Yuck… long time no blog. This is what happens when I go on consecutive weeks of trips.
Now, for Barcelona. Back two weekends ago, I ended up in Spain. Got on a morning flight to Barcelona with Ryanair again. Checked into the hotel by noon and started exploring the city. I enjoyed the warmer weather there… they even have palm trees!
First, one of the interesting things I found about Spanish was that the language was very similar to XML. For example, to indicate that a sentence is a question, it starts with an upside-down question mark and ends with a normal question mark: ¿<your question here>?. Also, follows with exclamations… you wrap words you want to emphasize with the exclamation tag: ¡<your exclamation here>!
On the way to the hotel, we passed by the Spanish version of the Arc de Triumph… I don’t quite understand what’s with the European’s fascination with “Arc” structures.
Gaudi Museum
I hear that Barcelona was heavily influenced by this architect named Gaudi. He uses mosaics heavily in all structures he designed. I personally find it interesting but I wouldn’t want a building made in his fashion. The museum looks like a fantasy village…
Las Ramblas + Art Gallery
Ended up on the main shopping street after it got dark… there are shops and stands that line the entire street all the way down to the docks. Left the street at around 7:30-ish to go see the art gallery building at night. As we were taking photos, we noticed that there were police in riot uniform starting to gather near the street… it appears that there were soccer fans or something who were marching through Barcelona. It’s strange that the Europeans have this obsession with soccer.
Dinner
We went for dinner shortly afterwards… ended up in the docks. Went to one of those huge seafood restaurants. Arthur and I ordered one platter of seafood at 18 euros per person. The platter that we got looked like the restaurant had fished out the entire sea for us. We barely finished the seafood consisting of shrimp, mussel, squid, fish, and lobster. After dinner, we ended up back at the hotel and I made Arthur go out drinking with me. We ended up in some sort of bar that had some psychotic art. FYI, Arthur rarely drinks alcoholic beverages… I bought him a cocktail and afterwards, he was like “man, I had a lot to drink”. For me, I didn’t feel any different.
Olympic Park
Recall that sometime in the 90s, Barcelona held a summer Olympic game… we went to the Olympic park to take more pictures. The first stop was this place called “Little Spain” where there were many recreated buildings from around Spain. For myself, I can’t tell the difference between the buildings. One of the highlights I saw was glass-making… it was cool to see the guy make glass horses.
The Olympic park was sorta impressive… they had this space needle thing going on. Afterwards, we took the cable car down to the beach.
Biking + Sagrada Familia Cathedral
After a rather slow lunch at a cafe, we rented bikes and toured around the city on our BMXs. I found out how unfit I am for athletic activities… I got tired very easily even biking on the easiest gear. We rode from the docks all the way uptown to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in about an hour. This cathedral was built in the early 20th century but it isn’t finished yet. To me, it’s strange because with modern day construction, a cathedral would only take maybe 4 years at most.
After seeing the Cathedral, we realized that we had 30 minutes or so to get down back to the docks to return the bikes. It would be bad to be stuck with the bikes overnight… we sped through the city at night at a rapid pace, and exactly 30 minutes later, we returned our bikes, albeit, my legs refused to work afterwards.
Dinner and bumming around
Another famous Spanish dish was Seafood Paella. It’s basically Spanish fried rice… but I say it can’t beat greasy Chinese fried rice.
Since we had an ultra-early morning flight at 6:30 am, we basically have to stay up the entire night. Arthur spent the night taking night photos… I spent it sitting around cause my legs were burning from the bike ride earlier. Arthur had some interesting night photos. By 2 am, we ended up at the airport bus station… I was really tired.
Made it back to London Monday morning… crawled into bed at 10 am.
Okay… I’m done with this blog entry. Add Berlin onto this blog soon.
