A Quick Visit to Barcelona

Sunday morning we flew out of Milan and landed in Barcelona, instead of taking an immediate connecting flight back to Granada though, Taco and I decided to have a little day trip in Barcelona and take an evening flight back instead. A shuttle bus from airport dropped us somewhere around the centre of town, we wandered around the area for a few minutes and then headed into the nearest café to grab some much needed coffee. It was only about 8:30am by that point so needless to say we were tired as hell. I went to order two cafe con leche (coffee with steamed milk) and ended up ordering it in Italian, apparently my brain was having a problem converting back into Spanish after a weekend of speaking mostly in Italian, oops. The guy looked at my really weirdly for a moment then raised two fingers and repeated "due?" I then immediately corrected myself by saying, "dos! lo siento.." while mentally face-palming myself. stupid brain. I was looking at the menu to see what kinda food/pastry things they had there and at first I was so confused, I know I was tired but the menu didn't look like any language I recognized...and then 'click' my brain realized it was in Catalan, there was Spanish as well but it was the secondary language, so strange. Barcelona and the Catalan province are quite interesting, it's seriously like a whole different world/language, pretty much like Quebec, separation issues and all. Catalan is definitely an odd language, especially on paper, there's a lot of x's in it, like they spell chocolate 'xocolate'..so weird. 

Two coffees later I was starting to feel semi-alive again. It was kinda nice drinking actual coffee again because in Italy we only drank espressos, mind you they were amazing espressos but those were gone in two or tree sips and sometimes it's nice actually drinking an actual cup of coffee, ya know? CapeGirl came and met up with us in the café because she's studying there for the year and promised to be our tour guide for the day. We headed over to her apartment to drop off all our travel stuff before exploring the city, passing through some pretty parks and side streets on our way there. She lives in a nice, modern apartment in a really central location in Barcelona, it was pretty sweet not gunna lie. 

Let the exploring begin! I really did like Barcelona, it was a beautiful city, lots of nice park areas, and beautiful architecture, it reminded me a lot of Paris to be honest. Plus it's right on the ocean so the beaches and marinas there are pretty amazing. It's a very diverse city, there's parks and greenery but then there's also a lot of small side streets and old architecture which contrasts the really commercial and modernized areas near the beach and centre of town. It's quite an interesting place. Definitely more modern than Granada, more green too. CapeGirl took us around to a bunch of the kool parts of town; the boardwalk near the beach, one of the big streets with all the touristy markets and things like that, we walked past some of the famous Gaudi buildings, etc. 

This is going to sound lame and ridiculous and whatever but the best part of the Barcelona trip, besides getting to chill with CapeGirl, was lunch. I had been craving sushi for so long and let's face it, Granada and Milan aren't exactly the best places to find good, fresh sushi, at least Barcelona is on the ocean and has a pretty good asian population. Because it was Sunday, apparently all the sushi restaurants were only open from 1pm-4pm, which was fine although by noon we were already starving, so we just wandered through the city until 1pm and then headed over to a Japanese place we had looked up online that had gotten good reviews and seemed to have a good lunch deal. When we got there the place was just starting to be set up, we asked if we could sit but the frustrated-looking woman started saying to us ' abierto a la una..a la una' we looked at her confused, checked our phones which said 1:03pm and then told her it was already 1pm, she then proceeded to tell us that they were going to be open at 2pm, not 1pm, so we just gave up and left, typical Spain life. We went to another place that was only a few blocks away, it was a bit more expensive but it was an all you can eat deal and it was greattttt. There was a ton of freshly made maki rolls, sashimi, nigri, tempura, other fried foods, rice dishes, noodles, salad bar, build-you-own-wok-dish, etc. I only have one thing to say about it, Satisfaction. 

If the sushi lunch wasn't vancouver-esque enough, we went and got Starbucks afterwards and got a grande vanilla latte. Yep that's right, on my visit to Barcelona I had sushi and Starbucks... how North American of me..yada yada yada.. I was craving them both so much okay! The last good sushi I had was in Vancouver this past JUNE and the last time I saw a Starbucks was in London on my way here to Granada. The sushi and the Starbucks were like small pieces of home <3. 

Anyways, after being all North American, we continued our venturing through the city and went to go check out the new and older cathedrals and some of the older parts of town. A lot of the main city was very modern and Paris-esque but the older parts of the city were much more old-world Europe, I loved that area of town. Lots of buildings made of stone and metal work that was pretty and detailed. We spent the remainder of our timme wandering around in that area but eventually we had to head back to CapeGirl's apartment to grab our stuff and head for the airport. It was a really great day of exploring, and guilty pleasures aha plus spending time with CapeGirl was great as always. 

Finally we got back to Granada and of course it was raining hard core when we landed, what else is new. A shuttle bus dropped us off in my neighbourhood and then I had the lovely 20mins hike up to my house in the pouring rain. so fun. I pretty much passed out once I got home, surprise surprise. 

Was definitely a great weekend. A very long weekend, but a great one for sure.

Nov. 11