Sunday, August 9, 2009

Vamos a Barcelona!

After our nice visit in New York, my mom and I hopped on a plane at JFK and took our flight to Paris. It was TERRIBLE! I didn't sleep even a little bit! I don't know what it was, but man, I didn't sleep at ALL, which made the next day totally hellacious. When we got to Paris, we were on a flight with at least 4 screaming children, and being as I was already exhausted, the flight was much more diffucult. Anyways, we got to Barcelona (although neither Spain nor France stamped my passport, oddly enough), and took a cab to the city. We are staying with a friend of my mom's here who has rented a flat for a month while he takes Spanish classes. His name is Steve, or Foxy. More about him later.

We rested for about an hour and then took a walk down "La Rambla". A rambla is a median or section in the road that separates the cars going in opposite directions, and La Rambla is the grandest of them all, apparently. It's a pedestrain walkway with all sorts of touristy things: Painters, crafts, souvenieers, and street performers. Only, on La Rambla, most of the performers aren't really performers, but just people dressed in elaborate costumes who don't do much at all. There are some who do the living statue kind of thing, but none of them are very convincing, especially since there are so many of them. If I had to do a living statue schtick I would set up camp somewhere where people wouldn't expect me to be, because then I would have a better chance at being convincing. Luckily, I don't have to do that because it seems really uncomfortable and pretty humiliating. There are also all these stalls on La Rambla that sell pets of all different kinds: Paraqueets, chickens, ducks, roosters, guinnea fowl, guinnea pigs, gerbils, hamsters, fish, CHIPMUNKS, turtles - all sorts of things. I'm not quite sure who is going on vacation to buy live animals, but there are an aweful lot of them, so someone must be buying them. And I hope that's true because they are in rather deplorable conditions, and it made me really sad to see all those poor animals in tiny little cages out in the hot sun. It's just not right. My opinion of La Rambla might be a little bit sullied by the fact that I was in a pretty crummy mood by the time we got there, having traveled for 12 hours and not slept for 24, and I had no desire to be smashed together with a bunch of people anymore for the day. On a different day, I might like it more. I'd like to go back and get some photos of the costume people (as depressing as it is) so I can show you all, so I imagine we will be going back there at some point.

After La Rambla we went to dinner with Foxy. He took us to a place called Castro (named after the gay district in San Francisco), and as you would expect it was a gay restaraunt. The food was alright - it had a really floofy, creative looking menu, but the execution was sorely lacking. I sort of expected this was going to be the case and just ordered a salad. The cava sangria was delicious, and although I think it's a bit silly to order sangria at a bar anyways (it's similar to ordering Jungle Juice), this was really tasty. Also, my mom thought that cava was a cactus, which was amusing. We had an alright time, despite being really underdressed (WHICH I HATE!), and the fact that my mom and I were the only two women in the place (and possible on the whole block). Honestly, I don't think I could have been TOO thrilled about anything at that point, and I was glad to get back to the apartment and finally go to sleep.

I have decided that since upload pictures is not really happening that I am going to come back to all these posts once I get home and add pictures so you all can see them. So, check back later! Also, I apologize for the temporary bad spelling - I'm not using firefox which is usually my saving grace. I will update soon with more! The upcoming days are much more exciting, I promise ;) .

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