barcelona

So, how did I end up in Barcelona last weekend? Through something called blind booking through Germanwings. Basically, it's 40Euro for a roundtrip flight from Stuttgart to any one of a group of 8-10 cities in Europe. For example, there was a group of party cities, shopping cities, Eastern Europe cities, etc. Originally we had wanted to do the Eastern Europe one, but we ended up choosing the culture bundle. You can pay an extra 5Euro to exclude a city, and then you find out exactly where you're going after you pay. To be honest, I had wanted to go to Budapest because I've never been to Eastern Europe, but there's always next time! And Barcelona was amazing :)

Here's my trip highlights.

- Parc Guell
My favorite 'must-see' sight in Barcelona. The architecture is completely unreal and absolutely stunning! Of course we also visited La Sagrada Familia, yet to be completed. And it was nice to 'stumble across' another Gaudi creation, La Pedrera.


- Hashish?
Las Ramblas in the day is touristy and crowded. Las Ramblas at night is touristy, not as crowded, and slightly sketchy. How so? First off, there's men (mostly from India and Pakistan, I believe) who stand on the street and sell beers and offer you other substances. Somebody in our group wanted to smoke and would whisper hashish at people on the street who seemed like the type to sell or smoke it, much to my entertainment. And trust me, it wasn't difficult for him to get any. I guess the marijuana laws in Spain are something like you aren't allowed to smoke it in public or sell it, but you are allowed to have up to 7 plants in your home.

- Coming up with elaborate plans to get me into the hotel
So we stayed in a hotel because it was cheaper than hostel, but the quoted price was for 2 people, so we had to be sneaky about the third person. And since I lost at rock paper scissors, I was the one who wasn't offiically staying there. This was complicated by the fact that you had to be buzzed in and buzzed out, so the first time they made me pretend that I wasn't with them but just happened to walk in at the same time. Anyways, it ended up working out ok.

- Clubbing...
Thanks to the Erasmus students from Barcelona, I had a good idea of the clubs and stuff. So Saturday night we walked all the way down Las Ramblas toward the beach. We saw the first port which we thought was the one with all the clubs (we also saw some bright lights and loud music), but it turned out that the next port was actually the one with all the nightlife. So then we continued down and about an hour and a half after we had left our hotel we (finally!) got to the right beach and area... there were probably at least 5 huge ones in that vicinity and tons more farther away. We attempted to get into Opium Mar, but were turned away because of John's tennis shoes. Then we went to Catwalk, which was a bit more lenient I guess. It probably helped that at that point, we were still early and the club seemed extremely empty (it was probably around 12:30am?). Our 20Euro cover included a free drink, which I (of course) took advantage of by getting two free drinks. Hey, I paid 20Euro!! It was probably about an hour or so until the club really started filling up and getting crowded.

- Beach
We went to Playa Barceloneta on Sunday evening. It was overcrowded, and there were street vendors selling mojitos, sunglasses, sarongs, even samosas (the fried Indian food). Then the Tony Hawk skate exhibition started and we watched various skaters (like ranked, and world-famous, apparently) show off their stuff. I did have to smile (and cheer obnoxiously) when they introduced a couple of the guys from California. And of course, everybody cheered for Tony Hawk, even when he failed miserably at doing his famous 900. (Eventually he did complete it, after like 9 or 10 tries.) The funny thing about Tony Hawk is that everybody knows who he is, but most of the people who know him wouldn't really go out of his way to see him... we were watching because we happened to be at the beach. Anyways, it was still a cool experience in Europe's 'skate capital'.