the harbor enjoying the weather and the beautiful day. I loved the palm trees everywhere and as we started to feel a bit tired we sat down for a little rest to glance through our Rick Steve's 'Snapshot Barcelona' and decide what to do with the rest of our afternoon/evening. I laid down on the large stone steps with my head in DH's lap and closed my eyes for a mini siesta...when in Spain...


After sunning ourselves for a while we felt refreshed and decided to wander up through La Ribera neighborhood and then head to the Parc de la Ciutadella. We stopped to have a look at the Church of Santa Maria del Mar in the Ribera district. A fine example of Catalan Gothic architecture, according to Rick Steves who also told us that "The proud shippers built this church in only 55 years, so that it has a harmonious style that is considered pure Catalan Gothic." I have to admit after seeing so many Gothic cathedrals all over Europe this one didn't really seem much different. I remember when I first came to Europe finding these churches overwhelmingly amazing - the size, the beauty, the age of them was awe inspiring. Now, it just seems like another church. Maybe I need to take a break from Gothic churches! Still, they are beautiful and it is amazing to think of the time and money people put into these monuments to their religion.
My favorite part to our first day in Barcelona (other than eating) was the Parc de la Ciutadella (Citadel Park). It's a huge green space with a fountain by Gaudi , a zoo, a triumphal arch, and museums to geology and zoology. There were people practicing tight rope walking - which was way cool. I so wanted to ask if I could try it, but I'm too much of a chicken. Rick Steves totally would have done it - that's why he's a travel writer and I'm not!
Not the best photos, but you can kind of see in the top one, the guy is bouncing off and below he's just gotten up on the rope and is starting to walk across.
We really wanted to go to the zoo but at nearly 20 Euros a ticket we decided that perhaps our money would be better spent elsewhere. I mean, you can go to a zoo anywhere in the world there's nothing particularly special about the animals in the Barcelona zoo. So we ambled around the park taking random pictures of each other and searching for a public bathroom. We have decided that our mission in life should be to record the locations of every public bathroom in every city we travel to. This would be a fantastic website, I think. And very useful. I find I spend half of every vacation wondering where on earth I can use a toilet and praying that it is 1) not a just a hole in the ground and 2) actually has a toilet seat. We could even have a rating system for the bathrooms. Let's see...the highest rating of 4 toilet bowls would mean, clean, with toilet paper, and an actual toilet with seat! What do you think? I think we have a winner on our hands. The one I found in Parc de la Ciutadella would probably be 2.5 toilet bowls. It had a flushing toilet, without a seat, and the toilet paper was out, but it did appear as though there normally was some. There was a sink to wash your hands and it was fairly clean. There was a hand dryer which means I only half dried my hands then dried them on my jeans because I can't be bothered to wait that long for my hands to be dry. Overall, when you are desperate for the toilet you could get stuck (and I have) with much worse options. Now that you are totally enthralled with my Barcelona bathroom experiences lets move on to some photos!
No, not photos of the bathrooms (although that would be key for my website).
This is my "don't mess with me" look

This is me being a spy running down the fountain steps, will I ever grow up?

Anyways, after the relaxing in the park we wandered through some of the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter). We stumbled upon the Cathedral of Barcelona and took a quick peak inside. Yep, another Gothic cathedral.
We headed back to our hotel so I could grab my sweatshirt and put on my jeans as the evening was getting chillier. The lovely concierge gave us some suggestions for dinner and we had a great meal at a little tapas restaurant called Taller Tapas. I can't believe we didn't take an photos of our tapas - they were SO good. In case you don't know tapas works like this. You order to or 3 tapas each and then share them. You can get vegetable, meat, seafood tapas, whatever. They come on small plates and you just have a sample of everything. We had these awesome fried artichoke hearts, asparagus and garlic, steamed mussels (I had these, DH tried one) lamb, and potatoes with garlic something or other. All of it was amazing. It's so much fun to order a bunch of different things and just have a little taste. I think you get the picture. They also had an amazing house red wine. Well, I couldn't have it because I was antibiotics, but I had a taste of the hubby's and I was SUPER jealous. I wish we knew what it was because I would buy it in a heart beat.

Well...so that was day 1 of our trip. Can you see why I don't blog anymore? I just get carried away. Our 2 night, 3 day trip should be covered in one short post but it will probably take me three. Which also means this will probably be it as I go back to work tomorrow. Oiy vay.