Barcelona! We are about to leave this wonderful city after spending three amazing days that I wont be able to do justice describing. I guess I will start with where we are staying - One Sants hostel. It all started when we met the guy who runs the hostel - Raphael. Take a second and try and picture this: if Mic Jagger and Captain Jack Sparrow had a son, and that son was Brazilian.... he would be Raphael. The group of people staying here are some of my favourite travel buddies I´ve ever met. People are from all over, but they are all just here to have a great time. We met a couple guys from Pittsburgh, who were consequently Buffalo Bills fans, and got the ¨Bills You Make Me Wanna Shout¨cheer going on the first night... It´s been a staple ever since. This is clearly cultural sharing at its finest. You´re welcome Spain.
The first thing we did when we got to the city was go out for dinner to a place Raphael recommended. He let us know that it was a tapas restaurant that was also a champagneria (they make champagne) and that you get really cheap glasses ($1.50) when you eat food. So we set out to navigate our way through the city with our tourist map. We got to the area of the restaurant with ease, and then spent the next half hour walking through the wide stone streets and narrow alleys looking for a sign for Champagneria. Finally, we turned down one of the small alleys to find a hole-in-the-wall place with people packed in and pouring out of it. It was set up as a long thin bar, the kind where everyone is standing and you have to fight your way through sweaty people and spilly champagne drinkers to get to the bar and order. Nothing on the chalkboard menu was in English, and no one behind the bar spoke a hint of it. We relied on Justin's broken Portuguese, which sometimes can be like Spanish, to find our way to delicious tapas and champagne. This may be my favourite experience thus far even though it was so far from the classy sitdown bubbly restaurant I had envisioned we were going to.
Each night at the hostel, the employed Party Girl takes everyone out to some bars to get the real European experience. On the first night, the first place we went was a shots bar (shooters for those of the previous generation). They had over 600 different kinds of shots, most of which I had never seen or heard of. You could get one called a toasted marshmellow, in which they lit the bar on fire, gave you marshmellows on a stick, and you burn the marshmellow, dunk it in the shot, each the marshmellow and the take the shot. Wild. So before we got to this place, I made a deal with one of the guys who was staying at our hostel from LA to take a surprise shot provided he payed for it and bought the one after. I´m going to preface this story with just saying sorry to my Grandmothers for the mental image you´re about to get. haha. Anyways, after he ordered the ¨Monica Lewinsky¨for me, everyone around us at the bar literally stopped and stared, and I knew there was a story in the making. I was promptly blindfolded, and the bartender (a Spanish guy) then hopped on the bar facing me and put my hands on his thighs. Following instruction, I opened my mouth and tasted whipped cream... on a dildo. The name started to make a lot of sense. After a hilarious performance from the bartender, in which I was required to yell out that the acts I was performing were for love and not for money, beer shot out of the top of the ¨member¨ in the general area of my face. There is video a photo footage of this in case anyone really needs to see it. haha. Needless to say the nightlife in Barcelona is something to experience - amazing DJs, 5-floor clubs, clubs that open onto the Mediterranean beaches... and they´re all open until 6am.
During our daytime here, we have packed it with sightseeing and time at the beach. In total, we have probably spent around 5 waking hours actually at the hostel, every other moment we´ve been trying to take in Barcelona. Probably the most interesting thing about Barcelona, and maybe what it´s most famous for is the architecture. Quite a few buildings in the city were designed by the modernist architect Gaudi. His buildings, usually inspired in some way by nature, tend to look a lot like the illustrations in Dr Suess books. They´re actually incredible. He also designed a massive church here called Sagrada Familia, which was like no other building I had ever seen, or even seen pictures of. On the outside, there was a modern, almost heavy feel to the design. On the inside though, it had stain glass windows that painted white walls all the way to the enormous vaulted ceiling with rays of oranges, greens and reds. I haven't toured much of Europe, so I am unable to really offer any great comparison to where Sagrada Familia stands in comparison to others if similar fame. But I can tell you that Justin and Adriana, two of the people I am travelling with who have seen a lot of Europe were joined me in feeling overwhelmed by its size and unique design. Something to see if you ever get the chance!
