Hasta luego Barcelona

Que pasa...

The end of our Barcelona days has come. It's a really cool city, though I think it would take a while to get on true siesta time... They are in a whole new world over here. Yesterday we went to the beach which was really beautiful. Lots of ppl were there drinking and hanging out. Patrick went swimming though it was a little too cold for us. After the beach we picked up some sangria and beer for the boys and got ready and hung out til our bar reservation at the ice bar...celona which was at midnight. It took a bit to get used to going out for the first time for the night so late. Most of the actual clubs don't open until 3 am. We got to the ice bar and stood in a short line to get our parkas and gloves. The temp inside the bar was -13 degrees celcius. Super intense. We drank drinks out of ice cups and sat on ice benches while ppl danced on the ice floor and watched the disco light glitter on all the ice sculptures and whatnot. It was really crazy being in there... I guess it's like what partying in Alaska is like. We eventually got too cold and left, walked along the club/bar strip on the beach. I had no expectations but Barcelona was intensely like Vegas where we were. Red carpets, VIP cards and tiny outfits with platform stilettos heels. Since mel and I had to lighten our loads and send home things like our heels so we felt underdressed for the club. Instead mel Patrick Eric and I walked alon the coast line people watching and headed to a pub near our hotel. Little did we know, on the tv was the Yankees play off game! How wonderful to see baseball on tv. Some norweign fella got sassy and made fun of us for wanting to watch the game being dumb Americans and i won't lie... I kind of judge norweigns now. Sorry If that's wrong. We hung out there til bar close at 3 and most ppl started heading to discotechas. As we all walked back to our hotel room, there were so many ppl outside it might have been new years in times square. It was insane to see that many ppl out and about at 3am. Very odd.

Mel and I got up early this morning and went touring to all the gaudi places. As usual, we accidently tool the metro to the top of the mountains and realized we were in some Barcelona suburb. Whoops... We made it back to park guell which was stunning. We thought at first it was a park type deal with trails and a panoramic view of the whole city. We took lots of pictures. Then we found the main area with all of these detailed tunnels, mosaic pillars and buildings. It's so unusual you can't help but keep staring. This was my favorite touristy thing here :). Then we headed to sangrada familia but once again messed up the metro got off a station where you couldn't tranfer trains and got booted onto the street. We still firmly believe that the signs were wrong. So then we went walking for what looked on the map about 2 blocks. Well... 45mins later we arrived. Stupid map. The cathedral was cool, extremely intriquite. No wonder it's still not supposed to be done til 2026. Everyone definitely moves slower in Spain. Mel and are like marathon speed walkers here. And also my first spanish pigeon shat on me. And we saw 3 trannies. Bad trannies... More man for sure than woman. We eventually walked back to the hotel where the lazy boys were still sleeping at 2pm. We rested... Did some trip planning... Ps- we are going to nice tomorrow not switzerland as was briefly our plan. It's really expensive and hard to travel to/out of conveniently. We had dinner at the most American looking sports bar and had some somewhat decent food. Spain has not good food. We tried our best to only eat in places that said Italian or French style food. We weren't interested in pig testicles or innards. We are cosidering getting another box wine of sangria- an excellent discovery here. Just enjoying a shower and packing now... I really felt like Barcelona was a different place.. The beach felt like Hawaii or somewhere to me, all surrounded in palm trees. It is a beautiful place and never once did we feel uncomfortable or unsafe. I guess having 2 boys around helped as well. Just an 8 hr train ride tomorrow.

NOTE: a new term- being belled at by others. No this is no typo. It appears to be common place to ring a bike bell loudly as a person nearly plows you over on their bike. As we tend to be frequently in their way, mel and I get belled at all day long. Food for thought, watch out for those bikes.

Love to all, <3 Karin