After a lengthy night sleeping with child and everyone in the room snoring some way or another, Jason and myself proceeded to formally check out of "The Cool Hostel" (Ok, you're leaving? Goodbye) and make our way up Las Ramblas towards our next hostel (St. Jordi) on diagonal. This included a stop for breakfast at a Spanish Patisserié...
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| Anytime food naturally glistens, it can't be all that bad |
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...and more offers from random vendors for random illegal opportunities (almost too good to turn down). We finally made it while I was texting Andrew, our other friend from UNC (#4) as he appeared from around the corner of the hostel. While it was great to see him, we were on a mission. We had priorities. There was something super important we had neglected in our Spanish euphoria the day before We had only one goal in mind as our day commenced:
Where will they be showing the UNC-Duke game in Barcelona?
We asked the hostel owner, and her best guess was "probably in some Irish pub or something"
After getting a tour of the hostel, we noticed that we had some time to kill until our two friends had arrived, so with the intention of starting the sight-seeing process, we proceeded to head to the north of the city towards Parqué de Guell (as we were told, only about 15 minutes from the hostel!). We jumped on the metro and found ourselves staring at a mountain above us.
After a confusing 20-odd minute walk through the suburb and asking 4-5 people for directions, we finally found the base. We walked up next to the cacti and orange trees and found the tippy-top after about 30 minutes. It's apparently a pretty well-know structure in Barçelona? I'll just post a couple photos to fill you in from here
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| Gaudí design |
After realizing Emily had been waiting for us at our hostel for a while, we ran back down the CORRECT side of the mountain (apparently we had walked around the back way) and ran to find her. We met her sitting in front of our hostel, waiting for us. (sincerest apologies on our part, lack of communication is an awful thing.) Our friends still hadn't arrived from the airport, so we decided to head down and see La Sagrada Familia (AFTER our first dish of Iberian ham), the unfinished Cathedral designed by Gaudí (they really like him here, no?).
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| And then my camera died for the day |
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So, it was pretty cool. And Gaudí even had a thing for math, inventing his own columns and using some form of parabolic hyperbola to generate the ceilings. A real renaissance man if you will. While in the museum, they played a video with Catalan speaking and Spanish subtitles. My connection is that if you cut off the end of every spanish word, you'll end up with a Catalan word. Also, approximately 3-5 groups of tourists confused me for Messi because I was wearing the jersey. I was a little flushed with fame, and may or may not have signed a couple of autographs.
Anyways, we got the news our friends had arrived, so we rushed back to the hostel, only to find...them not there. Mwiti had apparently been searching for a sim card. We were wandering around outside for a bit with a trip to the grocery store, when we caught them in the middle of the street.
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| THE UNHOLY TRIO REUNITED |
After pulling Lane and Mwiti's stuff into the hostel, we decided to take a trip down to the beach in Barcelona. This was my first time stepping in the Mediterranean, so we even made it a thing.
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| Just some good looking people. Way to achieve, tar heels. |
After walking along the sand, and uptown towards the arc d'triumph (after several interesting offers for photos in a shower and free hugs), we decided to split up and make our way back to the hostel before meeting up with our freinds for dinner later. The jetlaggers took naps ( I may have been partial to one myself), and we finally made our way to an authentic mexican restaurant. Jason was really missing out on his chips and salsa in France. After waiting about 3 hours for the restaurant to serve the 11 of us, we finally finished eating around 12-12:30, or 30 minutes before tip-off on the Duke game.
Of the original 11, only 4 of us actually decided to go seek it out, and only two of us spoke spanish (albeit, mine is 3 semesters of borderline B/A work and Jason is a natural speaker). We wandered up and down La Ramblas stopping in every sports bar, asking where we might possibly end up finding the game. I got really good at saying "No, gracias" to everyone on the street. After the 3rd or 4th rejection, we finally ended up at "The Temple Bar" in Barcelona
If you know Dublin, you'll know that Temple Bar is the notoriously overpriced section of town that targets tourists. So, I was hesitant at first, but any port in a storm, right?
After attempting to pull out my Irish Garda Citizenship card to curry favor with the bartender, he flipped it on the largest TV and set us up with our own section in the back.
We then proceeded to watch UNC destroy the opposition until about 6:00 left in the second half, when the bouncer informed us that we would have to leave and yelled at the bartender to turn off the TV. We pleaded with him to no avail, and he started moving us out. As Beth and Zane left the bar, Jason and I started wailing at the Bartender in my broken Spanish (he spoke english, I have no idea why I thought child-like spanish would help my case). It wasn't until Jason made a comparison between Real Madrid and Barcelona that the bartender convinced the bouncer to let us stay for the last few minutes. He was apparently getting paid by to get everyone out of the bar, so we weren't making his night. After arguing with him one more time to let Beth and Zane BACK into the bar, we watched until about a minute left when he would take no more.
And I don't mess with no bouncers. But the rest, I believe, is history.
Preview for tomorrow's entry:
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