Mood:
blueI went to Barcelona last weekend with a kiwi girl and irish lad. Only took us 14 hours (jayzus) of travelling. Sucks when you're flight is at 10 and the only bus to Dublin that will make it in time for your flight leaves at 215 in the morning. Of course I was running on 4 hours sleep from the partying the night before. Life is rough!
Eventually we made all the transfers (bus to flight to bus to metro to walking around lost) and found our hostel off La Rambla. La Rambla is the main tourist spot. It's basically a really long road filled with street performers, shops, and at night loads of drunk people and hookers. Haha. Barcelona really is a city that operates 24 hours a day.
The first night we stayed in the Ideal Youth Hostel which really did live up to its name (other than the fact that you have to pay additional fees for your sheets, blankets, and pillows). Livy, the kiwi, and I stayed with 12 guys in a mixed style dorm room. We met three french canadians who were really fun. They invited us to drink with them but we had to be meeting Paul, the Irish lad, and Livy's ex boyfriend.
Finding Paul was great fun since he let his PA book a hotel for him, but she booked the wrong branch and he was stuck 30 km outside of town. Talk about a long taxi ride. He ended up having to pay ?30 to get into Barcelona (about $36 I think). Seemed he was having trouble explaining McDonald's to the Spanish taxi driver who didn't understand a word of English. Livy and I were waited outside the golden arches so he could find us easily. After attempting to sing Buh-dah dah dah dah 'I'm lovin' it,' to the senor and getting no response save a string of incomprehensable spanish he decided to ring us. At which point I had to go find any spanish speaker to give directions to the taxi driver. So, I grabbed a McDonald's worker (who also didn't understand english) and said en espagnol por favor-the only thing i could think of saying. She dashed off to the back with our mobile phone but luckily came back saying outside in spanish. We took this as our cue to try and find Paul outside. After waiting out in thug central for a bit longer we found him. We dubbed the area outside McDonald's thug central because it was all boys from 15-20 dressed in baggy clothes, wearing bling, speaking spanish and trying to pick up women. Not the best place for two lady tourists to be standing, but we made it out with minimal comments and jeering.
Later we found ourselves at an Aussie pub (which became our fav hangout for the weekend). It was complete with crocodile & kangaroo nostalgia as well as a drunken Aussie stag party (equivalent to a bachelor party). The stag was dressed in speedos and some sort of plastic shirt with wife watcher written on the back. Very disturbing if you ask me. Later we wandered down the main pub street off La Rambla which happened to have one Irish pub after another. How is it that we leave Ireland only to find more Irish pubs? Anyway we had plenty of fun and chatted with some nice Argentinian fellas who happened to also be staying in our hostel. After we found the club where the Spanish mafia operate. I swear we were the only ones with pale skin there, needless to say we got a few questioning looks and left the place fairly quickly.
On day 2 we changed hostels in the hot sun with monsterous vodka hangovers (ugh!). Nothing like a 30 min walk with luggage and pounding heads. But our new hostel, The Centric Point, was gorgeous! We had a fifth floor room with a balcony overlooking one of the many beautiful spanish streets. Just around the corner was one of Gaudi's beautiful architectural creations. He has the most interesting style, so fairytale-like. It for some reason fits in with the city giving it a very unique feel. Then, we took a bus tour to see all of the major sites in the city. Livy and Paul said it was great, but I fell asleep... Maybe coming in around 4 isn't the best idea when you have a day of tourism ahead of you.
