Amigas en Barcelona (The Sequel)

Nearly five years ago, on my way out of living in Spain for the second time, I spent my last few days in the country visiting my friend Kate in Barcelona. (Here's the old post, if you want to take a look) She had just moved there, was working and didn't really know the city yet so what time we did have together we spent exploring or hanging out our hostel balcony watching the world's oldest profession take place en masse on the shady street below.

Since then we have both lived in a few different places, but recently we both ended up in Europe again. So, having successfully defended my thesis, I decided to book a quick trip to go see her.

My first night there we were to attend a bilingual pub quiz at an Irish bar in her neighborhood. She was busy giving an English lesson when the quiz was to begin, so she sent her neighbor, Fernando, to collect me. When I answered the door he said, "I think you are my date" and we headed to the bar to meet up with half a dozen other folks from Kate's circle of friends. This pub quiz was one of the funnest things I have ever done! Despite our team doing very well, we didn't manage to take home a prize (the competition was stiff!), but we had a lot of good laughs anyway. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera.

The next day we managed to get up by about noon and headed around the corner for some coffee and breakfast. As would become my habit for every single day while I was there, I had a chorizo sandwich. Spanish chorizo is amazing.

 Pretty sleepyhead

We started the day off by buying a few bottles of wine for me to take to some of my translation clients who have an office in the city. It was nice to finally put faces to names and even nicer to hear them say that I was their "number one". Hooray!

That afternoon, while wandering around we happened to wander by the 15th century Barcelona Cathedral. Much to our surprise, it had an elevator that would take you to the top of the cathedral. This was a nice change from the usual killer stair climbs required for visiting the top of anything in Paris.

Gorgeous day in a gorgeous city!

Afterward we meandered toward the beach front and stopped on the way to have a delicious lunch at a little unassuming cafe. Eventually, we ended up at the marina.

 Boats: They float.

 Amigas in the sand

That night we went to have dinner with Kate's friend and former roommate, Laia, in her beautiful apartment. We had a feast of salad, croquettes, paté and bread.

Kate rolls a cig while Laia buzzes around the kitchen.

The next day, out of morbid curiosity, we tried to go visit the funeral carriage museum but it was closed for siesta when we got there. So we walked a little way down the road to a nice park.

 Superfluously large fountain

 Serenity

There we completely lost our motivation to walk all the way back once it had reopened (we are lazy tourists). Instead, we walked to the nearby chocolate museum. On the way over there, I discovered the Barcelona also has an Arc de Triomf.

 L'arc en rouge

The chocolate museum was pretty corny for the most part, consisting mainly of googly-eyed caricatures of cartoon characters and animals. I do, however, give them props for our tickets being chocolate bars.

 Dramatic googley-eyed horses

 Chocolate book

 This was about as fancy as it got.

Behind the school was a fully transparent patisserie school, which I rudely ogled and photographed because I love chefs.

 I seeee you.

At the museum's exit was a café where we quickly found ourselves interrogating two ladies about the apparent cup of whipped cream they were sharing. We discovered that it was called a "Suiza" ("Swiss" - hot chocolate with whipped cream) and ordered two.

 We weren't about to share.

Then we attempted to regulate our insulin by zig-zagging through the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter.

 A-maze-ing!

A plaza with a Spanish guitarist playing flamenco. Doesn't get much more picturesque than that.

 Smushed living spaces

While here we also took a quick stroll through the Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar, a pretty little 14th century gothic church.

My third and last half day there we didn't have too much time to spare, so we didn't make any special plans. We started the day by attempting to visit the opera house. But when we arrived we were told the only way to see it was to pay €10 for an hour-long guided tour and frankly, we were just not that interested. 

Instead, we decided to walk around until we found somewhere to have coffee, which we chose to do in a less-than-ideal neighborhood. When we sat down at a table in the plaza our waitress even warned us not to leave our bags on the table in case someone were to run by and snatch them up. So we sat there drinking our coffee for a while, speculating on the elaborately-doored building adjacent to it. Since our communication had long descended into a ridiculous Spanglish, I told her that it was probably a "pequeño churcho" (a small church). Her response was to sing an ode to it:

 "Pequeño churcho, pequeño churcho;

¡Olé, olé, olé, olé!"

Next we took a long stroll down La Rambla, the main tourist strip of the city, stopping to take a look at this palm-filled plaza.

 Sunny

On our way to Plaça de Catalunya, where I had to catch my bus to the airport, we happened to spot one of the coolest street performers I have ever seen.

This guy's a goner.

We reached our destination and sat people watching until I had to get on the bus. All in all, it was a great little quick trip!