Barcelona Part dos.

Sooooo today reminded me why I like to travel alone. No offense to Kumiko but... Never again will I travel with her. Luckily she will never read my blog so I can say that. She bitchy and no fun. Okay, Aside from her being the most difficult person to enjoy a foreign land with Barcelona was amazing! We woke up around 8:30, okay I woke up at 8:30, Kumiko was up waay before that, and after I showered and got dressed we headed out. Okay, real quick this is where the first of many "seriously?" moments occurred with Kumiko....So I am the one paying 550euros for the hotel. My hotel. I am now paying for two hotels in Spain. One thing I like when I travel is my privacy. Which I keep by putting the 'do not disturb' sign outside my door at all times. I don't need someone coming into my room when I'm not there just to make my bed, and not with new sheets or comforters by the way, move my stuff around, or give me a fresh roll of toilet paper. I can ask for toilet paper and towels when I am in the hotel and need them. So as we are leaving the room Kumiko flips the do not disturb sign around so it says please come into my room and do stuff.... I ask "what are you doing? I don't want anyone in there while we're gone." Kumiko, like the spoiled little princess she is actually has the nerve to argue back and say "I want it cleaned." We were only in that room for like 13 hours, and 7 of those were sleeping... the room doesn't need cleaning... AT ALL. She gives me hella attitude like she even has a say... "Well whatever," i said and she had her wait but I said if anything of mine goes missing I'm blaming you. Anyways, now are finally off to visit la Sagrada Família. The famous cathedral everyone imagines when thinking of Barcelona. That place was amazing and very odd compared to other cathedrals I've seen around the world. It had a sort of extra terrestrial feeling to it with all it's bulbs and rounded surfaces. Anyways, we arrive later than we had originally planned. We wanted to get there a little before 9:00am since that's when the cathedral opened and we knew lines formed quickly but since I woke up late we arrived around 9:20. Well the lines weren't that long, nothing compared to the day before around 2:00pm, and so we jump in line. Kumiko is upset and complaining about the segrade going to be crowded when we get there because we didn't get here earlier and suggested we try again tomorrow.... Seriously? I had to explain to her that either we get here irrationally early so to be first in line thus first in the cathedral in which case we would only have minutes before everyone else was let in. So irritating. Anyways after explaining that there are going to be people in there no matter how early we get here because they aren't going to stop allowing people to pay for entry just because you want to be alone we should stay in line and go today. We were in line only about 15 minutes and were inside the cathedral in no time :) We both got two tickets, one entrance and one to go up to the towers. we had about an hour twenty before our time to go up. This was plenty of time to see the ground floor and take lots of pictures :D. 10:30 comes along and we are now in an elevator going up. Once we reach the top we then had the most spectacular views of Barcelona. the city is beautify from above. Kumiko and I spend about thirty five minutes at the top slowing moving in the direction of the stairs to go down (yeah, they make you walk back down via swirly stair case.) Next we spend about another forty minutes or so around the outside and through the museum. After la Sagrada Família we head back to around our hotel where Casa Milà or La Pedrera. This place is a building built by Antoni Gaudí. I don't really know what I saw here cause it was very odd. I do know there were apartments and there were elevators on every second floor cause Gaudí wanted it's inhabitants to know one another. the roof was extremely weird with huge pieces of art and the inside was very old. Oh and on what was... umm.. the 3rd floor? Was a museum explaining the history of the building and the inspiration for it's design from nature. Lot's of very interesting pieces on display explaining the different aspects of the building design polygonal shapes, curvature. After Casa Milà we decided to head back in the direction of the hotel to get some lunch. We went to this little tavern called Taverna Mediterranea right across the street from our hotel. This place was amazing and the staff were awesome. The main guy got a soccer jersey signed by Messi and had it framed and one of the ladies that worked there was putting it up on the wall. The man was very happy with it haha it was fun. We ordered the roasted chili peppers, deepfried cuttlefish, and green olives stuffed with anchovies as started. I ordered a steak with mushrooms and grilled onions which when asked how I wanted the steak cooked I answered, "well done" and the waiter told me "no," then pointed to his shoe haha he said I wanted medium well I said "well done!" he was firm in his decision of me getting it medium well haha. It was amazing! After lunch I wanted to head to the coast so Kumiko and I took some metros south and first went to the bus station to buy our bus tickets back to Madrid. After getting those, Oh also, around the bus station is an Arc del Triomf. This one is waay cooler looking than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris