Oh yeah, giving YOU the fingers on my way to Barcelona. Ahh Barcelona... it was totally different from most places we'd visited because it is a city wholly dedicated to lifestyle. As such, you don't visit Barcelona to see the sights, you visit Barcelona to live the life. It felt much more like a place I could live than an exotic place to visit so there's little to talk about apart from y'know, eating, drinking and hanging out. So that's all I'm going to talk about.
We turned up to our hotel which was right in the heart of the tourist district overlooking Las Ramblas. If you haven't come across Las Ramblas before, it is essentially a 24 hour party/riot masquerading as a huge pedestrian thoroughfare where tourists, street performers and confidence tricksters gather. Our Balcony was literally five metres from the action which meant earplugs were essential for sleep but it was an excellent vantage point to watch drunk tourists get mugged. I love local sports!
Look how successfully I blend in with other tourists on Las Ramblas in my beach gear. I so should be a secret agent...
One of Ruth's ambitions while travelling was to find the best hot chocolate in the world. This meant drinking a hot chocolate almost every day of our trip. A little Cafe in Hanoi was the winner until we stumbled upon this one. Taste? Imagine the sweetest thing you've ever tasted, multiple that sweetness by 1,056,897, condense it to the consistency of mud, add more sugar, then serve in a cup for breakfast. Each sip provided such an hallucinatory sugar high that I saw colours bleed from the walls while polar bears in bowler hats juggled chainsaws while gyrating to Madonna's "Into the Groove"... Maybe mine was spiked, I can't be sure.
Eating...
Drinking...
Hanging out...
Shopping even... Being a leftie I thought I'd found the perfect shop but the left ain't what it used to be. It cost me €15 for a Che Guevarra stubby holder and €20 for a Marx 2008 pin up calendar but it was worth it for Marx's pose in July... grr tiger!
OK there was some tourist action as well. We stopped our rigourous regime of eating and drinking to make a stop at the Gaudi La Sagrada Familia. It is the biggest Catholic Basillica in Spain and based on the designs of an architect (Antonio Gaudi) under the influence of either LSD or hot chocolate, I can't be sure. Unlike traditional church architects, Gaudi wasn't a big fan of straight lines so the whole thing kind of looks like a 5 year old's paper mache model of a church, only made of stone and a trillion times bigger. The problem is that they've been building this thing for 125 years and its still not finished so it kind of comes across like a very beautiful construction site.
When you look closely at the plans, it appears that the finished product will be twice the height of what it is today which makes the projected finish date of 2026 seem somewhat optimistic (Gaudi originally estimated that it would be completed in 2582 after 700 years of building, true story). I did wonder how they funded this ongoing work but that was explained on my entry ticket which said "your admission fee will contribute to the ongoing construction of this building which will never, ever finish because its such a nice little earner and did you see the plans? That shit is crazy." It was written in Spanish but I'm pretty sure that's what it said.
Considering the that the plans were drawn up in the 19th century, it is a pretty amazing achievement because the designs are a little, well, whacky for a conservative Catholic community. Last time I saw those knight guys they were chasing Frodo through middle earth...
But the church had very cool doors.
Spain's most famous son Christopher Columbus points us to the nearest pub... or America... or something... Poor Christopher, if you look closely at the hair on the statue, its white from the years of accumulated bird crap which literally makes him a shit head BOOM BOOM! If only Basil Brush could swear, he'd tell jokes like that.
We also spent a lot of time checking out the amazing graffiti around town although I have to admit...
...this was my favourite. Proving that bad taste is universal, some genius has spray painted that shed with the immortal words "Punk Rock, Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance, Sum 41." Sometimes I weep for the sanity, safety and future of our children...
Anyhow, I liked Barcelona so much Ruth bought me a snow dome. Hours of endless entertainment. Barcelona. Go there. End of story. Next stop Berlin.
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