Barcelona

Barcelona was pretty crazy and a good learning experience as we had a few hiccups. I bought my plane ticket last minute Thursday night which was expensive and flew out Friday to meet Brian. I landed a little after six and told him to call/meet me around that time. It didn't work out as we were in two different terminals. After an hour of walking around the airport I left and went into the city to wait for him. He called and after a few more hours we finally met up.

The first thing to do was find a place to stay. All of the hostels were booked solid except for one, with good reason. We then went around to a few bars and ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe where one of the people we were having a drink with got pick pocketed. She noticed her purse had moved and looked through it to find her wallet was missing and this guy was running for the door. She alerted the restaurant staff and they stopped him and called the Policia. The Policia returned her wallet but did not arrest him because the value of the items stolen was not over 300 euro. They released him which infuriated Brian and I and the Policia told us we could go "handle it ourselves" if we wanted to without fear of being arrested. Well I know Brian and I had a lot better night than that guy did. The only bad thing is that I lost my camera in the altercation so that is why there has been no pictures up to this point...

The next day we rented some bicycles and rode around the city. The harbors there are full of nice boats and the beaches are full of beautiful women. The only downside is that it's fully nude down there and most of the people who take advantage of this are the men. I will not comment on whether or not Brian and I took part in this local activity.






Saturday night we took it easy and only stayed out until 0300, which was a much earlier night than Friday. Unfortunately Brian lost his wallet, camera, and cell phone while on the beach. He went to the water for a minute and turned around and his things were gone. Theft and prostitution are out of control there but the problems are pretty much limited to nighttime.

Sunday we took a cable car ride from the beach front across the city to the top of the hill where an old fort was. It was pretty cool and had some amazing views. We had lunch on top of the hill overlooking the city. It was actually one of the cheaper and better meals we had during the trip.





It might be difficult to tell (to make the image larger, just right click and then click "view image"...and then you can even zoom in) but in this picture the green vein running through the city is La Rambla which is the street we stayed on and was very entertaining.


La Rambla from the ground


In the afternoon we headed to the Barcelona Maritime Museum which had a lot of neat models, information, etc about boats. The centerpiece was this awesome boat that looked like a pirate ship. I'm pretty sure that's what I should take out to the sandbar next time I'm on Lake Norman.



Giant winch


Apparently, divers in the olden days were midgets (PC=little people) with three fingers...


One of the early submarines


That evening we went to Plaza de Espana which has the Bullfighting Arena and the Museuo de Moderno Arto (don't check my espanol).



They had a mini-version of the Bellagio's water fountain music show thing which had drawn out huge crowds.








After watching this for awhile we went and visited Olympic Park where the 1992 Summer Olympics were held. Brian taught me some neat things about the camera that I had bought earlier that day and we took a lot of pictures of this giant needle thing.


Me pointing to my new camera fanny pack so I didn't lose yet another camera.




We somehow got locked in the Olympic Park and had to crawl under the gate to get out.


During some point in the trip I realized that I had booked my return flight one day too late (Tuesday). I tried to get AlItalia to bump my flight ahead one day but it is a small airline and no flights could get me to Frankfurt in time. So I headed over to Lufthansa to see if they had any flights available. After a long wait in a long line I got a seat on the next flight out for only 244 euro which was a lot better than what I had expected to pay. I had just enough time to get to the gate, drink one last awful Spanish beer (compared to the Germans'), and even get bumped up to first class because the plane was full. Overall, not a bad deal. Since Brian had lost a lot of his things, in particular, a way to access more money, I left him a few hundred euro and tried to give him my AlItalia ticket. After a long discussion with the ticket counter they could not give him the ticket (which I still think is BS). He was 40 euro short of buying his own Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt so Mama G and I tried to figure out how to get money to him while we had no way to communicate with him except through sporadic email and only being able to receive calls from him. She was finally able to wire him some money and the next thing I know Brian calls me from the Schweinfurt Hauptbanhof (train station) asking for a ride. He has been living with me for a couple days now as he rests up and tries to get his things back together before heading back out on the road.