haha. Okay so after getting bus tickets we head to a couple cathedrals down in the old part of Barcelona, Cathedral of Santa Eulalia and Santa Maria del Mar. These places were pretty awesome with the latter being the better one. Santa Maria del Mar had a very odd Palm tree oases in the middle of it. For some reason the greenery surrounded by stone was so cool. Anyways, these were two very quick stops. Now we are walking around the old part of Barcelona with it's narrow streets and little cafes and tapas restaurants. I was in heaven here. Aside from the crowds this was what I love to see and do. See the architecture and getting lost. Which is exactly what happened when we wanted to go to the harbor. I said "This way" as I'm pointing left from this little plaza. Wanted to just walk around Barcelona and eventually get to the water I started walking in the direction I pointed and Kumiko followed. Okay so during the next hour or so we passed some locals and what I think were some prostitutes in what could best be described as the Bronx version of Barcelona, some Muslims rioting over something, some children playing cricket in between two buildings and into an area were we didn't see any tourists. I finally pull out my map and say lets go into this little mart and see where we are. Kumiko asked if I knew where I was going. I said "nope" lol. This is where things get interesting and why I kept reminding myself why I prefer to travel alone because at this moment Kumiko got into one of those female tantrums. Saying things like "don't say you know where you are going when you really don't" and "if you don't know where you are going then ask for directions." sigh... seriously? I told her I never said I knew where I was going and that I just wanted to walk around and eventually end up where we wanted to go. She blew off what I said as if I was wrong and she was right and said no, you said you knew where you were going. I said I never said those words, all I said was "this way." And anyways, she said "nope but whatever" and did that whole girl thing where you guys just get quiet and start walking as if it actually makes you're lies real. ANYWAYS, turns out we were going in the complete opposite direction from the water and had to backtrack like30 minutes or so. Man Kumiko was piiiiissed. I was laughing so hard at how mad she was. She just kept walking at a super fast pace. She is so irritating. Grrr okay I'm done with her, all in all we finally get to the port! It's very beautiful there. We send a good two hours walking around this area taking pictures and soaking up the beauty. After a good amount of time here we decide to head back to the hotel but first Kumiko wanted to grab some souvenirs for her host family from Barcelona... Now... The thought is nice but seriously? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure lots of people would think to do the same but I just don't get it. If I was hosting someone here and they went off to, like, Pullman or lake Chelan or even Seattle, I would not want them to get me anything from there... souvenirs are junk. I accept the fact that the spoons I collect from every country I've been to is technically junk but they actually have a purpose and no one else got them for me. Okay so we are finally on our back back to the hotel. back at the hotel it was very quiet... I went straight upstairs and Kumiko went straight to the bathroom and shut the door. She was in there for the whole hour or so I have no idea doing what but when I had to pee I set the dead bolt in the door so it wouldn't shut all the way and went up one floor to use the public bathroom. I was kinda trying to avoid Kumiko during this time. Anyways, she came out around 9ish and asked if I wanted to go get something to eat. So we headed out to find dinner. After walking in circles we ended up going to this Japanese restaurant haha. This was weird, my brain didn't know how to comprehend a Japanese waitress speaking Spanish in a Japanese restaurant. And on top of that as soon as we sit down the lady who seated us throws like a million different menus on our table - ones in Spanish, ones in English, lists in which we can pick 5 dishes from for 13.35 euros and another list in which for 9 euros we can pick 3 options and we can use the numbers next to each dish on the lists in Spanish to find them on the English menus, or we can use the bug menus and order from the set meals for 2 people, or we can just order large dishes, or individual dishes it was chaos! I felt like I was doing homework! In the end we decided to each do the 5 small dishes each for 13.35 per person. I got friend wontons, miso soup, raw fish, dumplings and uh a breaded meat in a sweet and sour sauce. All in all it was pretty good and a cool idea having multiple small dishes rather than one big dish. We called it a night after that and went to bed after check some internetz like right now.

Tomorrow we are going to try and visit Hospital de Sant Pau with a guided tour so we can get access to the tunnels since the whole place is under construction right now. Also get a quick lunch, pick up some snacks for the bus ride back to Madrid and finally get to the bus station before 2:30pm.

Over and out - :D

written by

Kennyboy12 on July 17, 2011 from Barcelona, Spain

from the travel blog: 2011 - Happy Birthday from España

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