Episode 15, 06/05/2009 – BARCELONA BABY!

We got a 3 day weekend from school. And what does one do with a 3 day weekend in Spain but go traveling! The intended destination was Barcelona and we got a group together consisting of Rachael (our tour guide and den mother extraordinaire), Stephanie, Justin, Bobby, and myself. We booked plane tickets and a hostel a couple of weeks before and woke up at 4:00am for our epic journey into Cataluña. I should explain. They don’t speak Castilian Spanish in Barcelona. They speak this bizarre Spanish/French/other hybrid called Catalan. Being in the province of Cataluña, all of the street signs are primarily in Catalan and secondarily in Castilian (aka “normal” Spanish). It makes navigating the streets just THATTT much more confusing…

We got in around 9ish and wandered around to the hostel after taking a bus. The first day consisted primarily of dropping our stuff off at the hostel, checking facebook and etc. and then going to the heart of Barcelona: la plaza de Cataluña and a big long gigantic street called La Rambla (the area called “Las Ramblas”). Oh, first, I should mention we passed the famous “Monumento de Cristobal Colon”, which is one of about a million statues of Christopher Columbus in Spain. They certainly do love Columbus. Anyways, afterwards, we went forthwith to Las Ramblas. Las Ramblas sells anything that a tourist to Barcelona could possibly want to buy. Helado, Gelato, knockoff purses, Barcelona Futbol Jerseys, and prairie dogs…Yes, prairie dogs… It’s a very cool street. Even cooler, we went in to a very famous open-air food market called “La Boqueria” which has a delectable assortment of everything from fresh squeezed juices, fish with the heads still on, still-living snails, fresh bread, marzipan, sweets, and even vegetables! We took some pictures and resolved to come back with more time.

I should mention quickly about how one gets around in Barcelona. The metro is the quickest and easiest way to travel practically anywhere in the city. We bought what is called a “T-10” pass, which is a “cheap” (note the quotation marks) 10-time use card that all 5 of us shared well. It worked great. I can describe the Metro of Barcelona as a hybrid between the New York Metro in terms of busyness and amount of people (minus the cray-crays, thank God), but more structured like the London Underground. Thankfully, it DID have the punctuality and generally user-friendly feel of the London Underground, so I was pretty happy with our (and when I say, “our” lol I mean Rachel’s) ability to find where we were going. Speaking of Rachel, she was terrific! I gotta give a major shout-out to her supreme organizational/directional skills, especially in wake of certain difficult circumstances (stay tuned for THAT episode folks, lol).

In any case, back to Las Ramblas. Being tourists, we were obligated to do all the touristy things and take prodigious amounts of pictures while doing so. For example, we went to a café which served the excellent Spanish dish of Churros con Chocolate. Truly an authentic and delicious experience. We also sampled Gelato and Horbacha (as Rachel describes it, Soy Egg Nogg). We went into some tourist shops, we came, we saw, we conquered.

We followed the Las Ramblas rambling until we came to the centre of Barcelona, called La Plaza de Cataluña. The plaza itself is very big and very impressive, exhibiting of course the 1 block long Corte Ingles amoung other things. Oh, and among other things, remember way back in Episode 10 when I mentioned a little store called FNAC? Well, FNAC is essentially the Spanish version of Borders, but WAAAAYYY bigger and way better. I’ve managed to visit the one in Sevilla twice now, and what should my little eyes spot next to the block-long Corte Ingles but the gigantic FNAC Barcelona. Going in was an absolute must. I didn’t buy anything but it was still an excellent experience. We wrapped up our commercial/materialistic aspect of our Barcelona visit and returned to the hostel.

The hostel itself was excellent. For those of us who haven’t stayed in a hostel before, I’ll give a brief description. It is structured very similarly to a college dorm with the exception that there are 8ish beds to a room rather than 2. Our hostel was VERY nice. Nice beds, A/C, really cool common room (with comfy couches to boot), FAST RELIABLE INTERNET (thank GOD!), and cool people (more on that later). From what my memory allows, I remember that we rested a little bit, went out to dinner (I sadly can’t remember where…) and went to bed. This day was just the appetizer. Tomorrow would be the main course.