Barcelona!

Before it gets too cold some of the girls and I decided to take a weekend, which grew into 6 days, to Barcelona. I was in charge of accommodation, and there was a bit of panic when 2 places took a deposit from me and then rang to say the apartment wasn't actually available and they didn't have anywhere else suitable. But at the last minute I found an apartment in the gothic quarter which sleeps 8, very close to the action. It was cheap even split between the four of us: Milli, Alice, Emily and I. The flight only took an hour and we then we were in Spain! There was time to kill before we could check in so we grabbed lunch on La Rambla, the main drag of Barcelona. A nice waiter helped us with our Spanish while we had our first Sangria. As soon as we got into the apartment, with its 6 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms we messaged everyone we knew and some of our American friends booked flights to meet us on Saturday (Patrick, Jared, and Carla). Since the sun was shining and the weather forecast wasn't great we decided to unwind at Barceloneta beach. Perhaps not as good as my favourite Greek beaches, but still very refreshing, and in Greece you don't have people walking around selling mojitos.


That evening I introduced the girls to Maoz for dinner. It is a chain of falafel stores that are al over Europe, where you get your falafel in a bowl or pita and then there's an all-you-can-eat salad bar mmmmmm...... We wandered around trying a bar that was "vibe" as Alice would describe it. We picked one, and soon after sitting down and ordering our Sangria we discovered it was a combination of Spaniards and French-speakers. The guy sitting next to me was Japanese, had learnt English and Spanish and had was working in Barcelona so had picked up Catalan and had started doing business trips to France so his spoken French was excellent! The bar tender was nice and drew us a little map of the area with some good bars on it.

Next morning we wandered around the Barri Gotic, checking out the Catedral and Placa del Rei. Then Milli set us in the direction of La Ribera where we checked out some very trendy boutiques and second-hand stores before stopping for a coffee at Lilipep, a very cute café with couches and books and beautiful customers. More wandering ensued and we came to the Mercat de Santa Caterina, which is a massive under cover market. In the building was a wine bar with tapas, and a few samples tied us over until dinner. We had walked passed a restaurant in Placa Reial the day before with a huge queue and decided to give it go. Armed with our aperitifs and umbrellas, since it was raining, we waited in the line which created quite a buzz and got steadily longer and longer. At about 8.30 they start seating everyone for dinner, and it was actually really good! We had our doubts considering the number of tourists around us, but the food was good and cheap enough that we felt we could treat ourselves to desert. For after-dinner drinks we ended up in a bar near the apartment on Placa de George Orwell, and there we met Ricard! A young Catalan taking time off form uni, he seems to just go from bar to bar every night meeting up with friends and acquaintances and wiling away the hours. It was good luck we ran into him because he took us to some excellent bars that night. First was Nevermind where Emily and I enjoyed mojitos and chatted to some Australian boys (both from the mines in WA), and all of us went on to Sugar where we met a group of Brits. Still with the aussies in tow we stopped at Ricard's and met one of his friends who was busy mixing music and then I called it a night!

It was a good thing I didn't go on too late since I was the designated one to meet the Americans next morning, and their flight got in just before 8am. I showed them around the Barri Gotic and we got breakfast before returning to the apartment and banging around to wake the girls up. When we finally managed to rouse them we headed to the Mercat de la Boqueria on La Rambla for fuel, since they have row upon row of fresh fruit/ fruit-juice places. Then we continued down the street to Placa Catalunya and on to Passeig de Gracia to marvel at some of Gaudi's architecture. By the time we'd walked to the end of the Passeig everyone bailed to take a siesta except Milli, Carla and I who refuelled at a nearby café (there are photos of Milli's iced chocolate on Facebook), and then queued to see Gaudi's La Pedrera. There is a museum about Gaudi and his work, an apartment decorated in early 20th century style and the rooftop with all its bizarre grey-stone chimneys. In the museum Milli befriended a few Italians, which only served to confuse the small amount of Spanish I'd managed to learn so far. That evening we had a paella party (except it wasn't really paella since we were too late getting back to go to the markets to get seafood and we didn't actually have a paella, the thing you cook it in). It went down a treat and Ricard introduced us to Don Simon the original pre-mix sangria at 70c a carton. There was more reason to celebrate come midnight because Carla turned 22! after singing Happy Birthday and making many jokes about her age, we all headed out to meet the Italians and Emily's Swiss friend. Unfortunately most of the clubs had cover charges, and we weren't keen to pay so after bar-hopping until 3 we all hit the sack, so early for Barcelona!


We split into two groups on Sunday and the aussies went for a day trip to the Monestir de Montserrat. The Benedictine monastery, founded in 1025, sits on the side of a spectacular mountain. As well as having a beautiful chapel and a museum, there are a series of walking paths up and down the mountain, or you can opt for the two funiculars. It just so happened that there was some kind of race day and so there were people wearing serious walking gear and matching bright yellow jerseys arriving at intervals to be greeted by friends and family and a massive BBQ lunch. The first thing we did was have lunch and get maps &c... to find out what we should do with our day. It wasn't a great start to the day when the girls accidentally put sweetener on their chips instead of salt, but we got ice cream which seemed to cheer everyone up. We opted for the easy walk down the path to the Holy Cave, where the Black Mary was discovered and a chapel built around it. The path is decorated with depictions of the mysteries of Christ and the Virgin Mary. We took the funicular back up and then as the sun started to set Milli and I went for a quick trip up the second funicular for some amazing views before it was home time. To continue Carla's birthday celebrations she picked a Tapas restaurant for us to have dinner before going out. This is the night we discovered a amazing mojito bar where you pick the fruit you want your mojito to be made with (Emily and I went for strawberry, while Patrick went for the traditional lime).

Not everyone was as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as Carla, Alice and I who went out and left everyone else to sleep in. We had wanted to go the Picasso museum but it turns out not much is open on Monday in Barcelona. Instead we wandered around the very trendy El Raval district and Alice and I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art which has a huge collection of art from around the world and had 3 temporary expositions on as well. We met the others for lunch and took them to a café we'd walked passed earlier near the school of arts. We ate and admired all the beautiful arts students and then split up for some general meandering. Alice, Milli and I may have spent about an hour (or possibly longer?) in the shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art. We stopped by the Mercat on the way home to get some stuff for dinner and found Carla was keen to go to Park Guëll for sunset, which would have been nice had it not started pouring rain. The rest us convinced her that it wasn't worth getting drenched and instead we all went for a drink downstairs. In the end we just spent the night in the apartment talking politics and swapping stories (mostly Patrick told us stories and we laughed) and making fun of Carla's quotable moments.

The Americans had an earlier flight in the morning so we bid our goodbyes and shortly after checked out and headed to the Picasso museum. This time we'd checked opening times and put our bags in lockers while we had a look around. It was smaller than I expect with mainly Picasso's minor works, but it made for an interesting view of his career since most of the collection was laid out in chronological order, and another part was the private collection of his friend and personal assisstant, Jaume Sabartés. We had a quick lunch at Lilipep before heading for Barcelona airport and now it's back to uni.