Europe Blog #5

Barcelona; our final stop on the European vacation. 

I don't know how we crammed in as much as we did, but Barcelona kept us busy! We arrived in the evening and went straight to the hostel-which was quite difficult for us to find. The GPS was insistent that it was on a different road than it actually was, and trying to navigate on narrow streets that we weren't familiar with was frustrating! Once we finally found the hostel, we couldn't find a place to park the car, so we quickly dropped off our stuff, and decided to return the rental car so we could be rid of the hassle. We drove to the airport, ditched  the car, took a subway near our hostel and went and found some food! By this point I was starving!! On this particular evening we were looking for typical Spanish food, and ended up with potatoes, cheese and alcohol, lol. We called it a night somewhat early as the next day we were doing ALL THE THINGS. ALL OF THEM.

To start with, we began our day visiting the Fairy Tale Cafe. I had read that it was one of the more unusual places to visit in Barcelona, and unusual is definitely up my alley. This cafe had fantastic food (I got an egg and potato baguette... this seems to be the theme of Spain so far), and just enjoyed the scenery. There were animated thunder storms, the lights would flicker on and off, and there was a little fairy forest behind the bar. I loved it! This set off the morning atmosphere perfectly, and then we wandered along Los Ramblas street-the street known for its street performers, shops and pick pockets (fortunately we had no problems with this). Along the way, we stopped at the Cathedral of Barcelona, which is one of the most stunning Gothic churches in Europe. The inside decor is crazy-detailed. The paintings, the sculptures... the caskets of dead priests... yep, dead priests-I did say it was a Gothic church. Still though, it was gorgeous, and we were able to go on top of the church and get the most incredible view of Barcelona. This whole time, my man/boy/lover was fiddling with his phone desperately trying to purchase tickets for a Barcelona football (soccer) game that evening (which we eventually were able to get our hands on).

We did a lot of walking, almost 10 miles that day according to our phone's health app. We shopped, visited a pretty incredible street market, drank fancy smoothies, and then found our way to the Erotic Art Museum (because really, that is a necessity between all this church-visiting, lol). To be honest, I'm quite obsessed with erotic museums, I've been to the ones in Miami, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Paris.. so I figured I would add Barcelona to this list. Unfortunately, I would say Barcelona was the worst that I've been to so far. It was a lot of reproductions, and some kitchy "facts" about women who drank the most sperm in a day and things of that nature, but it didn't specialize in anything in particular for the culture. The Paris erotic museum had an entire exhibit on Japanese bondage art and another on ancient Greek Vases. Stuff that was legitimate art. I will say Barcelona did have some entertaining old porn videos running in one of the rooms though, it definitely lets you know how far the film industry has come!

We didn't spend a lot of time at the museum, so we were able to make our way back to the hostel and change clothing before we went to the Barcelona soccer game. This is the point where I should probably say, outside of my non-American stepfather watching the World Cup and yelling "GOOOOOAAAALLLL!!!" for 5 minutes at a time in my childhood, I really had no idea what I was in for. Barcelona was playing the Glasgow Celtics, and as soon as we got onto a very over crowded subway, I realized I was in over my head. The Celtic fans were EXTREMELY drunk and singing loudly about how they were going to crush Barcelona. The Celtics  were yelling to each other and some of the songs they were singing, were popular old tv theme song tunes, but they were using very different lyrics. Some people were entertained, but I was eyeing my nearest escape route, lol. Fortunately we made it to our stop (the same stop everyone else was getting off at), and from there the insanity just got more intense. Now the Barcelona fans were flooding the streets, piss-drunk and stopping traffic, they were singing anthems, grabbing strangers to dance with; It was wild! I often think American's are too rowdy with sports, but they don't have a thing on the Europeans.
We found our way to the stadium, and within a few minutes of getting drinks and sitting down, the game started! ... well, if you could call it a game. I'm not a big sports fan in general, but I do find myself getting into games when I attend them. I choose a team and decide I'm going to put all of my mental energy into making them win, so I focus way more than I probably should. I'm not a very loud person, but if you listen closely, you will probably hear me mumbling swear words under my breath. Either way, I didn't even have to try to mentally focus on a thing, Barcelona CREAMED the Celtics. They beat them 7-0, Messi even scored a hat-trick! I sorta felt bad for all of those excited Celtic fans who traveled all that way to lose so incredibly badly. I could just imagine their sad faces... up in the far away stands that the away team was stashed in. Of course Barcelona's locals were in very good spirits on our way back to the hostel.

The next morning was our last full day in Europe. I think I immediately was feeling a bit sad...but no time to dwell, we still had shit to do! The first thing on the agenda was the Gaudi church, Sagrada Familia. If you weren't sure where the term gaudy came from, it is this. This church has been in the process of being built for over 130 years. It is overly elaborate to the point where its not really even beautiful.. just tacky. Still though, it is an amazing spectacle and should be finished in about ten more years, lol. We wandered along, just taking in what we had left of Europe until we found ourselves at the Picasso museum. Pablo Picasso was from Barcelona, so it was a treat to get to go to the official museum. Picasso's work is unique-he started off doing academic realism which was incredible. The work he was putting out at 15 years old was better than most professionals could ever hope to match.. but by 20 or so, Picasso started to deconstruct his work into his own art form called Cubism. This work is so unique and brilliant; he would break everything down into shapes. I am sure that some people really love Picasso's work towards the latter part of his career, but I am not a fan of his style once it turned into minimalism. Either way though, it was a fantastic museum, and so cool to see the evolution of his art.

We had a late lunch, and decided to wander over to the beach around 5pm. We sat on the shore, watched the locals play in the water, and took in the view. The ocean air smelled beautiful. Around this time, we decided we better go have some fun before the trip was over, so we packed up our stuff and looked up unusual bars in Barcelona...

We discovered a heavy metal bar only a few blocks from our hostel called Hell Awaits. Within minutes of entering, I started drinking vodka and redbull, and demanding we play pool, as Dimmu Borgir played loudly over the speakers. The drinks were cheap ($2 euros), and the atmosphere was a lot of fun. When you walked in, Eddie (the Iron Maiden mascot of sorts) stood over you on the ceiling. At the far end of the bar, was a life size cemetery from the Metallica album cover, Master of Puppets. There was a large screen playing music videos from random metal bands, and signed guitars adorned the walls. This is the kind of place I love. I've visited so many fun metal themed places (The Lovecraft Bar in Portland, Kuma's Corner in Chicago etc). This was a perfect ending to a very successful trip. We got some Barcelona fast food for dinner, and stumbled back to our hostel, drunk and beaming with excitement from everything we had experienced. What an amazing journey.
The next morning we grumpily made our way to the airport and traveled for 20 hours straight back to reality. Booo.

I guess that's the end, for now.  Someone send me back to Europe?!

<3, Carlotta