barcelona, spain june 12

Thank goodness Kristen and I found each other relatively easily at the airport. It was great to see her Thursday morning. We hopped on the aeroport shuttle and headed into town. La Ramblas is one of the main pedestrians streets in barcelona and our hostel was right on it -or so we thought. So we looked out for #75 surrounded by crowds of people and dressed up street performers and random stands like pet ones. We buzzed Casa Juan per the instructions we found online and stored our luggage with the guy we basically woke up. Kris and I decided on a cute tapas place -ordered a bottle of house blanc vino - just under 10 E-woo hoo - this was a welcome change from Switzerland and its sky high prices! The food was good - chorizo, olives, octupus, and fish balls -we caught up on the past few weeks (this consisted mostly of boy stuff) and then we went back to officially check in. As it turns out we were at a different place since we had a room en suite. After sticking around to hear the dos and donts and being given a very handy mcdonalds map, we walked down closer toward the water + Christopher Colon statue. Our room had two balconies and was a pretty good size with wood beams and red walls. They keys were tricky which made us a bit nervous. We took a nap and then got ready for our first night out. We found the most impressive market I have ever been to! Crazy amounts of fresh fruit, vibrant colors, juices - it was pretty amazing - I didn't know where to look first. We had kiwi juice (yum!) and went in search of Palau de la Musica that my cousin had emailed me about. The tours for that same day were sold out and so we bought tickets to that nights performance and then hopped in a cab to get to La Sagrada Famalia Cathedral. Opted for the audio tour and learned much about about Gaudi and the still under construction but breathtaking cathedral. The outside looked like a winter wonderland castle - there are still about 200 people a day that work on it. As part of the tour that was under the building there was a timeline and there we found out that we happened to be visiting on the anniversary of Gaudi's death -6/1o/1926 - how strange! Turns out he was killed by a street car - Kristen guessed right. It closed at 8 pm, we stayed as long as we were able to taking pictures and soaking it all in and then headed down to the square with enough time to have cappacino in a tall glass with empanadas at Alcur Cafe right across from the music place - I was a fan! We took our seats and for the next hour and a half listened to the beautiful sounds of Manuel Gonzalez's guitar. He is so talented and captivating. People were coughing which was distracting but I very much enjoyed the performance. Kristen fell asleep during the first half which was pretty funny. The last song was like jaws/the pink panther/the Beatles, etc. it was very cool. We went to a crepe place right across the street and split a ham, cheese and asparagus crepe and a coconut and nutella crepe...I tried Estrella which is the local popular beer. What a good find this place was. Outside our hostel windows you could hear everything- it was so loud so sleep was disrupted by people yelling at all hours and the sounds of glass trucks.