We have been traveling for one week now. The last few days have seen us travel through three countries.
Last Thursday, we landed in Barcelona, Spain. The flight departed a bit late and landed around 10pm. It
was already dark. We went through customs smoothly and got our second stamp in our passports. With
only British Pounds in hand, we searched out some ATM's to get some euros. A bus took us from the
airport to the area where we had booked a hostel.
Our hostel was just off the main street called La Rambla [1]. The street is more of a huge sidewalk with a
single lane for cars on each side. It was the main strip for bars, hostels, clubs, and tourists in general. We
walked for about 10 blocks to find our hostel. We found the place at 85 Hospital, but the inside was dark
and no one answered our repeated knocking. The guy at the Indian restaurant next door advised us to try
the hostel we had walked by a half-block back. This turned out to be the correct place. The friendly lady
and the counter got us checked in and we walked back to the address that we were at earlier and walked
inside the building. Our room was on the first floor, but the building had three first floors: Planta Baja,
Principal, and Primero. After about five minutes of trying to get in the door at Principal, we then noticed
there was a Primero.
The room was fantastic. It was an entire apartment with three beds, one couch, air conditioning, kitchen,
and clothes washer [2, 3, 4]. The air conditioner was immediately turned on and remained on until we left.
After some quick washing up, we headed out to La Rambla to see what it had to offer. We stopped at The
Pita House and had some lamb shwarmas and fritas. We wandered around until we found a huge plaza
just off the strip. It contained hundreds of kids sitting around drinking beers that were being sold by
vendors. The beers were called Estrellas Damm. It was a local beer and provided most of our drinking in
Spain. We opted for a table and bought some beers from one of the bars that surrounded the square.
After a few rounds, we decided to head off to a club for which we received passes for earlier from
someone on the street. The passes allowed for free entry before 2:30am. Everyone else had the same
idea as us and there was a huge rush to get in just before 2:30am.
The club was called Fellini. It had three rooms on two floors. The first two rooms played a techno-house
style of music while the third room was more funk and disco. The club was fun, but hot and expensive for
beers. We left around 4:30am and headed back home with another beer purchased from a street vendor.
Victor purchased some chicken and we headed back to our air conditioned apartment.
The next day, we woke up around 3pm, took showers and headed out to buy some food to make
breakfast. This was an extremely cheap way to eat considering all the euros we spent the night before.
We found a huge market place that impressed all of us [5, 6]. They had everything fresh and beautifully
displayed. We went back home and Gardo and Victor made breakfast [7]. It was about 6pm. With only a
couple hours of daylight left, we went out to find the Gaudi church that Gardo's relative had told him was
interesting to see.
We walked through the city for about a half-hour to get to it [8]. It was a church over 100 years old that was
still being built [9, 10]. It was very tall with extravagant carvings that decorated every inch of it. We
couldn't go in because it had already closed, but we took a lot of pictures from the outside. I bought Iberia
a bracelet from one of the vendors on the street outside the church.
It was getting dark, so we decided to head to a part of town called Gothica to find some beer and food.
Victor wanted to take a shower and headed back to the hostel while Rey, Gardo, and I found a restaurant.
We ate octopus and fried calamari with a couple of beers. The owner was very friendly [11] and told us
that, compared to American women, Spanish women were more beautiful, but more stubborn. A man
walking down the street started to chat up the women at the next table. Not wanting his company, one
woman took out her lighter and held it to the crotch of the man. It took him about 20 seconds to notice.
Any longer and he would have been on fire. We also saw a guy riding his bike down the street with his
girlfriend sitting on the front handlebars. However, instead of facing front, she was facing him and kissing
him. I'm not sure how he could see where he was going.
Victor rejoined us and we had a couple more beers. We had received a flier about a dub club the night
before, so we went there next. It cost us three euros to get in. It was in a huge warehouse. The
warehouse was almost completely dark except for one light that illuminated the wall just behind the DJ.
The music wasn't exactly dub, but more like a techno'd-out dub. It was good and we all danced. There
was a small outside area that provided some eardrum relief from being inside [12]. A small makeshift fence
sectioned off the area outside. A girl either fell or, being completely drunk, decided to jump into the fence.
