Day 30: Better late than never - the free tour

---

(Recap back for the 27th. I'm just slow)

Ok, I’m starting to get bad at updating now... tends to happen towards the end of my trips haha.

We went on one of the free tours today – different company this time since our usual doesn’t run here. (Runner Beans today! It was good!) We started in Plaça Reial and heard about the pipe smoking championships and all the pipe smoking that goes on in one of the pipe smoking bars. How quaint.

From there we headed off into the Gothic Quarter (great architecture), but we kind of weaved in and out of areas. We also did the Jewish Quarter (neat seeing the Hebrew inscriptions on some of the old stones). Other than that, it was really the main tourist area/the old town that we walked around.

The age of the city isn’t something I really knew ahead of time – the Old Wall that used to surround Barcelona still stands in some parts of the city. We got to see a part of it, along with part of a roman aqueduct and some of the old towers that still stand in the Old Town. That was a neat sight.

We went to the city hall area where of course there was some sort of demonstration going on – people were all in black and blowing whistles. I never understood the point of demonstrating if you don’t have signs/we have no idea what you’re protesting.

We also heard the beautiful story about their Christmas traditions here – I love it. I love it x100. They have this really creepy log. A log they call the shit log. I kid you not.

Kids feed this log – they put tons of food in front of it in the lead up to Christmas... and a blanket to keep it warm and voila, it poops out the small presents (like a stocking, back home).

BUT WAIT!

Before they get their presents, they whack the log with a stick while singing and the last two lines of the song are: “if you don’t shit well, we will hit you with a stick.”

NOW COME ON! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

But WAIT AGAIN – it gets better. Another huge part of the Christmas tradition and the nativity scene is the shitter. Yes, the shitter. Households around Catalonia have little bonhommes that are squatting (fake poo included in the figurine!) because the poo is supposed to symbolize giving back to the Earth and bring good luck.

I feel our family should be part Catalonian.

(Sidenote: while walking between ‘stops’ there was this great big Basset Hound sleeping in the middle of one of the alleys we were walking down. And he was BIG. Best photo ever haha)

Anyway, to clean things up a bit... ahem.

We also went to the Cathedral – we didn’t have time to go inside (/it’s only free before and after certain times, so we’d come back) but we did go inside the cloister area which is home to 13 geese. (There are 13 of them because Saint Eulalia was 13 when she became a martyr in Barcelona... long story, it’s midnight, too tired to type.) Anyway, the geese were fun to watch and the enclosure is quite beautiful.

We ended at Santa Maria del Mar (big church) – the church is only open after 4:30pm, so after the tour we pretty much just wandered around the Ramblas area and seeing what else there is to see in that main area.

We started our adventure by getting some gelato... and boy was it some amazing gelato (minus the fact it started to melt as soon as we got it haha, just an excuse to eat it quicker!). After that we just headed north and wandered the streets pretty much, taking in the sights and just people-watching. Actually. There was a lot of dog-watching too – there are a crazy amount of dogs here, but actual pet dogs, not street dogs, and they’re all adorable.

Our greatest find was a huge market... time to do some food-explorin’ !! They had a lot of beautiful fruit (oh so many colours!) so I got a nice strawberry and kiwi platter for a euro fifty and went to town – they were really fresh and juicy! Not far down they had some sausage kebabs (... yes!) for a euro so I figured why not? I have no idea what kind of sausages they were – some was pastrami or salami or something, it was one I recognized at least. There was some other one I vaguely recognized too. Another one no idea but tasted great and the other one blood sausage... which I’d never tried and wasn’t as bad as I expected.

Speaking of blood, we spent a lot of time walking around the meat section just to see what they had – and they had pretty much everything. Skinned whole rabbits seem to be a big draw here – eyeballs and all. A lot of chickens with their heads still on, a lot of goat heads with their eyes still in... that kind of thing. A lot of pork and beef legs (hooves still on) and of course all the organs you could ever want! I definitely wanted some chicken and/or cow hearts after our walk about. (I’m not kidding, that stuff is good!) The tripe I don’t find quite as enticing... not going to try that any time soon. They also had a lot of brains floating around... hmm.

We also spent a lot of time in the fish section because that’s just as much fun. We certainly knew everything was fresh – while looking we realized that all the crustaceans were still moving. The crabs were scuttling and clawing; the prawns were flailing all over the place (one guy was on his back and like doing the reverse worm – quite a show!); the lobsters were just creepy as ever. Pretty much all the actual fish still had their heads attached, so a lot of creepy looks from dead fish... I hate their eyes. And there was one fish in particular (merluza? Something like that) that had razor sharp teeth too – just so not appetizing to look at as it stares at you from the ice blocks.

After that we headed back towards Santa Maria del Mar and the Cathedral since entrance was now free. Santa Maria was nice – similar to a lot of other churches I’ve been in. From there we headed up to the Cathedral which is quite grand and gothic. We spent quite a bit of time in there just walking around and taking in the grandiose of each statue for each saint they had.

At the end of our walk-around, I went to get two little candles – every trip, every time I’m at a Cathedral or a particularly nice church I always light them for my grandparents... it really makes me think of them.

Anyway, after that we headed back to the hostel. I do have to give them props for their free dinner – it was a nice pesto pasta salad that actually tasted really good. Free food – you can’t go wrong there!

---