Day 5 - Barcelona
We were a bit nervous about our stay in Barcelona because it was our first experience using AirBnB.com for accommodation. Basically people rent out rooms in their apartments or entire apartments. In this case we rented a room in the apartment where the hosts lived. Luckily the place existed and better yet the hosts were great! Cesar and his boyfriend, Yulien, were very gracious and gave us wonderful recommendations and advice on exploring the city. Their French bull dog, Pierre, was icing on the cake for me aside from his fetish with shoes and sunglasses. Haha. The hosts are from Cuba and lived in America for some time before moving to Barcelona. They both don't have any plans of returning to their former home in South Beach or America in general but according to Yulien if they ever did move to the states he would want to live with the white people in Minnesota. An interesting choice!
Our first day of exploring was great. The apartment located within walking distance to most of everything we wanted to see. We headed straight to the Cathedral on the edge of the Gothic quarter (Barri Gotic). It was beautiful and it didn't cost us any money which was have found to be rare. In the center it had a beautiful courtyard of citrus trees with a small pond with geese. Next we headed to the start of La Rambla, Placa de Catalunya. It was swarmed with ore pigeons than San Marco Piazza in Venice! I have learned in my old age not only do I really dislike pigeons I'm a little afraid of them as well. After some near collisions with these flying daredevils we headed down La Rambla. This is a mob scene filled with an insane amount of tourists and I assume many pickpockets as the pickings of unassuming American, German, and Asian tourists were plenty. The street is lined with shops, street vendors selling every souvenir imaginable and toys that made an annoying sound and street performers. I have to admit that the statue ones were the best I've ever seen. if Brian didn't hold me back I would have joined the throngs of 10 year olds and paid an obscene amount of Euros for a picture with them. I sort of still wish I did :).
From the tone I am sure you gathered this wasn't exactly our scene so we headed straight for the winding, narrowing streets of the the Gothic quarter. We proceeded to get lost in the beauty and awe inspiring fairytale esque of this neighborhood. And I guess we did our fair share of just being lost too. Some how we managed to get ourselves down to our goal destination of the harbor and checked our the Mirdor de Colon. It's a statue honoring Columbus and his discovery of America, however, the funny thing is he is pointing not toward America but across the Mediterranean sea toward Italy and France! They got a little confused. After a long day of site seeing we were ready for a glass of wine and a couch! We ended up chatting with Cesar, Yulien and of course Pierre all night so we had to ditch dinner plans and opted for a kebab instead which come to find out were almost as ubiquitous as tapas restaurants!
We called it a might after the surprise other guests arrived. They were some kids from CA and ended up being pleasant enough but the apartment was very tiny so it ended being a bit cramped.
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