Barcelona - let the music play

So. Barcelona. At last we meet. We've been looking forward to this trip since our last one ended (Amsterdam – totally forgot to write that one up, will do!) and here it is.

First off, flight was late. Apparently airline trouble turns me into a horrible person, along with all other passengers except Joe. I was angry at everyone for queueing wrong, for being too foreign, too loud, inconsiderate etc. Joe made sure I didn't voice my concerns too loudly. He's pretty good. Anyways, got the flight going eventually, flew to Barcelona, arrived at our hostel (Hotel Transit) at about 10:30ish after picking up our dinner (McDonald's – it was easy and quick) and into our room.

It's a twin, with an ash tray. We booked double, non smoking! Neato. Decided we were too tired to worry and went to bed. Sadly our neighbours did not. German or Russian girls, singing and yelling and screaaaaaming their heads off til well past 12am. There was banging and shouting and echoing until finally the concierge came up and yelled at them. I cannot fathom how people can get this far in life and still not consider that maybe when one is in a hotel with other visitors, that screaming to all hours of the night, let alone Sunday night, is not a kickin rad thing to do. Eventually we got to sleep around 1am, thus ending our first night in Barcelona.

Happily Monday in Espana went better. It was raining ever so slightly, which wasn't so bad but caused very wet feet (manageable) and we wandered up from our hostel towards town. Saw a lovely park with a big sculpture by Joan Miro and palm trees. Then along a very long and busy street with lovely big trees and lots of market stalls selling all sorts. Hit the Placa de Catalunya and wandered down Las Ramblas. These were pretty much just super busy. They're a big long series of pedestrian roads, but they have car lanes down each side so you can't just wander into the shops, you still have to cross traffic. Stopped in a place called Cafe de l'Opera and had super chocolatey drinks with churros, deep fried donut-like things that you dip into the delicious chocolate.

My two years of learning Spanish have vaguely paid off, in that I can ask for a table and get general understandings of what waiters say to us. But I'm wishing I could remember more of it so I could actually hold conversations with people! Oh well.

After delicious chocolate, we wandered through Barri Gotic which is pretty much the oldest part of town, and it's awesome. The streets are big enough for a single vehicle, and cars hardly ever come through so it's mostly just people and cute shops and houses above with balconies, the streets sometimes leading to big squares with churches and restaurants around the edges. Headed down to Place Reial and had the menu del dia (set priced lunch with 2-3 courses) at Taxidermista (I know, what the heck does this mean in Spanish?) . It was really good, was about 10 euros each and we got bread, a drink, and three courses – I had salad, tuna stew, and strawberry ice cream, yum yum! While Joe had mushroom pasta, veal steak and .. a banana. Yes it seems that 'Fruit' on the menu meant a single piece. We laughed and just mixed it into the ice cream and shared.

Wandered around Barri Gotic some more, then headed down to the waterfront and wandered again for a while. Discovered a circus near the port and I managed to book us tickets, which was my first real test with Spanish, as I was able to confirm the different ticket prices and what they entailed, and what time the show started with the ticket operator speaking no English :D Yay me! We had some time before it started so we found a gelato place and pretended to read magazines – mostly we were just guessing and trying to work out what the pictures corresponded to. I think I was reading an article about homosexual military uniforms in Che's Argentina (w t f indeed).

Headed back to the circus and it mostly appeared to be attended by families with oodles of children, which was great. They were very cute, all running around with their strange languaging. We had B tickets, which were the second cheapest and got quite decent seats. The performers were pretty great, Spanish speaking of course but there was a lot of physical humour with the clowns and most of the gags and the like were quite easy to understand. We saw ballerinas doing rope dances (those ones when you hang in the air and spin etc), girls walking up ramps on big red balls, awesome unicycling, jugglers, clowns, one of those bikers on a big floating stage thing (there's a pic somewhere if that's not clear) and some crazy acrobats that appeared to be a middle aged husband and wife, very cute! What made it most appealing though was that the stunts almost all had someone spotting or looking out for the performers, like they had only just got the stunts working and were still unsure. One of the unicyclist's tricks failed and she fell, but we all cheered her and then cheered her even more when she got it right the second time. I don't know, it was nice knowing they had limitations but were trying to do it anyway :)

After the circus, which was great, we wandered back up Las Ramblas, and stopped in a place called Mickeys for a late night dinner/snack. Bad idea – total tourist trap with high priced and low quality tapas. We only got 3 and a drink each and it totalled over 30 euros! Ick. Oh well it was an experience, plus I spotted a neat Spanish singer on the music TV that I want to hear more of, Maria Mena, so there's a silver lining. Headed up to the metro and caught a train back to Tarragona, the station closest to our hostel. Got into our better hostel room and had a good nights sleep...