That night we drank at the hostel bar where we chatted with Marios (my Italian/Romanian bartender friend woo woo!) and two crazy Aussies. Around 1230 we finally made it down to the Aussie bar again where we met a group of Dubliners and two Americans. One of the Americans was a hulking giant of a man from the OC complete with bleach blond hair who plays water polo, nationally, I believe. We found a slighty better club this night with our group of 7 by the time we got there, but it was not as busy as we’d hoped being a Sunday night. There were still plenty of people (which suited all of us, save the 2 yanks). The music was a bit odd, being mostly 50’s-90’s music upstairs like ‘do the twist,’ and ‘girl’s just want to have fun.’ While hip-hop and rap blared downstairs with a room full of Africans. I eventually got Livy to dance with me downstairs since I love hip-hop music, but she was a bit put-off when a giant African dude tried to grind up on her. Haha. She grabbed me and made me go bounce around upstairs. The Yanks at this point were bored to death with the odd collection of music and people and wanted us to head to another club on the beach. Unfortunately I was the only one keen to go and they got the shaft. Mr. Waterpolo was severely disappointed that I wouldn’t go with him to be sure but ya can’t please everyone. Haha. We ended up staying with the Irish lads who were just visiting for a couple days before heading to Andorra for a ski trip. It turns out they had a huge group going but all but 2 backed out so they had an entire apartment to themselves. They tried to convince the 3 of us to head up with them and stay for free, but sadly we all had to be back for work in a couple days L. We had a good time dancing with all different nationalities, Irish, Americans, Italians, Spainards and it’s really funny when you see how different they all are.
Day 3-Save the best for last!
On day 3 we toured on the bus once again, but this time I managed to stay awake the entire time. Unfortunately pretty much all of the museums are closed on Sunday and Monday so the bus tour was our only way to see things, but still we packed a lot in. We also made it to the sea, which was gorgeous. I miss being around water that is such a rich beautiful blue colour. Unfortunately, the water in Galway is typically a nasty stormy grey colour, which reflects our weather patterns. Livy and I spent a bit of time collecting the pretty little shells in all different pinks, blues, and oranges, until Paul got bored and so hungry he couldn’t stop winging (how they say whining over here, pronounced win-jing). After that it was back to the hostel for a nap before we went out again.
Dinner was fantastic. We ate in the lounge of our hostel where one of our hostel roomies, a man from Mexico City made us Quesadillas with ham, cheese, refried beans, and peppers. Mmm mmm. After that we joined our Aussie friends from the night before at the bar with Marios who kindly supplied us with free flaming shots and drink nearly all night. We had a great time making fun of all the typical stereotypes of our different countries. This was mostly brought on by the fact that Aussies and Kiwis love to slag (make fun) of each other non-stop. But of course you can’t avoid making fun of how unintelligent Americans, thanks Mr. President and the media. It can be difficult to watch every little thing you say. The Aussies decided to name Paul ‘Declan’ since that was the only authentic Irish name they could think of. We all eventually started to call him that and I think I’m not going to switch back.
Finally we heading down to the Aussie bar again cause the Aussies hadn’t actually been there yet. Marios was very sad cause he couldn’t join us as he had to work, but it was time to move along. On the way I decided to give them a good laugh (accidentally of course). I was walking ahead of the others with Tim, one of the Aussies and for some reason stopped in the middle of the intersection. A Spanish opportunist saw this and honked from way back, scaring the bejayzus out of me. Then, as the Spaniard drove by he waved to my friends and laughed, causing them to all roll on the ground with laughter. At each proceeding cross walk Tim would grab me and say ‘The man is Red!’ (our little saying for the crosswalk signs) and not let me cross regardless of whether it was red or green, making everyone laugh all over again. Needless to say, it was quite a long walk to the pub.
The Aussie pub was great fun again. I made friends with a bunch of English marathon runners and some fellas from Leeds. They have very thick accents. One of the lads was dubbed my Leeds boyfriend. Haha, his friend who didn’t have any front teeth found this very entertaining and yelled out there’s your Yank every time I passed by. At this pub our group grew yet again as I made friends with a group of girls we later found out were from our hostel and told them all to come sit with us. As the Aussie pub closed we had a group of 12 or so moving along to a nightclub, which included so many different European and North Americans that I can’t even remember all the nationalities. In the end, we went to some nightclub, which was in a wine cellar type room and playing some sort of metal. Again, it was an odd collection of people, but this time they were head banging and socializing alternately. Livy and Paul left me with all my new found friends, but we had a great time dancing around and making fun of each other. It was probably my favourite night of our trip.