Now, to Madrid for a day and Seville for a couple more. I am hoping that by the end of the trip, the tan and beard I'm working on will help me truly fit in with with the Spaniards. I'll keep you updated on that front.
For now, ad
The first thing we did when we got to the city was go out for dinner to a place Raphael recommended. He let us know that it was a tapas restaurant that was also a champagneria (they make champagne) and that you get really cheap glasses ($1.50) when you eat food. So we set out to navigate our way through the city with our tourist map. We got to the area of the restaurant with ease, and then spent the next half hour walking through the wide stone streets and narrow alleys looking for a sign for Champagneria. Finally, we turned down one of the small alleys to find a hole-in-the-wall place with people packed in and pouring out of it. It was set up as a long thin bar, the kind where everyone is standing and you have to fight your way through sweaty people and spilly champagne drinkers to get to the bar and order. Nothing on the chalkboard menu was in English, and no one behind the bar spoke a hint of it. We relied on Justin's broken Portuguese, which sometimes can be like Spanish, to find our way to delicious tapas and champagne. This may be my favourite experience thus far even though it was so far from the classy sitdown bubbly restaurant I had envisioned we were going to.
Each night at the hostel, the employed Party Girl takes everyone out to some bars to get the real European experience. On the first night, the first place we went was a shots bar (shooters for those of the previous generation). They had over 600 different kinds of shots, most of which I had never seen or heard of. You could get one called a toasted marshmellow, in which they lit the bar on fire, gave you marshmellows on a stick, and you burn the marshmellow, dunk it in the shot, each the marshmellow and the take the shot. Wild. So before we got to this place, I made a deal with one of the guys who was staying at our hostel from LA to take a surprise shot provided he payed for it and bought the one after. I´m going to preface this story with just saying sorry to my Grandmothers for the mental image you´re about to get. haha. Anyways, after he ordered the ¨Monica Lewinsky¨for me, everyone around us at the bar literally stopped and stared, and I knew there was a story in the making. I was promptly blindfolded, and the bartender (a Spanish guy) then hopped on the bar facing me and put my hands on his thighs. Following instruction, I opened my mouth and tasted whipped cream... on a dildo. The name started to make a lot of sense. After a hilarious performance from the bartender, in which I was required to yell out that the acts I was performing were for love and not for money, beer shot out of the top of the ¨member¨ in the general area of my face. There is video a photo footage of this in case anyone really needs to see it. haha. Needless to say the nightlife in Barcelona is something to experience - amazing DJs, 5-floor clubs, clubs that open onto the Mediterranean beaches... and they´re all open until 6am.
During our daytime here, we have packed it with sightseeing and time at the beach. In total, we have probably spent around 5 waking hours actually at the hostel, every other moment we´ve been trying to take in Barcelona. Probably the most interesting thing about Barcelona, and maybe what it´s most famous for is the architecture. Quite a few buildings in the city were designed by the modernist architect Gaudi. His buildings, usually inspired in some way by nature, tend to look a lot like the illustrations in Dr Suess books. They´re actually incredible. He also designed a massive church here called Sagrada Familia, which was like no other building I had ever seen, or even seen pictures of. On the outside, there was a modern, almost heavy feel to the design. On the inside though, it had stain glass windows that painted white walls all the way to the enormous vaulted ceiling with rays of oranges, greens and reds. I haven't toured much of Europe, so I am unable to really offer any great comparison to where Sagrada Familia stands in comparison to others if similar fame. But I can tell you that Justin and Adriana, two of the people I am travelling with who have seen a lot of Europe were joined me in feeling overwhelmed by its size and unique design. Something to see if you ever get the chance!
Now, to Madrid for a day and Seville for a couple more. I am hoping that by the end of the trip, the tan and beard I'm working on will help me truly fit in with with the Spaniards. I'll keep you updated on that front.
For now, ad
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