Eurotrip Day 7 – Barcelona

Park Guell

The next day I think it was a little cooler in the city, but it didn’t help that Vero brought us to a park which was essentially climbing up steep inclines most of the day!  No worries…a week into the trip, my legs were welcome to any challenge!  After buying a few postcards, we headed up to the Park Guell which is home to a few Gaudi architectures.  Hmm…I am now wondering if there is a correlation between the word gaudy and Gaudi.  Interesting.

Zee cave! Come into zee cave!

The park was quite beautiful and it was great to walk to the top of the park to get a marvelous view of Barcelona.  Barcelona was definitely the highlight of our trip…perhaps it was the fact that it was mid-September and beautiful, and the beach was in the distance.  Either way, we couldn’t get enough!

I believe at this point Carrie and I were freaking out about the height we are on, and the little foothold we had.

Excellent slide guitarist found on top of the hill!

On the way back down from the park, we stopped in for some much needed sustenance.  Vero and Carrie had some special of the day which consisted of a myriad assortment of foods…chicken legs, lasagna, salad…it was a motley crew.  I had a great pizza and a beer to hold me over.

Note where they sat us for lunch! Carrie said that her Dad would love this picture.

What else was there to do but to head back to the beach!  We came prepared this time around with some proper bathing suits, however it took some finagling to change in the middle of the beach!  The water was a little colder today..to the point that Vero didn’t want to chance it with her cold.  Carrie and I floated around for awhile and then surprise, surprise, Karen had found us!  I had emailed her with our schedule of the day and it was nice of her to show up with some food in hand…olives (yum!), strawberries, meat on a stick…it was what we needed!  Karen was a great time and we chatted with her about her life back in Philadelphia with her boyfriend (whose name escapes me at the moment, but I always remember that he had a wicked job…he worked with vinyl records and made them into furniture pieces…unless I’m really mixing that up.  At least that’s what I thought she said which I thought was super cool.)

Attempting to change into a bathing suit in Barcelona takes some concentration.

With an evening in Barcelona ahead of us, we headed back to the apartment with some wine, bread and cheese and had a snack before heading out to see some flamenco dancing.  This was THE thing Vero wanted to do on her Eurotrip so I was worried that we wouldn’t make it on time touring through ‘las ramblas’ which is a pedestrian street famous for LOADS of people and LOADS of people selling things.

Her arms are moving too fast for the camera! I’m sure camera aficionados would tell us how we can compensate for this…but we thought the effect captured was true to the moment.

We did end up getting to the flamenco club in time, sat down quite near the stage (the place was smaller than Zaphod’s) and grabbed a pitcher of sangria.

On fire!  Note that we ended up in a club that must have been named after Toronto!

Flamenco dancing was quite fascinating.  I really had no idea what to expect.  It may differ from place to place, but in our context we saw a group of people come out from side stage…one with a guitar, a handful of women, a few men.  Then the clapping started…they were all trying to achieve a beat together and once they found this beat, others went playing on the offbeat so each person clapping became a separate instrument.  Intense concentration was around.  The guitar started playing some amazing flamenco music…then the singing started by this one woman.  Then each person would have a chance to take center stage and dance in a tap-dance style (I can’t really figure out another way to describe it) which is quite amazing!  They were going faster than my eyes could see!

At various points in the set, they would all sit down and continue clapping but then one man would take center stage for quite awhile while one woman sang and the guitar went into overdrive.  I was entirely driven by this performance…it must take intense concentration to be in a flamenco group.  Two thumbs for flamenco dancing and I would love to see other incarnations of it.  I also appreciated this club that we went to.  It was nice to sit with 50 other people in an intimate setting.

This was clearly taken during the theme song from Friends playing.

Afterwards, the club turned into a discotheque so we decided to stay for awhile and marvel at the North American tunes they were playing.  They even played the theme from Friends which we had a good laugh at.  Seeing that after 30 minutes we were still the only people in the club and no Eurobeats had emerged, I convinced everyone to leave in search for the next big thing.  I kept thinking the next big thing would be in the form of a club which was handing out flyers saying “One City, One Club” but Carrie kept pointing out that a bunch of gangstas handed out the flyers and that we would stick out like a sore thumb in that type of club!  I kept trying to convince them throughout the night, but no dice.

At one point, we were traipsing up las ramblas and a guy wanted us to come up to his bar.  We didn’t really want to but we chatted with him about the city and where he was from and I felt that this guy was really great at conversation that I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go and have one beer at his bar.  I convinced the girls that this was THE stopover point before seeking out Eurobeats.

Those crazy Itals.

Little did I know that this would turn into THE event of Barcelona.  We walked up some stairs and the guy from the street announces “I have brought Canadians and Americans!” and the crowds erupts!  What the heck is going on?  Then out of nowhere, six guys (who I had seen earlier in the area since they were all wearing superhero t-shirts…Captain America, X-Men, Spidey, etc.) were attracted to Karen, Carrie and Vero like bees to honey.  No wait, that’s not an accurate description.  Like piranhas to meat is more like it.  They SWARMED us.  It was crazy!  Kisses were laid upon body parts, foreign languages flying around, drinks being poured down arms and licked off…what the heck was going on?!  Karen was a little overwhelmed by it all so she wanted me to guard her from these crazy guys.  Vero and Carrie were loving it so I watched from afar in case they got out of control.

Is this a common thing in Italy?

Turns out that this group were a bunch of Italian men in Barcelona for ONE night of fun.  Incredible.  Imagine going to one city for one night…of course you are going to go all out!  So of course when three beautiful ladies come in the bar, what else are you going to do?  Granted, I don’t see myself trying to kiss a girl as soon as I get into a bar, but maybe that’s how the Italians do it?  🙂

Batman must be sad after the DC 52 reboot.

After an hour, they finally went about their way and then a bunch of others guy entered the bar…but these guys were my brethren.  It was like the cloud of testosterone had left the place, and was replaced by a cloud of geeks.  I knew it was my duty as a fellow geek to upgrade their night from a night out of with the boys talking about Dungeons and Dragons and biology, to a night of beautiful foreign women chatting with them.  The ladies kindly agreed to go chat with these guys by my request and fun times were had.  One of the guys reminded me of Jeremy Taggert from Our Lady Peace…some crazy hair going on!  He was a biologist from Brussels.  I gathered that these guys didn’t know each other and they had met in the hostel, but I’m not really clear on that front.  I do remember one of the guys chugging a beer so that he could get a kiss from Carrie and Vero.  CLASSIC!

Geeks triumphant!

That beer was gone in seven seconds!

The night ended with us stumbling home and me buying a couple more beer from street vendors (that was quite, quite convenient!  One euro for a can of beer, but I could potentially get caught by the police while drinking in a crowd of people?  Hey, no problem!) and us eating some curry wurst that Carrie had brought from Germany!  I love curry wurst and it hit the spot!

Love me some curry wurst. This photo is for Paul and Sarah as I know they love curry wurst so much that they went to the museum in Berlin.

A great day in Barcelona…those crazy Italians.  Love them.

We also said goodbye to Karen as she was staying in Barcelona for another week while we were leaving the next day.  I would like to think that she had an amazing time afterwards, but let’s be honest, I don’t think you can top a weekend with a bunch of Canadians in Barcelona!

It was also an amazing, amazing time seeing Carrie after a year away from Canada!  While it would have been nice to see Frankfurt (where she lives), I think we all agreed that Barcelona was the better choice!  Next time we come, it will have to be another exotic locale!