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Wow, Barcelona was so wonderful. Truth be told we haven't had any time to write because we've been having too much fun. To start we decided to nix Costa Brava because everyone told us that Lloret del Mar was a big sleazy resort town that was overcrowded and dirty, the second reason being that there was no easy way to get there that didn't involve changing transportation at least once. Once we got to Barcelona and checked into our hostel we really wanted to stay. The hostel was very cute; bright colors clean and comfortable; and the staff was very friendly. There was a really good mix of people there, no one was there just to drink and party. We fell in with a nice clique of people all interested in experiencing the culture and having some company. A couple of the girls were seasoned travellers. One had been world travelling for a year, living and working wherever she landed. It was inspiring. So we weren't alone in the big city, it felt safer.
We went to a lovely little beach town called Sitges, which is like the Cape Cod of Spain. We met a girl, Shelly, at breakfast one
Tapas
or Pinxos in Catalan morning and she joined us for the day. It had beautiful little beaches divided by stone pilings, little avenues along the beach with cafes and seafood restaurants and chaotic colorful little streets with shops selling all manner of things from beachwear to art pieces. We sunned ourselves then rented a paddle boat with a slide and heaved out into the Mediterranean past the breakers. It was a little bit dizzying climbing up a 10 foot ladder that starts 3 feet above the water, all the while the boat is heaving side to side with the waves. But it is all worth it to sit at the top and view the whole spanish coast for miles with the little people milling on the beach like ants, then slide down into the cool crystal clear water. Just before I slid down, at one point, I spotted a Jelly Fish blobbing around below us, quite beautiful but unnerving. After we had too much sun we stopped at the first restaurant we saw and had a seafood dinner and Sangria made with Cava, a kind of Champagne, which is a Catalan Specialty.
The next day Miranda and I went to see a Flamenco
Show in the old medieval town of the Parc Montjuic. It was in Tablao de Carmen, a famous Flamenco House, that was a tiny little place with the stage 10 feet from our table. The dancing was passionate and intense, Miranda had never seen anything like it before. The dancers and the music competed with each other, the guitar would challenge the dancer with a faster tempo, or the dancer would keep the singers on the edge of their chairs watching her feet. The guitarrist played so fast you couldn't see his fingers. We walked back down the big mountain to our hostel and had an Estrella beer, my new favorite.
Another night, we went to a whole in the wall Sangria Bar called L'Ovella Negra or The Black Sheep. Lo gave us a recommendation and we found it. Its off the main drag Las Ramblas in a little neighborhood called El Raval. The narrow windy streets open into little palm tree squares where laughter and music float out of the bars. This place looked like a wine cellar inside, wood beams holding up the curved plastered stone ceilings. The place was packed with travellers and catalanians elbow to
elbow all swilling from big pichers of sangria. We met a guy at the end of our table who told us about his plot to teach others how to be cool. The sangria was cold and delicious and went down very easily. We walked the 4 kilometers back to our hostel.
The Last day we met our friends in the Parc MontJuic for an outdoor movie. Before we lined up, we checked out the Miro Museum, which housed quite alot of his work including sculpture, and fabric and tapetry pieces. Amazing. He used his own pictoral language to try to communicate. Some of his frequent symbols were birds, planets, stars and other heavenly bodies, women. His work is so peaceful and optimistic. At the top balcony of the museum we were inspired to make our own shadow sculptures, after viewing his work. After, we line up with about 5000 young hip barcelonians (this was the place to be on a Fri night apparently) at the castle on the top of the Pak. We got a nice spot inside the castle walls in the center of the lawn about 25 feet back from the screen. They had a live band
The Little Details
Barcelona is Such an Artist's City as it got dark, a jazz fusion band that blended traditional accordian music with electric intruments. (Miranda called it modern polka). We celebrated our last night with our friends with a bottle of Cava, delicious! Once it got dark we saw a sweet sad Irish Movie called "Once" with terrible spanish subtitles; the translation was way off, but people still laughed at the jokes
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anonymous
non-member comment
What does it look like?
a sea anemonea... or that eye ball thing from The Navigator