BARCELONA!!!

 

My apologies for not posting anything for about a month! I had written a ton of posts on my little netbook but it has crashed! So I have had to re-do everything. Just a warning to everyone this is a really long post haha.

So for those of you who just haven’t put all the puzzle pieces together yet, I now live in Sweden! CRAZY RIGHT! Well its cold in Sweden! Most Swedes are surprised that the other UVic boys and I aren’t use to the tad bit nipply weather but then we go on to explain that where we come from in Canada you can only build igloos 2 or 3 times a year!!!! So a little while ago when the Jonkoping crew were trying to figure out where we wanted to go for the rest of what I like to call “academic relaxation breaks”. We decided going somewhere warm would be really awesome and we all really wanted to go to Spain so we made it happen. We did some dangles and got return tickets to Barcelona Spain for around $75. I actually almost didn’t end up going at the last second because I was unfortunately mentally and physically paralyzed due to a terribly awful case of strep throat. The day before we were supposed to leave I still couldn’t swallow anything (Yes that is what she said, well done) and I had a pretty ferocious fever. So I went to the doctor (which was quite an interesting process in itself) and got some DRUGS!!! I felt so much better the next morning so we peaced out to Barcelona. We did unfortunately have to sleep that night in the Skavsta airport which I am sure the equivalent to hell haha. Most Ryan Air airports are barer then old Mother Hubbard and all of her cupboards combined! So you can either sleep on the floor, claim 5 or 6 wooden chairs and make a chair bed, or........ sleep on the floor. Andrew was the only one that didn’t even try and sleep but he made up games that involved all of us which kept him quite amused haha. Here is Grammer making his bed for the night.

When we landed in Barcelona we walk across the city to our hostel. Now if you ever go to Barcelona please do yourself a favour and go to this hostel. It’s called “Kabul” and it’s AWESOME! It is right no las Rambla the main tourist strip, its in walking distance of the beach, you get free dinner and breakfast, 30 mins of free internet a day, they take you to a new club every night, and the best part yet they are located right beside a bakery that makes the best donuts in Spain! The hostel encourages drinking games and just good old fashion drinking so there is never a dull moment. I want to give a shout out to Zed’s sister Safeena for recommending Kabul to us. Here are some arrival pics and shots of Kabul.

This is a shot I took from our bedroom windown

The first night we got into the hostel and grab some wine then commenced the drankin. We went to one of Barcelona’s most popular clubs “Opium” which comes complete with beach access, a huge patio, a massive dance floor, and some kind of Spanish dancing girls. One point in the night we went onto the beach and zed had to relieve himself unfortunately there were some well disguised undercover cops who really did not appreciate this. Long story short Zed talked himself out of a lifetime in a Spanish jail cell by explaining to the policemen that he was very sorry but in Canada it is perfectly legal to urinate on beaches haha. Here are some pics of us doing our thing and of the club. 

Now we live in a world of about 9 billion people, thats a lot, but I have had so many crazy small world stories happen in my life while traveling and am inclined to tell you one more we experienced in Barcelona on our first night. Barcelona is a city of about 3 million and it seems that if you closed your eyes and throw a rock you would hit a club. Squamish B.C. has the population of about 15,000. Thus what do you think the probability of someone from Squamish B.C. running into his friend who is also from Squamish in Barcelona Spain in a random night club? Well apparently a lot higher then I would have guessed. After the whole urination incident we went back to the patio to get back into the club when a girl behind us thought we budged in front of her and her friends in the line to get back in and said “I guess these guys don’t know what lines are”. We all looked around and Zed realized that this girl was an old friend of his from Squamish B.C. haha. It was crazy, he actually knew her whole group and we ended up partying with them for the rest of the night. It was a great first night. Heres a pic of the friends being reunited!

