Barcelona Barcelona

We spent our first day in Barcelona finding a place to stay and mostly exploring the town. It is pretty cool, and like Tarifa, none of the ladies on the beach wear a bathing suit top. It's pretty chill. (Bea keeps thinking of all the sailor stories her dad has told her about all these Mediterranean ports he stopped in while in the Navy. She keeps expecting to see a group of sailors walking down the beach with all the bare breasted ladies).

On Friday we did an all day Antoni Gaudi day - he is a cool dude. We checked out the cathedral he designed, which they are still building since 1882 or something. At first we thought, "What’s taking them so long?" but then we saw it and the details in every little thing, such as the columns, roof, figures; everything is so intense and must take so long to carve. Every shape is planned out to well and very ornate. He is really a sculptor, also really a genius, an all around amazingly creative guy. We walked around the city seeing his buildings, but really only got to a couple. We were going to go to the beach, but kind of got hung up on all the crazy things going on here. There is a festival that lasts four days, only about two blocks from where we are staying. Last night we were wondering why it was so incredibly loud outside our room. First there were fireworks, then a marching band came down our street, then a guy with some kind of horn, not to mention the oodles and oodles of people constantly streaming down the street and the people ringing their bike bells. It is absolutely insane. When we woke up the next morning there was confetti everywhere.

All the stores were closed because of the festival, so we had to get our dinner food from a bodega. Not the best decision because we ended up with bread, canned corn, garlic oil spread, and really bad lemon beer. Peter thought it was alright, but Bea didn’t want anything to do with it, so we decided we just go out to eat for the rest of our meals.

On Saturday just kept bumping into all crazy things all day. There was a huge gathering of drummers from all over, and they were just standing around drumming so loudly together, at least a hundred of them. Then there was the little plaza with some kind of band and people doing this strange dance in circles and bobbing around. Then there was some kind of miniature parade, a lady on a float talking and these women behind her in these weird clear orbs making poses and wearing weird costumes. Later that night we spent a couple hours walking up and down La Rambla following all sorts of different marching bands around, then got some big sangrias and called it a night.