Once on the train I, with the help of my equally confused Chinese neighbor and her family, figured out where the hell was taking us and where I needed to go. It could not have been more confusing. Have they heard of a little red “You are here” dot? I guess that’s asking too much. Silly American girl. The Chinese family was entertaining – the parents were admiring the elder door so blatantly, and the younger, fatter, uglier sister only got the affection of said older sister. Yes, I picked all that up without understanding a word they were saying.
I was probably a bit of a spectacle making my way through the train station, as I didn’t bother picking up my suitcase to go up and down the endless stair cases. Clang clang clang. Yup. Sorry Mark, your bag might not survive much longer.
I finally got to my hotel – Hotel Barcelona Universal – which was LITERALLY right there was you get off the metro stop. Awesome. The front desk wasn’t particularly friendly, but all my requests were met so I can’t complain too much. Customer service, after all, is an American invention. I unpacked my suits, connected to the internet, and went to SLEEP. I slept till about 4 in the afternoon and then went to explore the neighborhood.
So, while the hotel is in a prime location in proximity to the metro, if you wander even 200 ft away from the hotel, you’re in a pretty shady neighborhood. That first day I walked to Las Ramblas, but in general, its not the best idea. I definitely stood out in my bright shiny rosy cheeked blondness. It’s a personal preference, but it makes me uncomfortable to be in neighborhoods like that alone.
I bought a croissant and a bottle of water as I was starving (thank god, though, for the Luna bars that I brought with me) After, I wandered up and down Las Ramblas looking for an attractive sidewalk café to have a cup of coffee at. Upon approaching the end of Las Ramblas, a young man in a big jacket and a shaved head offered me “sexo gratis” as I was crossing the street. Gee! For free! I thought nothing was free! Oh wait, that’s just in the US. I ended up back at the first café, and ordered my café con leche. The waiter was bored, as it was like 6pm on a Saturday afternoon and apparently that’s not a prime “sit in a café” time. This isn’t Paris, where that’s all people do He gave me a map of the city that was a lot better and more useful than the one I was using.
I strolled down Las Ramblas and made my way into the crazy market where they sell everything from fish to jelly candy. There were some delicious candied nuts that I wanted to buy a small sample of, but my lack of Spanish resulted in my buying a 10 euro bag of dates and nuts…oh well.
That’ll teach me to be more assertive.
I’m sick, so all I really want in life right now is some tea and honey. Most of the small little grocery shops I’d gone into didn’t have honey, so I went to El Corte Ingles in Placa Catalunya and bought myself a gigantic (only size they had) squeeze pot of honey for 5 euro. I then wandered into the first Starbucks I could find, because the concept of decaffeinated tea (as I would later learn at my hotel) doesn’t actually exist in this country. While in line at Starbucks, a young man with lots of curly brown hair started talking to me in Spanish. I gave him an apologetic smile and told him I had no idea what he was saying. Apparently, he wanted to “invite me” for a cup of coffee. The whole process was extremely awkward. After paying for my tea, he said he’d like to sit down with me, but he was already sitting with a friend (why did he invite me??), but then his friend actually got up to go, so I ended up sitting and talking with him for about 20 minutes. His name was Ananda and he was a meditation instructor for a living. Oh yes. We soon ran out of things to talk about so I politely excused myself and went on my way to search for the restaurant I had been told to go to for dinner.
A shady shoe store and a short bus ride later, there I was at Nor Este. I tried not to be put off by the lack of people on the restaurant’s patio (it was, after all, Barcelona’s winter) and went inside. I gave the hostess the card from Ramon (the waiter at the café) like he had said and she excitedly sat me and gave me a menu. Of course, the couple sitting behind me was Russian. I chatted with them, found out what they had ordered (so I would know what NOT to get) and ordered bacon wrapped shrimp for an appetizer and the seafood paella for dinner.
The shrimp was…interesting, but the paella delicious. I ordered the Crema Catalan for dessert – big mistake. It was like an overly sweet, overly runny crème brulee. But I chit chatted with the waiters, practiced my horrendous Spanish, and found out that I could take a bus home, because the metro may be shady at 11pm.
When I got back to my hotel, I was still in desperate need of tea to drink with my huge bottle of honey so I went down to the hotel bar. I ended up meeting a Scottish guy named Austin. Austin was in Barcelona for the umpteenth town because Austin works for a company that builds cremating furnaces. So, naturally, the Barcelona cemetery was quiet a client. He was the commissioning engineer for the furnace they would be putting in. Exciting, eh?
Like I mentioned earlier, they don’t understand the concept of decaf tea, and the waiter looked at my like I was crazy when I asked for “te sin caffeine?” No lady, that ain’t happenin. So I had some hot water with lemon and honey while another English couple joined our conversation. Finally, I popped a Benadryl and was out for the next 12 hours to catch up on the 3 nights of sleep I’d missed out on.
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