So, as I was saying. At first we were confused and a bit unsure on how to behave. The general gist seemed to be about ordering tapas and we weren’t hungry per se. So at first, we tentatively ordered beer, and Tim by some divine intervention saw a tag labelled Limon and asked for at. What he got is the drink of his dreams – half lemonade, and half beer. While my beer wasn’t bad, i really should just stick to wine around here. It is obscenity good and obscenely cheap.*
As wqe got the beer, we also got a freebie (sic?) of 2 pieces of deep fried fish. It was delicious, and everyone around us were ordering food, so we ordered a tapas of sausage and one of mussels.
As we were sitting there, I realize the guy behind Tim is holding a lit cigarette. Mind you, smoking outdoors is finely, but we had no idea there is evener a possibility of smoking indoors! As I tell Tim “I think it is ok to smoke inside” and we look around, we see in slow motion everyone in he bar pull out a cigarette and light it. We see the ash on the floor, and ashtrays on the tables AND IT ALL STARTS TO MAKE SENSE. Like in the ending of Usual Suspects.
Anyway, after an amazing lunch of amazing mussels, prepared very differently from how we do it usually, but still deliciously, and 2 drinks, we come home fore a brief nap/siesta. Ending of day 1 was a success – we went to Ramblas, the main walking strip with parents, and had dinner in a reasonably decent place, which seemed totally overpriced after the 17 eu bill at chitos. (for 5 drinks, 2 large tapas and a tiny “free” one.)
The mattress at our place sucked, and my book was interesting, so i don’t think i slept until 12-1. Unfortunately this trend only became worse as the time went on.
Day two had a Mission. We had to figure out where to get a mini sim card with a data plan for ipsad. This end up being a massive adventure: he first store said ghat only 1 store for Mobilcity carries this in Barcelona…. Then that store had a 40 minute wait. Then they pointed us to another kiosk, one located inside court ingles – a large shopping mall. Then THAT kiosk skipped over Tims number. Then they said he needs to have a passport, and that a sim cost 20eu, and activation another X eu, and that there is no prepaid plasm, only monthly contract.
At some point in theta above I did exploratory shopping in the area and identified a balanciaga (designer) wallet, a dress, a bag, and a skirt**. I had no money on me, but that sure saved time when i came back to try stuff on.
After we got to the point where they said that we need a passport, tim was tired, i was tired, and we were low on alcohol levels. A drink and some small snacks later, we took the metro home, rested fore an hour, and headed out again, with a verbatim quote from oranje’s site – the apparently only mobile network that carries ipad sims and has a pare paid data plan – on the 35eu prEpaid plan that includes a sim and no activation charges. This time, another maddeningly long wait later, the dude busted out a BOX of ipad sims – they were labelled sims for iPad!! Why all the difficulties before?? Anyway, at least the passport requirement is legit and is actually standard in spain. After that, thoroughly happy, we went to see the Gaudi classic, Sagrada Familla. Unexpectedly, it was a lovely experience – the design contains way more logic and math and design then “decorations” from what I expected. Along the way we stopped for another beer/limn, and a delicious 2eu sandwich. Amazing.
The evening was another delicious and interesting restaurant with parents. Somewhere there I also had a swim on as beach with a lot of topless and naked people, which apparently is normal. What was even more amazing is that really pretty people were topless too. Fun times for us!
We got profoundly buzzed, finishing another 2 (3?) bottles of wine over the evening. I went to sleep at 5am due to heat, snoring and an insanely bad mattress.
The 8am wake up call to go for a morning swim with mom, then coffee and croissants***, and then our personal guided tour around the city was painful.
Day 3 started off by a very high quality personal tour given by Christina from //insert tour company name here, can’t remember now, something weird//. she was an adorable, stylish, student/guide, who game us an amazing 3 hour insiders view of the old city. It would be impossible to retell everything that she has told us…. Just highlights:
– the funny way that the city grew means that no building is of one age.
– the completely hidden oldest roman columns in the city that are located inside a courtyard of a private residence.
– the legends and stories of the saints of Catalunya, Spain and Barcelona.
– the stories and kings courtyard
– tiny amazing local places of soap, drinks, tea and tapas
Her professionalism and skill was unbelievably good. Worth every penny. ****
After the tour she kindly helped us find moms friend, who were meeting after wards, and located us to a great local (no tourists, hidden away in a university courtyard!) tapas place. We had tapas, and then split up: tim and dad stayed to pay the bill and go home fore rest (and tim relating fore his work conference call That was the entire Eason why we NEEDED to get an iPad SIM), moms friend (N.) went to check in to her hotel, and mom and i went to buy all the stuff i Lund day before. We made amazing time, hitting 4 stores and buying everything in 1.5 hours, and a had time to spare to get home and take an amazingly needed 2 hour nap.
After the nap in double-time, tim and i got an espresso, I went to take some photos of the beach, and then got ready and went out for dinner with aren’t and N while poor Tim had to stay behind to work.
As soon as we left an insane thunderstorm caught us outside. After waiting for it to subside we gave up and grabbed a car toward our restaurant. Another pricy choice***** but good taste allowed us to wait out the rain and dive into the gothic quarter.
What a lovely night it was! We walked around the dark alleys, stumbling around like so many – but not too many – other people. On a hunt for a perfect place to sit and have wine we got insanely lucky. I spotted the kings court lit up at night and wanted to take photos, and asked the group to wait. Being the brilliant folks they are, they found a great wine place that allowed us to sit right there , at the courtyard, with the church bells ringing like they have for the past thousands of years. We drank 2 more bottles of wine, and got home at an intently early hour of 12. A long day it was, for sure, but an amazing one at that.
After another way to late showing on my part, 6am wake up call, thankfully bags packed the night before, we took a cab to the clean, modern, Huge Terminal 1 of Barcelona airport, and caught a plane to Granada. Ite feels like we are coming in fore a landing, so finally i managed to do a full travel blog!
Bless ipad and Steve Jobs and thank you to them fore providing us with the means to hold a skype conversation, play agates, and blog, and gps. I wish i were sponsored.
I’m at ~11gb/32gb of photos so far. I’ll go back and clean up some of the blurry/repeats of what i shot last night… Later. Now: time to game hole the plane is in the air and tim is busy with my ebook!
* pardon the uncouth mentions of prices,but I’m so pleasantly surprised at how cheap things are. For some reason i thought Spain would be expensive. Let’s home Andalucia is the same!
** wallet was on sale from the department store, bag and skirt from European Zara^, and skirt from some random place.
*** side note about breakfast. 2eu gives you a mindblowingly amazing croissant that has been freshly baked that morning, and a coffee du leech – basically a latte. I just have no words for how amazing it is. Really. I wish we had the same tradition in canada of having amazing wines and amazing coffee…..everywhere.
**** a lot of pennies.
***** after enjoying amazing 2eu sandwiches, 20eu meal seems wrong. So not crazy, but still. It’s the principle.
^ as everyone should know, European Zara is painfully better than north amereican. Like, NA’s is good too, but here is really is wonderful.