Day 1
After a 4 hour wait at the airport and an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam, we had only a two hour flight until we made it to our first destination. The plane touched down in Barcelona and we grabbed our bags and headed to the bus stop.
Once we checked in at our hotel we headed up to the room, threw down our bags and jumped into bed for a quick nap. Two hours later I (Jill) woke up to use the restroom, however, I couldn't figure out how to turn on the bathroom lights. Blair decided to get up and help figure it out. Much to our surprise all the lights in the hotel room were not working. Very angered by this Blair suggested that we call the front desk and ask for help. It wasn't until we were about to pick up the phone that we realized in order for the lights to work we needed to insert the room key into the wall (a very unusual concept for us Americans). I then proceeded to take a shower where I could not figure out how to get the water to come through the shower head, luckily after 20 minutes of trying Blair was able to figure it out (in two seconds I might add).
We got cleaned up and decided to check out the pool at the sister hotel a few blocks away. We navigated the streets perfectly but could not seem to find the other location so we stopped at a local restaurant to ask for directions. Much to our surprise the server politely informed us that we were standing kiddy corner from the hotel.
While at the pool we met some nice people from London who were their enjoying a friends 21st birthday. We laid out for a few hours and decided to head to dinner. We asked the concierge for suggestions and she told us about a few places she enjoyed. She gave us a map with a few highlighted places. It seemed simple enough, after all we are two smart girls with a map and somewhat a good sense of direction. It took us about 20-30 mins to arrive at one of the places marked on the map, however not until then did we realize that we never asked for the name of the restaurant and therefore couldn't eat there. So we began walking back towards our hotel.
We found a cute little Tapas restaurant on our walk back so we decided to stop in for a bite. When our serve came to give us the menu (which was all I'm Spanish) we asked him to help us order. He picked three things on the menu and sent them our way. Although the food was ok it wasn't exactly what we were looking for. We said goodbye to our waiter and ventured back toward the hotel to find something better. We were in for a treat (literally). We stopped at a nice looking restaurant for what had to be the most delicious crape. Our night ended early with our heads hitting the pillow fast.
Day 2
After a nice 12 hour sleep, Jill and I woke up bright and early to find our way to our first booked tour. The goal was to get to the Opera house by 10am. We made it with plenty of time to spare. This was another story for our tour guide...who never showed up. Once we realized the tour guide had ditched us we decided to take things into our own hands. We decided to rent a gocart (similar to an American golf cart) to take us around the city. Hidden in an alley off a main road the gocart company made a copy of our license and informed us that because we did not have a license written in Spanish we could take an hour and have them translate it for us or we could risk being pulled over by the police. We jumped in the cart and with the help of our lovely GPS (Carmen) we navigated throughout the city. We only got out of the cart to explore once but when we got back in we needed to push the cart out of the parking spot since gocart apparently cannot reverse on their own.
After about an hour and a half we decided that we had enough of Carmen and wanted to go back to the rental store. We made a few wrong turns hoping she would navigate us back but instead it started the tour over based on the closest landmark. At this point we had no other choice but to find our way back ourselves. We did a pretty good job of getting back to the central location however, the main road was blocked so we turned down a "secret" alley that Carmen called out for us. We arrived safely back at the store and we on our way to the next activity.
We bought passes for a hop on hop off tour that would take us around the city, and used that as our transportation to get to the beach. Our beach adventures including napping, tanning, hopping into the water and more tanning. We stayed for a few hours then headed back to eat, shower, nap, and get ready for the night. It may seem to you as if we are napping a lot, but in order to keep up with those in Barcelona we must do everything much later. For example, going out at 11:30pm is much to early according to our hotel and cab driver. They were correct. The first club we tried to enter was having a private party and unfortunately, we were not on the list. So we walked next door to Carpe Diem where we again were asked if we were on the list, I told the bouncer if he wanted he could add us since we again weren't on it but we were allowed in anyway. We drank a pitcher of Sangria and waited for the club to pick up a bit. We met a lovely man who wanted us to ride his motorcycle later and two cute boys similar to our age. The club was having a party to celebrate the motor races that took place that day (originally the bouncer told us the were model races but we quickly learned we were miss informed).
At about 1:00am we decided to head to Opium, one of the better known club in Barcelona. We danced for a while and then went outside fora breather. While outside Blair and I met a boy named Diego from Mexico, he was traveling with his brother Eduardo. Blair and Eddie decided to hit the dance floor while I decided to go talk to the guy sitting across from us. When I was ready to dance some more, Diego and I went to find Blair. It didn't take long for us to find her, she told me that Eddie was a horrible dancer and that it was time to move on. We went over and started dancing with a group of gay men from Sweden for a while and then moved on to the tallest men at the club. Of course they were American. They were basketball players from True college (we don't even know if this is a real college) studying abroad. Once we had enough of them, we found a cab and headed back to the hotel for the night.
Day 3
We had big plans for our last day in Barcelona. We wanted to stop, take a Gaudi tour and then try and make our way back to the beach. When we awoke we realized that we were not going to be able to do all we had hoped since it was already noon. We quickly got dressed and headed to find a sandwich shop for lunch.
Walking in and out of a few different places we finally found one we liked. We could barely read the menu but we were able to understand bits and pieces. It wasn't for the first 10-15 mins of us waiting there that we realized we needed to order from the bar so we asked the bartender for help. He of course couldn't speak English and it took us a little while to realize that there was a piece or paper on each table we needed to fill out with our order. We ordered 6 different sandwiches between the two of us and enjoyed everyone. Then we shopped a little and got on the tour bus. We road the bus around the city for a while and got off at the last stop before the final destination figuring we could navigate ourselves back. We only had to stop and ask for directions three times before we made it back to Plaça Cataluyna. Our navigation skills have been amazing this trip, I might add.
We ate a quick dinner and headed back to the hotel to pack and freshen up. We wanted to grab one last drink before we left Barcelona so we ventured out one last time. We stopped for a crepe on the way and while enjoying we saw a group of kids our age walk by on what we decided was a bar crawl. We tried to quickly pay, but unfortunately didn't make the bar crawl in time. We wondered up and down the streets trying to find them, but sadly had no luck. We decided the best idea was to go back to the sandwich shop from lunch (we noticed there were a lot of people there at night). We waited in what seemed liked the longest none moving line ever. We decided the girl behind us was either on some type of drug or a gypsy. First she asked us how to order, yes you're hearing us right. Then she found food that was leftover from a man siting at a table near us. The girl decided to eat the leftover chips until a waiter took it a way. From there she decided to eat the crumbs off the table. We soon realized the sandwich place only served beer and moved next door to Happys Bar. We had a glass of sangria then called it a night. Goodbye Barcelona hello Rome!!
No comments:
Post a Comment