The entire fence fell over and left me with a nice cut on the back of my leg. We must have stayed until
about 4am and started the 30-minute walk home.
The next day started out very much the same with about a 2pm rising. We had thought about going to the
beach about 11am, but it was raining outside at the time. We gladly continued sleeping. Gardo and Vic
made us another breakfast. We walked about 30 minutes to the beach and got there about 5pm [13]. The
heat had dropped a little by that time and the temperature was perfect. We swam for about 15 minutes and
then laid on the beach [14]. The water was a nice looking blue-green color, but there was a bit of trash-like
junk floating around in the water. This was my first time in the Mediterranean Sea. There were a few
women that were topless.
At about 7pm, we headed off to find some food as everyone was craving steak. In an extremely random
occurrence, we ran into a friend named Greg [15]. He was a good friend of Victor's from the freshman year
dorms at U.C. Berkeley. I had hung out with him a few times. He's a cool guy and leads an interesting life.
We caught up for a bit and Greg joined us on the search for some food. We found exactly what we were
looking for: steaks and fries. I think the meat was lomo (shoulder).
After showering up at home, Greg walked us around some of the smaller streets off of La Rambla. This
was a very cool place to walk around and I don't know why we didn't stumble across it before. There is a
maze of small streets just big enough for one car. All the people, including a ton of tourists, walk around
the small streets. We never went inside any of the bars because the beers we bought on the street were
extremely cheap: less than one euro per beer compared to about four euros in a bar. We ran into a guy
from Portland who was living in Spain. He was selling chocolate chip cookies on the street. We kindly
bought a few, but the cookies sucked. We sat around drinking on the street watching hundreds of drunk
people walk around. We got back home about 5am. It is funny how hours can pass just walking around
drinking beer [16]. I was always surprised to find out how late we had stayed out.
We were going to be traveling to Zurich, Switzerland the next day and we hadn't exactly figured out how to
use our Europass and make train reservations. Also, our check-out time for the hostel was 11am. Rey and
I begrudgingly set the alarm for 9am. With a huge hangover, we headed out the door while Gardo and
Victor got another hour of sleep. After discovering that the local travel agency wasn't going to open on a
Sunday, we sought out a tourist information desk on La Rambla. We decided to take the Metro to the train
station with a pretty good idea that we could not make it back in time for an 11am checkout. We found the
train station, found the information desk, found the ticket counter, and made our reservations for later that
day. The Express train that we wanted to take was full, so we took a series of regional trains. This was
going to add another three hours to the already 13-hour trip. Rey and I got back to the hostel about
11:45am. The four of us quickly packed up our stuff and checked out of the hostel.
Our hangovers were in full swing. We left our backpacks at the front desk. We had about five hours of
time before we had to head to the strain station, so we decided to find some food and head to Parc Gruell.
This park is on top of a hill that looks out over most of Barcelona. After a quick stop at the tourist
information counter, we took the Metro to our destination. Along the way, a girl named Jennifer from Los
Angeles who had a southern accent started talking to us. She was a teacher living indefinitely in
Barcelona. She lived right near the park, so she walked us to the foot of the stairs and escalators that lead
to the top [17].
The view from the top was gorgeous [18]. We also saw a few sculptures from Gaudi while we were up
there [19, 20]. We were all extremely tired, so we sat on the park benches [21] listening to a Spanish guitar
player [22]. We headed back down the hill about 4pm. This gave us plenty of time to go back to the hostel
to pick up our backpacks and take the Metro to the train station. I was feeling a lot better by this time, but
the morning had been rough. Heading out on a 16-hour train ride not having showered for 24 hours was
not going to be easy either.
I had a great time in Spain. The highlights for me were the small streets around Gothica and La Rambla.
The town was overrun by tourists, so it was hard to get a sense of how Spaniards lived. It was exciting to
see people from all over the world, speaking so many different languages, all coming to Barcelona to
vacation. It was definitely the most multicultural experience of my life. It was definitely an eye-opener for
me. It made me realize how much of the world I don't know and how much of the world doesn't know the
U.S. The U.S. seemed pretty insignificant. It would be fun to live in another country for a while to really
participate in the culture and lifestyle.
