(Note: this post lacks pictures because the camera battery is charging. Also, it covers 2 days.)
Tuesday, May 5th
Good news everyone! Even though we ended up with the same exactly livery driver to return us to the airport in Rome and flew on a low-cost European airline, we are safely in Barcelona, Spain!
We landed around 11:30AM yesterday and had to wait a bit for our driver who talked way too much and in way too broken English for our tired minds to comprehend. He also made us wait in the car while he scouted out where we had to walk to our hotel because he kept warning us about gypsies stealing our stuff. For what it's worth, we still haven't seen a gypsy....
The room wasn't ready, so we checked in our bags and grabbed lunch from some sausage place a few blocks walk away. And let me tell you: this isn't Rome. There is so much more color, liveliness and different food options here. It's such a different atmosphere and it's phenomenal. Not that we didn't love Rome, but a change of pace like this was really nice to have. It's really hard to describe how incredibly different it is here vs. Rome.
After lunch, we meandered back to the hotel and went up to our now ready room. Which was a cave.
No really, for a brief moment we didn't think we even had a window. It was tiny, no where to put a suitcase, and had almost no light coming in. Mark this one in your calendar: Nick for once actually did something like ask for a new room. And he got it to! Our new room is like a whole different hotel and it's actually quite nice. Which is good, because we proceeded to take a two hour nap because we were awake way too early that morning to catch our flight.
Once we woke up, we headed out for a small walking tour of the area that we are in. Mainly, another church: La Catedral de Barcelona. This was much different than many of the churches in Rome. Imagine the church we got married in, 5 times the size, remove the paintings on the wall, and add way more detail to all the alters (I mean all of them, there had to be 20-30 in total). I'll add some pictures tomorrow hopefully so you can see what I mean.
Finally, we went to grab a beer at a local bar. And for the first time in a week and a half, we were someplace that specialized in beer and not wine. Best. Beer. Ever. Just for that reason alone. We also proceeded to find a great tapas place and had a fantastic time. All in all, a great first day in Barcelona.
Wednesday, May 6th
We woke up early today to get to the Sagrada Familia at opening and beat the lines. We didn't make opening and we had no chance of getting in until late afternoon. Womp womp. Good news, we went to the nearby cafe, used the Wifi on my phone and have tickets for tomorrow. We also figured out how to use the extensive Barcelona Metro. Yay for saving our feet!
Instead, we ended up at the Barcelona Aquarium. It had a tunnel under the water. Meaning we watched sharks swim over us. That was pretty awesome. I'll have some pictures and videos tomorrow. We also spent some time walking around the nearby pier which was like a smaller version of Navy Pier in Chicago. We mainly needed to kill time to buy the tickets for a catamaran jazz cruise we wanted to take in the afternoon.
And take that cruise we did. It honestly was just fantastic to sit on a boat out in the water off the coast of Barcelona for an hour and half. So this is what most people's honeymoons feel like!
Finally, we capped the day sitting in a dive bar watching the local futbol team in a semi-final game. That was quite the experience. Soccer fans in Europe are a wild bunch when they score.
Hopefully pictures tomorrow with some more details!
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