Our 2nd day in Barcelona we attempted to head straight to the Sagrada Famillia but when we arrived the line was literally wrapped around the block. It easily would have taken us 2+ hours to wait there. So we decided to postpone our tour there and head to a couple museums instead. The first was the Picasso Museum. We loved it. It was the first museum we have seen that takes you from start to finish of an artist's life. It was really interesting to see the progression in his work from standard, renaissance art and the evolvement into his more famous cubism style. Our next stop was the History of Barcelona Museum. This was built over ruins of the original Roman city. After viewing some artifacts we went to the basement to walk among the ruins. Our audio guide explained to us everything from where people slept to the location of the winery, which interestingly enough the Roman Spaniards drank upwards of over a liter of wine per person per day. I knew there'd was a reason I loved Spain! The museum was very educational but after seeing so many ruins we we ready to get back into the daylight with today's civilization. We meandered thru the small twisting streets in the Gothic quarter until we found ourselves back at the apartment. After showering we headed out for a night on the town Barcelonan style!
As we soon found out, the "like to party" description in our hosts Caesar and Yuniel's airbnb profile was very true. The two told about their typical night which involved having a few drinks at home, heading to dinner around ten, hitting up a bar until three then heading to a club until six. We decided one night that we would give their itinerary a shot. If our forty year old host could handle it three nights a week we could manage for one night we thought.
We made dinner reservations at a restaurant run by a friend of our hosts for 9:30. The place was on the first floor of an old home near barcenoleta, a popular area near the water. The place was tucked away from the touristy spots along the water which we were excited about. The restaurant was quiet that night despite it being a Saturday with only two other parties. The waiter/owner spoke very little English but was able to make some recommendations. In the end we decided on a traditional Spanish dish made up of rice, prawns, mussels, and squid all cooked together in a tomato sauce in a big cast iron skillet. We paired it with a bottle of white wine and it turned out to be one of our best meals yet. At the end of dinner, the waiter brought out a bottle of milky looking liquer that had a nice coffee taste.
After dinner we started to seek out an area with some small bars we had passed earlier. After wandering for half hour or so we decided to just stop at a place with a picture of the jackson five in the window. A very efficient employee was shuffling people in and found us a seat right away. We had a couple of beers then snuck out to a mojito bar. Although mojitos are not really Spanish drinks as we were reminded they were made very well here. We sat and chatted among many locals until the place closed down around two.
Until this point we weren't sure if we would make it to a club but we caught our second wind with the mojitos and decided to give it a shot. We walked quite a ways, and passed some prostitutes in action, to a beach with some of the cities biggest discos and got in line at Opium, the place our hosts recommended. We got to the front of the line only to find out that it was a 25 euro cover charge per person. We chose to walk over to Cat Walk instead where Brit negotiated from 15 to 12 with a drink included.
The place was crawling with the 18-25 year old crowd but we felt at home when the upstairs dj started playing all the bar songs from 2002 for some reason. The guy downstairs played some weird slow techno but he had a bubble machine at his disposal which was nice. We stayed at the club until around 5am and were back at the apartment around 6, taking advantage of the 24 hour metro on Saturday nights.
Overall it was a memorable night and we were glad that we were able to party like barcelonans. We decided that we would complete the experience by waking up the next morning and heading to the beach. Most people from Barcelona head back to the beaches of barcenoleta to continue the party but we decided to take a train to a more quiet beach for a day of naps.
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