The second day was pretty damn LEGEND! ......Wait for it!...... I hope your not lactose intolerant because the next word is .... DAIRY! Grammer and myself got up early and went to the bakery just outside the square that Kabul is in and grabbed some BITCHEN donuts and bread items and made our way over to the FC Barcelona store to inquire about getting some tickets for that night’s game. We got some info and realized it would be better to go to another ticket outlet just because at the store the line was longer then my...... well it was long. So we went back to the hostel and grabbed the boys, headed to las Rambla and grabbed 4 tickets. We then headed to the beach for some fun in the sun. We walked about 3 km and might have hit another bakery on the way in order to acquire addition donut supplies and then got to the beach. It was a burning 31 degrees that day so it was a nice contrast to what we were use to in Sweden. Once we arrived on the beach i remembered that many beaches in Spain are topless and this was just a fantastic realization. It could have been the overdose of baked goods, topless women, the 31 degree weather making me irrational but whatever the reason was i decided not to buy sunscreen that day. I spent the whole day hanging out in the sand, playing toss with the boys, or beach volleyball. Now i know i look quite tanned, on many occasions I have even been called a “bronzed god”, but the truth is i do indeed burn. Needless to say i got DESTROYED that day haha. But it was all worth it because there was an outdoor gym on the beach thus I could get two birds stoned at once! Hit the beach and have fun but also get HUGE at the same time! Here are some photogs.

We then grabbed some food and went home changed and headed to the Barcelona soccer game. We were a bit late due to the purchasing of wobbly pops but we didn’t miss anything. My team for all international games is Spain so it was awesome to see Barcelona play because they have so many of my favourite players. It was a great game and Barcelona ended up winning 1-0. David Vila scored in the second half with a great goal. I was surprised however by the lack of ....... crazy soccer hooligans. For the most part it wasn’t that loud, everyone was pretty calm and there were only a couple of chants. I think it was because it wasn’t that big of a game. None the less it was a great experience to see such high quality soccer live and just be involved in the overall atmosphere. I would recommend it to anyone that has a chance to see a high calibre European soccer game. Here are some pictures of the game. 

After the game we went back to the hostel and partied with a bunch of people that were staying there.

The next day we met up with two guys I met the night before. One of the guys named josh had a pretty rough night that night haha. We all got him pretty drunk at kings cup and apparently he went back up to his room at some point in the night and urinated all over a girls open bag that was staying in the same room as him haha, so you know he is a good guy. So we grabbed him and his friend Soloman and went on a huge biking tour of the city. It was the best way to see the city. We rented bikes for $5 and had them for the whole day. We went and stopped at Goudies “Sagrada Familya” which was pretty amazing! I would highly suggest you to check out Zed's video of us biking around Barcelona, it's kid of funny. Here are some pictures. 

We then just biked around the city, and then for lunch we tracked down a highly recommended tappa bar that Zed’s sister told us about. It was awesome we had some Champaign and tried basically everything on the menu.

We then biked down to a well known park and adventured around.

Once we realized the time we started to head out of the park and then it all went wrong...... While we were leaving the park Zed got a wee bit excited repeatedly started to do “SICK JUMPS” with his bike haha. Unfortunately when he was showing me his skills he whipped out hard haha. He wasn’t that hurt but he broke his bike haha. 

Soloman was the only one to turn around and everyone carried on because they didn’t know anything had happened haha. We had 30 minutes to get the bikes back at that point, it was getting dark, and we had no idea where we were. We ended up finding a taxi throwing Zed and the bike in the taxi and sending them off then me and Soloman found our way back to the rental place with 5 minutes to spare, it was awesome. Apparently the guy that ran the rental place asked if someone had tried to steal the bike and if that was why the front wheel was destroyed, so Zed just said yes and everything was fine haha. We went back to Kabul showered up grabbed some beer at the bar and I found myself downstairs talking with some Americans and one of Zed’s friends from Squamish that checked into the hostel that day. A street drawer came around and Zed’s buddy got him to draw quick sketches of all of us. Unfortunately he did me last and the fastest and thus the drawling looks more like blonde Robert De Niro then me haha. Check it.

One piece of information i forgot to explain was that why picked September 20^th to arrive in Barcelona because that was the beginning of the “end of summer festival” which meant tons of events and activities were going on all around the city. One thing that happened each night during this festival was fireworks! That night we met up with a bunch of people down on the beach and watch the fireworks. It was the great country of CANADA who was performing that night and it was awesome! Here are some picture of some shows going on throughout the city and the fireworks!

Graham’s good friend Kevin Whitmarsh who is studying in northern Spain met up with us half way through the fireworks. I wasn’t sure if he was worthy but then I was like “could it be?” and yes it could........... He became the fifth addition to our wolf pack and was inducted into the game of life the next night. 

