Barcelona

What a city is all I can say, I loved this place, like a lot a lot!!! :p

I really don't know what I was expecting from Spain, I had heard good things but nothing specific to why it was a great place to visit. When I was there I had the same feeling I felt whilst being in Athens, exploring the major archaeological sites and soaking in the history, but somehow Barcelona just feels like it has that bit more to offer.

What history this place has, it is incredible. It is very dark, we learnt of how people were stoned, set alight, had hot oil poured over them etc. if they did not take up the catholic religion or obey the princess Isabel's' rule. The buildings we saw were incredible, most of them designed by Gaudi. Taking the bike tour through town we learnt of how the plague had hit the city several times throughout history and wiped out up to 50% of the population each time. The city back in the day did not have a sewerage system and because of the many tightly packed streets with high rise buildings they experienced poor airflow. Gaudi designed a new section where the buildings were spaced further apart, each intersection is quite large and awkward. The corners of the buidlings are done in 45 degree sections rather than the standard 90, due to this the intersections are square shaped but the roads come off the corners. It is actually interesting to see, just pull out a map and it stands out like a sore thumb as to which section was 'planned'.

Other than the history, the many great sites from Gaudi (more detail in ross's blog) and the city structure, there are many other great points about Barcelona. We visited a market and all I can say is WOW!! Fresh fruit, smoothies / slushies, seafood, meats, deli's, deserts and lollies, just about anything you could want, nestled in amongst the markets were cafés /restaurants cooking the freshest seafood dishes, YUM!!. All through the town there are plenty of places to buy clothes and shoes etc. I really like the clothing stores, I was so tempted to throw all my stuff out and go and buy new gear :p may be next time haha. They have great variety and the everything is just ..wait for it because we use this word a lot.. different.

The night life around Barcelona is also pretty special, it has something else going for it.There are plenty of restaurants and bars, many places selling the well know 'tapas' as well as 'pinxtos'. Interesting enough, tapas was invented by the bartenders here, apparently the story goes they had a problem with beer flies. The bar tenders decided to start serving the beers with something on the side so that the customers had something to cover their beers with. When the 'tapas' was finished the staff would also know that the customer is ready for another beer. We went on a tapas crawl one night and ordered a beer, the smallest size at one of the places was a litre, this went for sangria aswell. I don't know if that is what Oktoberfest is like but you have to get through it fairly quickly or it goes warm. There was a bit frustration between the crew when everyone ordered a drink and we had something like 10 1litre drinks on the table, each costing 15 euro. We argued with the staff but found it easier to just drink up :P.

On the first night we also went on a pub crawl, there was this once bar that was fantastic, inside the building had been decorated like a forest, needless to say the atmosphere was pretty special inside.. I really enjoyed it. After the crawl I decided to head out to a club on the other end of the city by myself. I tried to get a few takers but couldn't find any. There I met up with some girls we had met from the greek islands, girls from quebec, unfortunately for me the girl I had gotten to know well was not with them but the 5 of us had a bloody good time regardless. It was a bit awkward at first turning up to a club out in woop woop being the only English speaking person there. I was definitely uncomfortable until finding the girls. The night finished and we all decided to walk home. Seriously the longest walk of my life and in hindsight I should have taken a cab back because having a few drinks under the belt and walking the main streets of the city at 5:30 in the morning is probably not the safest option.I eventually walked down the main strip - la rambla, just near our accommodation, this stretch was the most interesting. I was approached by at least 10 hookers on a stretch of 100m, one just came up and grabbed my pants and I started to get fairly annoyed with them. Interesting experience and one I'd like to stay away from next time :P.

Saying this after stumbling in, in the morning after the night out, with a kebab loaded with chilli flakes, I was coughing and spluttering as I was walking up the hostel hallway chocking on a chilli flake, I obviously woke ross up and from there had to spill the beans on last nights happenings and my mini adventure :p. From here we decided to wake up the next morning at 5:30am and do the la rambla walk just so he could see how many bloody hookers approach you :p its an odd experience. It was kind of disappointing because we hardly got a bite :p not that we where looking for anything in particular, so he didn't really get to see what I was exposed to the night before. We ended up walking down a shifty street and these two blokes approached us. They started talking jimmberish and making lots of movements with their hands and feet, from here I knew something was up. I started rolling my sleeves up not sure of what was to come, they tried to make a diversion by acting like maniacs so they could pickpocket us. Ross had nothing on him and they soon realised that. I had a camera and an iphone, somehow he knew which pocket to go for and before I knew it he was in my grill with his hand half way in my pocket! I cottoned on quickly and grabbed his wrist, pulled it out and gave him the stink eye. From there they left pretty quickly, not that I'm intimidating, they weren't too aggressive which was lucky, close call. We made our way home at 6am after getting an experience we weren't looking for haha.

We also did a cooking experience, here we were taught how to make seafood paella and sangria!! It was a steamy hot hot little room in the back of a bar, the pan was massive and the smells coming off it were amazing. The food tasted fantastic and the extra strong sangria we made was delicious. I though sangria was just red wine and coke but that infact is kalimoocha (ill check the spelling for this one), sangria has fruit, lemon soft drink, either brandy, white rum or whisky, red wine and may be a couple extras, ill check my notes. It was a great night. Afterwards we hit the bar for 3 euro cocktails (which is never a good idea especially the night before an early flight), from here we were roped into a pub crawl. We ended up with 2 hours sleep before our flight to Ibiza, haha not the greatest idea but at least we got to meet some more greatpeople and experience that little more of this great place called Barcelona.

-Ryan