Well my time here in Barcelona is coming to an end, the hostel we’ve stayed at, Saint Jordi Alberg, has been amazing, very friendly staff who make you feel extremely welcome, and a good vibe to the place.

Some of the highlights from the trip:

La Ramblas
This is THE strip in Barcelona.  It’s about a 2km long street with a massive center walkway where there are street performers, little shops and sweet patios for which to eat Tapas and have a few drinks.  The highlight of the strip are the people that dress up like statues and then there are actual statues, so you can’t really tell which are which, and you start approaching both with a large amount of caution for fear of them moving at the last second to freak you out…

The greatest was when I was trying to take a picture of one, and my camera screen washed out white, and I got all confused, then tried to take another picture and the screen went white again, then when I looked up I saw that the statue man was reflecting the sun with a mirror into my lense and then we both burst out laughing and he pointed down for a small donation.  I thought it was such a hilarious tactic that I went and gave him some money and he let me take his picture in peace and even did a little celebration thing =)

Beach
The beach is great because the weather is amazing and there´s nice scenery to look at too .  Also there were tons of windsurfers and kite surfers out every day so I enjoyed watching them.  Sadly the rental places didn’t start for another 10 days so I was out of luck, hopefuly I’ll get out in the greek islands.

There are also people trying to work the beach which are hilarious.  There are a bunch of Indian men that carry around beer and water and about every 20 seconds someone comes by saying “Servosas, beer, agua, cola” and they just walk up and down the beach repeating that over and over and over in the most monotonous tone you´ve ever heard.  Then there are also the Chinese ladies that are always walking by, a little less frequently though saying “Massage?? Massage??”  and then they smile at you when you look at them and offer a 5Euro massage.  I only saw one person ever actually get one though, so I’m not sure how much money they actually make.

El Gato Negro
This place rocked.  It was a shot bar that has over 150 shots or so with a giant list of them on the wall.  We did many, many shots here.  There was even some crazy one where they vaporized the alcohol with fire and some crazy method with a bowl and glass, so you do the shot and then you breath in the alcohol, very crazy and burns a lot hahaha but fun none the less to see who can breath in the vapour the longest.

City Design
The architecture here is beautiful.  The little parks surrounding the Gaudi building are very nice and everything in the city is laid out very well.  The sidewalks are all tiled and add a nice touch to the ambience of the city.  It’s also nice that they don’t have any skyscrappers so everything just seems so much more open.  Combining that with tapered corners at intersections and little monuments in the middle of intersections randomly throughout the city, it really is a stunning place.

Siesta
When they say they have a siesta from 3-5pm…they have a siesta from 3-5.  Literally the entire city shuts down, it’s crazyness.  Only a few places are actually open, like a few of the supermarkets.

Parc Guelle
We went to this park today on our last day here in Barcelona.  It´s essentially a park designed by Gaudi that was supposed to be a private and isolated residential garden with around 60 houses.  Josep Guelle hired Gaudi to design the infrastructure but when it was time to sell the houses a few years later, there was a lack of interest and then the city bought the area and turned it into a private park.

Now what´s cool is that off the main paths, there are smaller trails, almost like goat paths through forested parts of the park.  Billy and I took a lot of those, and kept climbing higher and higher on the mountain the park sits on.  Eventually we found a trail to the very peak of the mountain that was actually far away from the park and way off the beaten path.  It was a stunning view and no one was there as you had to do some rock climbing to get up there.  It was a truly satisfying moment with an amazing view of the entire city.

Once we got our fill of the view, instead of returning down the path we came we decided to take another small path that dropped down over the other side of the mountain and into the real Barcelona, not the tourist areas that we were accustomed to.  We wandered around for a bit, appreciating what Barcelona is really like and then went into some little restaurant for a meal!  We just chose things randomly off the hand-written menu as no one there spoke any english and we had no clue what the menu was saying.  We ended up getting some crazy soups, then a main meal of meat, fries and fried eggplant, a coke, yogurt for dessert and then when we tried to ask for the check we ended up getting espressos instead as there was a hilarious breakdown in communication between us and the guy working there.  So we had our espressos which turned out to be quite good and then finally got the bill.  It all only cost 9 Euro each, which was awesome, because a similar meal in the touristy area probably would have been around 15-20 Euros each at least!  We then caught a bus back to the hostel and now here I am typing up this post!

The End
Tomorrow we leave for Greece and it´s going to be a long day of airports as we first fly to Brussels, have a 4 hour layover and then another 3.5 hour flight to Athens.  So it´s a 7:30am – 8:30pm day…not going to be fun, especially since we´re going to be tired from partying tonight =) but ah well, I´m sure there will be lots of time to sleep and relax when we finally get to the islands of Greece.