Wow I don’t think I have explained “Life” yet to you fine people. This is of course absolutely ridiculous of me because this is something everyone should understand and integrate into their lives in order to increase ones average utility level by at least 3 fold. However this is already a massive post so I shall leave that for another day.

After the fantastic fireworks we all drank on the beach together for awhile then our wolf pack of 5 went back to our hostel quickly then went to the famed “RASMATAZ!!!”. This is supposed to be one if not thee biggest clubs in the world and Barcelona’s most popular and renown club. It consists of at least 6 different clubs put together. It was MASSIVE!, you were able to move from one club to another and all of which had a different theme, style, and music. It was definitely an experience and things got a little bit messy.

The next day we had to move hostels because Kabul was full for the rest of our stay. It took us awhile to find our new hostel but once we did we had quite a lengthy cat nap and then grabbed a bottle of 80% absinthe and let the chips fall where they may haha. We went looking for a shot bar Zed’s sister told us to find but due to our state we weren’t extremely effective in locating ........ well anything haha. We ended up wandering around the city making friends, getting into street brawls with one another, unfortunately breaking stuff, and of course eating a ton of Kebabs. If you have never had absinthe before keep it that way! Here are some highlights of the night.

CLIFF HANGER!!

haha This guy was nuts!

You just got ICED!

Saturday was our last day but was defiantly my favourite.  We went to Park Guel which is a huge park with architectural elements to it made by Gaudi. It is amazingly trippy and had a great look out of the whole city. It’s a great day trip for people with massive hangovers because a huge series of escalaters take you to the top!!!! CHECK IT!

We then jumped on a couple subway trains and a trolley and were taken up to Tibidabo. This was what I believe to be the highest point in Barcelona. On this tippy top mountain there is an amusement park built around the most amazing church ever. I took some amazing pictures here and waited for the sun to set so we could get the best view ever. At the time there was a wedding going on so there were rose peddles and confetti blowing around. It was a pretty magical time. Andrew convinced me to pay like 4 more euro to go to the very top of the church and it was worth EVERY PENNY! If you ever have an option to pay a little bit more for a better view DO IT!! Here are some of my favourates from Tibidabo.

That night we went to the best random find of the trip which was “Lactuca buffet”. At this fine establishment one is able to drink and eat and much as their heart desires! Thats right sports fans UNLIMITED BEER AND FOOD! If you go to Barcelona seek this holly place out! Its a goldmine!

That night we finally found the fabled shot bar “El Gato Negro”. Once again if you ever go to Barcelona you have to go here and order a “Monica Lewinsky”. After we (I mean Kevin) experienced that hahaha, we had a few more drinks said good morrow to Kevin and went to the bus station so we could get bus to the airport to go home. We had to line up to get tickets for the next bus and fortunately for us Andrew lined up behind the craziest Spaniard anyone could ever encounter haha. If anyone was ever going to stab us to death it would have been this duder haha. He was laughing and yell at himself………. It was AWESOME! I took a picture of him but he saw me. He was pleasantly amused by this though so everything was good to go. 

So that just about finished up our Barcelona adventure except for one more thing. When we were walking around Park Guel Andrew, Zed, and Graham found this vendor who was selling cardboard TV characters that had magnets on them. The idea was that to take a piece of string and attach the character to the middle of the string so he is off the ground, then one side to a speaker, and the other side to a wall. Once the speaker plays a song with a lot of base these guys were suppose to start bobbing and dancing.  hahahaha. They got a “good deal” and bought a couple of these guys. While we were waiting for our plane to leave Barcelona we found out something amazing………… THESE AMAZINGLY OVER PRICED CARDBOARD CUT OUTS WERE SIMPLY……….. AMAZINGLY OVER PRICED CARDBOARD CUT OUTS HAHA. Check out this video of the boy’s realization haha.

Barcelona was an amazing city! If I had to describe the city in one word it would be “alive”. No matter if it was 1 in afternoon or 4 in morning the streets were just as busy. There are always places to go and things to do. If I could go to any city with a big group of friends it would defiantly be Barcelona. The food was great, the weather was hot, and the clubs were plentiful! It was a fantastic trip! Do yourself a favour while your young and go check this city out if you haven’t already!