Our first experience in Barcelona was getting lost in it, which is as good of a way as any to see a city, I suppose. We picked a random bus to take us into the city from the airport and got off at a random stop. The random stop turned out to be quite close to our hotel - or so we thought. It took about 20 minutes of circling the area before Jon realized that the park we were near was not actually the park our hotel was close to. Fortunately, the correct park was only a 15 minute walk away, so we set off in the proper direction and arrived shortly afterwards. The park featured a large citadel, which was cool, but it turned out that, once again, Google Maps was wrong and our hotel was not where we thought it would be, which was less cool. I sat on the lawn and guarded the bags while Jon went on a hotel-finding expedition. It was a long time before he came back, but when he finally returned he had found both the hotel and a place where we could get paella for dinner. I waited outside the hotel while Jon checked in with both of our bags, because we'd only booked a room for 1 person. We'd had a hard time finding accommodations in the location we needed to be in (chosen because it was close to the venue for the Barcelona Music Conference, the reason we came to Spain in the first place), and the cost for a double room was significantly higher than the cost of a single, so we figured we'd just book a single and sneak me in.
The plan went off without a hitch. Jon met me back outside after dropping our bags in the room and we went out for dinner to give the hotel employees time to forget who Jon was and what room he was in. We went a short way up the street before settling on a surprisingly well-priced restaurant with seafood paella. The food took forever to be ready and service was slow - which is a very serious crime when your customers are impatient "New Yorkers" (term used loosely in my case, of course) with gurgling stomachs - but it turned out to be delicious once it arrived. It was the perfect introduction to Spain.
We returned home directly after dinner and had a quiet night in because Jon had work to do and it was unlikely that it was going to get done during the two days of the music conference! It took us ages to find breakfast the next day, because restaurants were few and far between in our part of town. When we finally found one, we made the important discoveries that:
- Service is slow everywhere in Spain, which I suppose should not come as much of a surprise when you consider that the country has an official naptime. It is not the most energetic of nations.
- Spanish restaurants are all run by Asians. Go figure.
- Everything in Spain comes with a fried egg and enough salt to kill a field full of snails.
After breakfast we - you guessed it! - worked all afternoon, breaking only for a brief time to find somewhere to print our tickets for the concert. It ended up being a bit of a hike, but it gave us an opportunity to see the city that we probably would not have had otherwise. The highlight was a park with the "Arc de Triomf." Who knew that Spain has one as well?! Other than that, I found the city to be disappointingly bland, though I rather suspect that that's because we were in a boring part of town, and not because Barcelona is a generally unattractive city.
I did my best to look festive for the concert, but most of my fun and costume-y clothing is back in New York. I did manage to dig up a few colorful sartorial accents, however, and doused myself in glitter, which I never travel without. I also put together a really cool eye makeup look (8 colors total, I believe!), but the lighting was bad so I wasn't able to get a good picture of it. The concert was within walking distance, so we grabbed a drink for the journey (to avoid paying for absurdly priced concert beverages) and set off.
Just before we arrived, we realized that neither one of us had remembered the tickets. *facepalm* What a rookie mistake. We tried to see if there was a will call service we could pick them up from, but there was not. The people helping us tried their best to get us in, but said that the only option was giving them our email addresses and the passwords to the accounts so they could look our tickets up. Yeah right. So we trekked back home, grabbed the tickets, and hurried back (thank God we lived close!).
As we were walking to the back of the long line, one of the men who had helped us earlier spotted us and waved us over. He then proceeded to lift the velvet rope and usher us into the VIP line, before tapping the bouncer on the shoulder and telling him to let us in right away. Apparently being late and somewhat incompetent sometimes has its perks. :)
The venue turned out to be quite small (about 2,000 people according to the man who let us jump the line), so we got to see the DJs in a much more intimate setting than we usually do. We caught part of Eric Prydz's set, which was actually pretty awesome, and then it was time for our personal favorite: Armin van Buuren. His set was also awesome...but then again his sets are always awesome, and that's why that was the 4th or 5th time I'd seen him! Marcus Schultz followed, but we were so exhausted from hours of bouncing around and fighting for space in the pit that we left as he was getting started. The exit put you right on the beach, so we took a quick stroll through the sand before passing what I think was the first real fist fight I have witnessed and heading home.
The next day we grabbed a quick breakfast (at a restaurant run by Asian people - surprise, surprise!) and then went back to the beach to enjoy it by daylight. It was BEAUTIFUL. I think the Mediterranean and I are well-suited for each other. We spent some time enjoying the sun and sand and playing around in the water, and then went in search of a quick beachside refreshment because it was HOT out there! En route, we made another important discovery about Spain: people roam around the beach giving massages. That is most definitely my kind of beach! I didn't have a swimsuit on, sadly, and though you can legally be nude anywhere in Barcelona, modesty got the better of me. My waterfront massage will just have to be on my next trip to Spain, I guess! :) My waterfront drink, however, came just after the massage discovery and was delicious - a capifresa, which was basically a caipirinha with muddled strawberries. It was the perfect summer refreshment.
After more work, a little Spanish wine, and a short nap on Jon's part, we decided it was time for more paella. We returned to the place where we had eaten the first night, but ended up deciding on fideua - a traditional dish that's basically seafood paella but with noodles instead of rice - instead. We only had an hour or so between dinner and needing to leave for the concert, but I was desperately in need of sleep since insomnia was still keeping me up at night and had prevented me from participating in the nap mentioned above. I fell asleep thinking it was just going to be a nap, but when I woke up I was covered in mosquito bites and - blerg - my stomach felt awful. I laid awake for a while - deep breaths, deeeeeeeep breaths - but there was no avoiding it. I dragged my broken self to the bathroom and...well...you can probably guess what happened to my dinner. I dozed in the bathroom briefly, because the sound of water running in the sink was oddly soothing (sorry conservationists!), before deciding that the contents of my stomach were stable enough to return to bed. No concert for me, as you can probably guess. Jon, who mysteriously felt fine, despite the fact that we had eaten exactly the same things all day long, decided that staying in with his sick gf was preferable to going to the concert (in spite of her insistence otherwise!). He is clearly delusional.
Not exactly how I wanted to spend my last day in Spain, but *shrug*. I guess things can't go my way all the time. I survived, and in the morning I felt fine and it was time to go to Poland.
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