barcelona, spain

we flew into barcelona a day before we had to get on board the ship. after a day and a half of travel we got into the airport around 11:30 am. we were both pretty paranoid about the airline loosing our luggage so when we had to wait for almost 2 hours to get our bags we were a little stressed out. but finally we had our bags and so we caught the metro and headed for our hotel. expedia had given us an address so we just decided to get there via metro and foot. when we finally got to the street and number where the hotel was we found that such hotel and said address did not exist. we were both tired and hungry and now chris was angry too. he left me in another hotels lobby and ran to an internet cafe so he could call the hotel. it turned out that the hotel was in tarrasa, which was 40 minutes by taxi outside of barcelona. we had suspected that this might be the case because we looked up the hotel website while we were booking the hotel and found that the location did not match the location of the expedia website. luckily we were able to cancel our reservation and expedia refunded our money and gave us a voucher toward our next booking. but we still didn't have a hotel. so we walked around barcelona looking for a place to stay but every where we stopped was full. by now it was 3 in the afternoon and we were still walking around with all our luggage. finally someone directed us to the office of tourism who hooked us up with a nice hotel. after checking in, we went over the the sagrada familia cathedral.

we walked around and went to a park where we saw tons of old men playing patonka {bocce ball}.

we sat and watched them for quite a while, they took the game so seriously and they even had men officiating. in the park we also ran into some old men from iraq. we took their picture and then after we got them to take our picture they kept wanting to take pictures with me after they found out we were americans. they would say something in their language and then laugh and then say "take you picture?" to me. i was afraid they were getting our pictures to take to their leaders...

we then meandered over to las ramblas, which is a huge market that runs down the middle of the street all the way to the harbour. there are also people who dress up as statues and pose all day as different things.

we found a little restuarant on las ramblas that had paella {chris' favorite spanish dish}. it's a rice meat and vegetable dish that is made with safron and a bunch of other spices. it was super good and i'm hoping to find a good recipe that isn't too hard to replicate. after dinner we walked the rest of las ramblas to the pier where we would catch our bus the next morning.

saturday morning we woke up and walked to the mercadona {a small supermarket} to grab some breakfast. chris' favorite pastry from spain is a napolitana, which is similar to a croissant with chocolate inside...super delish. we got a couple of those and then christ wanted some horchata {spanish horchata is different from mexican horchata because it is made from tiger nuts instead of rice...and don't ask me what tiger nuts are because i have no idea}. after breakfast and a little walking around we checked out of the hotel and headed for the ship. we decided to take a taxi and boy was that a mistake. when we arrived at the dock the meter read 13 euros and then he arbitrarily added 10 more euro like we wouldn't notice. stupid taxi drivers...and this wouldn't be the last time we were taken advantage of...