Day 10 #2...Exploring la cuidad y cultura de Barcelona (Flamenco included)

Day 10, June 24th:

LIVE FROM BARCELONA, SPAIN itttttts BLOG TIME! 

After watching the sun come up and the ship come into port, we finally got off the ship around 11:00.  The gangway is actually located on Deck 2 for this port, so it makes it much easier for us to enter and exit everyday.  The ship is docked at a commercial pier (because we are here so long) so they have a shuttle tour bus for us that takes us a block away from the main drag, Las Ramblas!  The Las Ramblas is the Market Street of Barcelona.  It is full of shops, tents, restaurants, and places with entertainment.  There are millions of people painted up like all different types of characters and you can take your picture with them for some change.  They also can sell you beer on the street; therefore, every two steps someone is trying to sell you one out of a six-pack for 1 euro each.  It was entertaining at first, but quickly got annoying.  Anyways, we all ate breakfast on the ship, but we were hungry for local cuisine, so we ate desayuno on the Las Ramblas.  We ordered the famous Spanish food, croquettes, which are little fried dough sticks with jamon (ham) or other local specialties.  They were very inexpensive (8 euro) and were very good; however, we had them again at dinner and learned that they really were not that good (at least not homemade like we had for dinner).  The buildings are so different than the US. Every one of them looks totally different and they are all very beautiful.  Don’t worry! I have millions of pictures.  The architecture is awesome!  We saw almost the entire city by foot. Okay, not really but we walked like 3,000 miles yesterday…no joke!  We passed several of the houses and buildings that Gaudi designed while ultimately making our way to the La Sagrada Familia.  It is a church that Gaudi designed that has been under construction since the 1800s and is not scheduled for completion until 2026.  It is currently a museum and the money raised from visitors have funded the entire construction process of the building.  It is one of the tallest buildings in the city and it is beautiful to see.  We are planning to go see it on Sunday with the entire “group”.  We then decided that we should head to buy tickets to a Flamenco show, so we hopped on the underground metro towards the theater.  It was pretty fun exploring the city via underground rails when we don’t have any idea what the signs say and have no clue where we are going! You learn quick though… We found the theater but it was closed, so we began our quest to find an internet café in order to purchase our tickets online.  We also made a quick stop at a local corner store to purchase potato chips cooked in olive oil.  Let’s just say I ate the entire bag!  After our long and tiring expedition around the city, we headed back to the ship to exchange members of our group…we picked up some and dropped off others.  It really sucks for those that take all SAS trips because they all want to do what we did, but they are restricted to time because of their trips.  The entire group, minus Daniel and Lacey (she went to see Flamenco at the same place we did except with SAS at the earlier show for two and a half times more then we paid), went to eat before our show.  We took David’s advice and found this small restaurant located on the second floor a building over looking Las Ramblas.  OHHH MY GOD THIS PLACE WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!  It was sooooo nice and CHEAP!  Danielle, Heather, and I all ordered different things and we may or may not have played pass the plate game.   All of the dishes were scrumptious!  The others all wanted seafood so they played their own pass the plate game.  We had croquettes con jamon (croquettes with ham), a hamburger patty topped with a fried egg and caramelized onions, and veal steaks topped with phyllo dough pouches of baked brie and a wonderful white sauce that we don’t know what it was.  SOOOOOOOOO GOOD!  Everything was so inexpensive too!  The entire bill was 29 euro for the three of us.  We would have paid at least 20 dollars a plate for that in the US, probably 30 dollars a plate in Charleston.  I could eat there every night!  I even told the waiter that he should come back on the ship with us and serve us dinner like that every night.  He didn’t know what I said, but I tried.  I have gotten much better at la language de Espanol while we have been here.  It is fun communicating with them!  I did try their octopus though.  It was okay…I would never order it, but I ate it!  I am trying to become adventurous.  We even meet a whole group of students from USC at the restaurant.  We had about an hour or so before our Flamenco show, so we decided to run and see the Arc de Triomf. It was just a few blocks out of the way, but we went anyways.  It was soooo cool!  The sun was setting as we arrived, so it was beautiful.  We then began making our way to the show and the story begins.  We ended up walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking and walking…NO JOKE!  It was maybe one of the coolest things we have done in Barcelona, but ohh man did we walk.  Clark played navigator.  We never got lost, but we just didn’t realize how far out of the way we went.  We ended walking down back streets where all of the locals live and it was sooooo cool.  We never would have found or saw that if we didn’t do what we did.  It was awesome.  The locals were all hanging out in the street playing music, going to super small restaurants and bars, playing in playgrounds, socializing, and drinking out the coolest water fountains in the world.  Water comes out of the light posts!!!!!!!!!  We stumbled across the Palau de la Musica Catalana that millions of columns that were all decorated differently with mosaics and the Barcelona Cathedral.  We didn’t think we were that far away so we decided to walk to the show, which started in 45 minutes, but it ended being about an hour and a half walk at a leisurely pace.  We floored it!  We walked so fast that we might as well ran there!  To top it off, it was uphill.  Our trip through the Spanish village actually took us about 7 blocks further away from the theater.  If I would have known how far away we were, I would have suggested taking the underground metro; hindsight 20-20, we walked the entire way!  Once we got there, the show had just started and we enjoyed the Flamenco show a lot.  It was awesome!  I have pictures and video too.  They were dancing, singing, playing music, and even a type of tap dancing that made it a true experience.  I have never seen anything like it before!  Since the show ended at midnight, the metro was closed and we had to walk all the way back to the ship!  We tried to get a taxi, but little did we know that you can only have 4 people per cab…we had 5!  Our feet were so tired, but we definitely didn’t want to split up in two taxis, since we really don’t know what we are doing!  We ended up meeting Lacey and Daniel in the Placa de Catalunya on the way.  We tried to go back to the Attic, where we ate dinner, for dessert, but they were closing, so we stopped for homemade ice cream.  I had both pistachio and mint chocolate chip (thanks to Danielle) for 2 euro!  It was pretty good after a long day.  Once we got back to the ship, we went straight to bed!  We were so tired.  It was 02:30 by the time we got to our rooms.  Daniel, Lacey and Clark have to be up at 05:00 for their SAS trip to Madrid and Toledo.  I am so happy that we decided not to go to Madrid independently.  Barcelona is sooo amazing!  We already are running out of time to do everything we wanted and you have just read everything we did on our first day!  The weather was amazing too! Just perfecto!  This entire city is so different and amazing!  I wish you could have been here!

I hope you enjoyed the shortest post I have ever written…don’t forget that that is only what we did since we got off the ship at 11:00 (the first 5 hours of our day was in a separate post so be sure to read that too).  Tomorrow’s post is not looking good either!  

Buenos noches!

(I love being able to actually speak normally and having the locals actually understand me…those of you that know me well will understand why!)