Barcelona!

Yesterday morning I flew from Berlin to Barcelona. I was so sad to leave Berlin after a wonderful 4 days visiting my high school friend Kate and getting to know such an interesting and vibrant city. Berlin is amazing and still up and coming after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was almost shocking to see such modern buildings after several months of living in the Old World of Europe. I met a few locals and really enjoyed their company, got a feel for a few neighborhoods and learned about the long, sad, and dynamic history of the city. After such a positive experience visiting Berlin I cannot wait to return sometime soon and see other parts of Germany too.

My flight to Barcelona left Berlin at 8:50 and I landed just before noon. I had made plans to meet my Canadian Counterpart in the Barcelona airport because she was flying from London that same morning. Unfortunately we failed to make this plan beyond basically saying "we will meet at the airport." I walked very slowly from my arrival gate to the exit looking in every corner to see if she was hanging out inside the security checkpoint. It wasn't until I was nearly out of the gates area that I remembered that the UK is not part of the Schengen Region, and therefore she would have gone through passport control and then been summarily directed outside of the secured part of the airport. Just as I realized this I exited the secured area myself and she was standing there dutifully waiting for me. Perhaps one day I will realize that other people can be as anal and meticulous as I am about plans and meeting times so I should worry less and trust them to do there thing.

Anyway, it took us a full hour or so to figure out the trains to get into the city and then we found our hostel pretty easily. We spent our first few hours getting settled including buying groceries (because I am moments away from being flat broke for this trip) for the hostel, claiming our beds and then napping a bit after long mornings of traveling. In the afternoon we walked down to Las Ramblas, the main drag of the city complete with touristy booths for postcards and the like, street performers and a fantastic food market. I think we'll try to wander through Las Ramblas every day just for the spectacle. We cooked a pizza at the hostel for supper, which was a well spent 2 euros. Who needs money/a restaurant???

At some point my Canadian Counterpart, a very shy and normally stay at home kind of girl, said to me: "I don't want to have a crazy night out, but it would be really lame if we didn't leave the hostel tonight." Fair enough. So we left the hostel around 22:00 and started walking toward Las Ramblas again, Rough Guide in hand, in search of a cheap drink. Basically we let ourselves get pretty lost in the Barri Gotic, but felt very safe the whole time as we kept passing pockets of young locals out for some good fun and there were lots of well-lit areas where we could stop and check our map, etc. In all I was pleasantly surprised with how secure we felt walking around late at night in a strange city.

After over an hour of poking our heads into random side streets and generally going in the same direction, we found ourselves sort of making a giant circle, which was good because we knew where we were. We also ran into a bar not listed anywhere in our book or online called tres floras serving 2 euro beers and 3.50 mojitos. Sold. We went in and it was a small place with interesting decor and a very pretty bar tender. We ordered a drink each and sat down near a poker game. It was noisy and crowded but had a friendly atmosphere. I really enjoyed just people watching and catching up with my old roommate whom I hadn't seen for over a week (and, for me, 3 countries ago). My beer was something local on tap, pretty yummy, and Sam's mojito was really good for being so cheap. If we don't get any bright ideas for other places to hang out at night I can definitely see us going back there.

We got back to the hostel a bit after 01:00 and hit the hay hard. This morning we let ourselves sleep in and then Sam realized she needed clothes and wanted to go to the Mango Outlet. I'm poor and still exhausted from travel so I'm hanging out in the hostel until she gets back. Then we have plans to hike Montjuic. It's a bit cloudy today so not great for the beach, so we figured it would be nice for a hike and seeing the city from above, plus Montjuic is home to some old Jewish structures (maybe even a neighborhood, not sure) and leftover buildings and gardens from the Olympics. Should be fun.