the beginning of the end

Alright. Refreshed by an hour and half of sleep, I can now recount yesterday's events. And really all the events that have transpired in Barcelona.

After arriving and showering, Alli and I explored Las Ramblas looking for food. We met a testy Turk who said, "What, you don't speak English?" when I couldn't understand what he was asking me. Taken aback, I answered, "No, un poco..." I need to toughen up.

We went to the beach, which was beautiful and exquisitely filthy. It is odd knowing we're along the Meditteranean, while the only large body of water I've dealt with extensively is the Pacific.

That night, we had dinner at a café downstairs from our hostel, and had our first experience of Barcelona's prepackaged food. Essentially, every restaurant purchases Paella and Italian favorites from a company and serves it based on the price of the rest of the restaurant's food, and they advertise this shamelessly. For example, at the café we ate at this first night, a chicken paella sot 7.50€. At the restauarant we ate at the following day for lunch, the exact same dish from the exact same company cost 9.20€.

We happened upon a sexually charged acrobatic street performance on Wednesday night, which was hilarous, and then walked out on a pier that extends into the sea, lined with boats and capped by a huge shopping mall and aquarium.

The next day, we had a late lunch and purchased our train tickets to leave for Verona, and explored this cool park where there is a giant statue of a woolly mammoth, a beautiful fountain, a zoo, several museums, a fountain decorated with devil children attempting to drown one another, and manicured lawns spotted with palm trees. Later on, we went to a jazz club where everyone else looked like an older, Spanish version of my uncle Blaise, save a cute guitar player, and then to a restaurant near the beach where our waiter spoke 7 languages, with plans to learn 3 more in the coming year, and explained to us the wonders of a woman's walk, la chula.

Friday was meant to be our touristy day as we killed the time before our train left. We dropped our bags off at a bus station (the lockers at França were closed down for the summer. Assholes.) and walked to la iglesia de la Sagrada Familia.

I'd say this was the first snag in what became a downward spiral. It cost 8€ to go inside. Alli and I chose to take pictures with a man dressed as Jesús instead, for a grand total of 20 cents.

Then we decide to check out some of the other architecture by Gaudí that is scattered throughout the city. La Petrada, however, also costs 8€. Coincidence, or conspiracy?

Our money was better spent on books in Spanish and lunch at the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory.

With plenty of time to kill, we picked up our bags from the bus stop and decided to have a lovely little read in the cool park. Where two men attempted to relieve us of our belongings. Luckily, Alli apparently has a sixth sense for thievery, since she looked over at a man trying to ease my purse away from the pile of stuff, and then countered with "Do you have a cigarette?" when she asked him what he was doing. The idiot and his accomplice bike away, only to return to attempt to rob the people directly in front of us. It was unnerving (but also hilarious) watching them crabwalk and belly crawl in unison towards a bag just out of its owners sightline. Alli, ever superhero, raced over there to warn the couple of the unwanted visitors and the men collapsed into a pile, pretending to pour over a tourist map.

We left this park for another, but were too paranoid to stay long, since every noise sounded like an attempt on our things. We also developed an antithievery seatbelt devices before setting off in search of internet and getting distracted by the Barcelona hipster shopping scene.

And then we went to França to wait for our train.

Oh, the irony.