I hate that saying….not sure why I used it.

Ok…12 hour journey that turned into an adventure. Spain is on strike now….seems to be a trickle effect…so we had to jump off a few trains and figure out others ways to travel. We met an awesome couple named Ezra and Derrick from Singapore who shared two bottles of vino with us. The couple was celebrating Ezra’s 60th birthday. I hope Peter and I are like Ezra and Derrick when we are 60. One thing about trains you meet so many people.

Arrival in Barcelona…ate, explored…slept. Well…we tried too. Our hotel has paper thin walls and it’s right on a noisy street.

Day 1….
Barcelona has a street called the Ramblas…this is equivalent to any major tourist street/market in any city (like the French market in New Orleans, or Pike Place in Seattle), but with some exciting twists. They have a ton of interesting performers that come to life if you pay them (of course). Also, there are tons of flower shops and pet stores. They sell everything from small turkeys (game hens I think they are called…not sure), pigeons, ferrets, fish, turtles, chickens, ducks, roosters, bunnies, some weird jumpy creatures that looked like Peter’s mom (heehee). Parrots….hamsters. Basically if you brought any small kid by this market, they would want everything. Although I think some of the pets are sold as food…seriously.

We spent most of the day walking around exploring. We mainly stayed close to the beaches….ahhh. We also checked out the casino….they made a picture of us, scanned our passports and made us sign something. Lots of security for a not so great casino.

We also tried a ton of tapas….our favorite was called the bomb which consisted of meat and bread….imagine a hush puppy, with meat and special hot sauce….it was yummy. We also had fried crawfish, but it still had it’s head on.,,,hmm, but it was yummy. The other tapas were pretty normal…meat on a stick etc.

Peter will now talk about day two…

Well thanks Eli, continuing on…

Barcelona is a medium sized city (1.5 million if I remember correctly), so it’s quite spaced out…. With this in mind we decided to take one of the hop-on, hop-off buses to try and see more of the city in a shorter time span. Bad idea. We wait 15 minutes to buy a ticket, then we waited 45 minutes just to get on a bus, but then, when we’re finally about to get on the next bus, none show up for 5 minutes….10 minutes…15…20…then we see the reason… A protest is coming and blocking all traffic (a protest against transportation)… Excellent. So, we are shuffled off to the next stop (a 15 minute walk) where we wait another 20 minutes to get on a bus…. Sigh. After all this waiting, we make our way around the city up to see the old grounds from the 1992 Olympics that were held here. O… that reminds me, EVERY place we go, they are working on the major buildings (painting, restoring, etc…) so we end up looking at half the building under scaffolds, which, aren’t very visually appealing. I guess coming in the off-season has some consequences. Sorry for the tangent, umm, Olympic stadium was undergoing some renovation, so we wandered around some more, hopped back on the bus, and headed back to town.

Museum time…

We visited 2 here in Barcelona, the Picasso museum, and the City history museum. Picasso was pretty interesting, many works from his early years and a lot of his work while he was in school. Tired of typing… back to you Eli…

The history museum was also pretty interesting. You take an elevator down into a basement where you find ancient ruins of the city. There you get to walk through the many different histories of the city. You can view a 3d example of how the city once looked and it’s deterioration to its current state.

Now for the food. We decided to eat more tapas which included more bombs and other things that were yummy. I dared Peter to eat a giant jalapeno…but he couldn’t do it. We only had wine as a chaser. Water is more expensive than beer or wine…what are you gonna do?

We decided at the last minute to see a Flamenco show. This was awesome….four dancers, three singers, some clappers and three guitarists….it was a symphony of emotion and sound. The costumes were great and the show made me want to get up and dance. Peter was even ready to dance (heehee). We have some video and will try to post part of the show.

Ok…bedtime….Peter had to put lotion on my bug bites… they keep growing and I keep scratching. I think I may have to go to the doctor.

Departure of Barcelona

Our train left at 9:30am….only problem is there was a hole on the train track. Not sure how that happens, but they stuck us on a bus and sent us to some small town where we took another train. Met a dude named Rupert, who is a travel writer and photographer. He’s going to Madrid to stay in a 5 star hotel and write about it….lucky man.

We made it to Madrid where we missed our next train because of the hole in Barcelona. Also the train people have gone on strike here…so we have to wait 5 hours to take the next train to the town of our destination, Malaga, where we will meet my mom’s friend Marion. She rocks. We won’t be arriving until midnight and we’re not actually staying in Malaga…it’s a small town south of Malaga called Fuengirola. So as of now we are not sure how we will get there. Maybe we’ll hitch hike. Hmmm the adventure of transportation continues.