Our yummy desserts!
Point-and-eat :)
The metro presented us with some big laughs. We walked down into the metro station from Las Ramblas. First of all, that’s weird. There should not be escalators going down into the sidewalk. I still can’t get over that! Then we walk in, and there’s a line to buy tickets from machines. There were 6 of us, so the cheapest option was to buy a 10-use pass and swipe it 6 times for all of us. Kelsey decided that she didn’t have enough pesos—yes, PESOS—with her to pay for it. I wasn’t aware that we traveled from Spain to Mexico! Then Katie decided to pay with her debit card. Wrong pin. Trying again, wrong pin. Uh oh! My card was the last one tried, and thank goodness it worked! Crisis 1, averted. With our ticket, we proceeded to the station where you swipe your ticket and go through these swishy automatic doors. The 2 doors were parallel and vertical, and when they opened they swished down and out, and when then closed the swished down and in. Fancy! Well anyway, we swiped the ticket once and someone was supposed to go through the swishy door. Two girls tried to go at once and got stuck, then another girl ran through them in case the doors closed quickly. Right after she got through (and barely), the swishy doors SWOOSHED shut so quickly! Now we knew we had to work fast. Next swipe, GO GO GO!!! Next, GO!!!!!!! And yes, all of us were yelling and very into it. Finally we all got through, and on the last person discovered that all of that was completely unnecessary. Apparently the swishy doors open when you swipe, then close RIGHT after you go through them. They have a sensor. And we are idiots. Anyway, at this point we were laughing soooo hard. All of the sudden a man walking towards us hissed at us. It was like he was spitting, only I don’t think he did. Um…..? That made us laugh about 10 times harder!
Finally we got to the actual metro loading zone. …And then realized we were on the wrong side. And the only way to get to the other side…wait, there wasn’t one. Unless we jump down and ran over the tracks (an impossible height). Not happening! Thank goodness we realized at the last second that we were on the right side, so it came and we got on. I’m pretty sure this was my first metro experience ever! If I’ve been on one before, I don’t remember it at all. Anyway, I heard tons of pickpocketing happens on the metro so of course I was sketched out. All I had was my money belt under my shorts and some money in my bra…BOTH no-no zones. But I was still paranoid! So I placed myself in the middle of the girls. :) Once the metro got to the second stop, it was time to get off. GOOD, because there was a creepy guy that wouldn’t stop staring at me who didn’t get off. As we walked toward the exit, we realized we had no idea where the exit really was. Apparently we were following someone, expecting them to know where to get out, but that someone was just going to another metro. That we almost got on. Woops! Anyway, at this point it was almost 9. We were at Placa de Cataluna, we were just UNDER ground! Kelsey’s famous line of the night (as she has her hands up to the ceiling)- “DANI! We’re here, I promise! We’re just underneath you and can’t figure out how to get up there!” At first it was funny. Then as we kept walking, we really really couldn’t find our way out! About 15 minutes later, all of us on the verge of having claustrophobic breakdowns, we emerged to the outside world! We came up an escalator onto the sidewalk. Again, so weird! Oh, and in the metro station there was a trumpet player. Well, bad choice because it was so loud and made my ears hurt! I would much rather listen to someone playing on the street where the acoustics don’t ruin my eardrums.
We finally got there! 30 minutes late…and Kelsey’s friend wasn’t there. We didn’t blame her because it was the center of where the homeless/jobless people live and are protesting, so we used a precious text to find out where she was. We met her at a restaurant for dinner. It was so good! The menu was just a huge fold-out of pictures of tapas with names of them…en Espanol. So clearly we had no idea what we were eating. We looked really confused and I think the waitress saw us fighting over what all of the words meant, because she came over and brought us menus with a list of the English meanings. MMM not embarrassing at all… There were 6 of us so we ordered some Sangria…it was day 2 in Barcelona and we still hadn’t had it! That wasn’t okay. It was pretty good! I had croquettas and more Spanish tortilla. Nani’s is better! Then I ordered dessert..OH my gosh!!! It was this amazing chocolate thing…I can’t even explain it. Just delicious. One of the best desserts I’ve had in awhile! Our point-and-eat dinner ended up being yummy!
After dinner, the girls we met who are studying here took us out to a local bar. It REALLY was local…we wouldn’t even have been able to find it if we weren’t taken there! We walked down Las Ramblas, then turned down an alley, then again, and then walked up to this sketchy looking fence. They promised they’ve been there and it’s not sketchy once you get in, so we trusted them. We got in a line and handed the (scary) bouncers our IDs to get in. One girl in, two girls in, my turn. Well apparently he hadn’t seen too many of the tacky California vertical licenses before because for a bit he didn’t believe it was real. Thanks, California. Finally we were all in- and it felt like we were in a different world! The bar was called L’Ovella Negra (Catalan) and means The Black Sheep. It felt like we were in an old movie! Or in an Irish pub! It was so cool and old and weird and amazing! We seriously felt like we stepped into a movie. The girls said we had to get the huge thing of sangria and we were fine with that…well, the “huge thing” ended up being 4 liters! And only 20 euros!! And they served it with popcorn…we thought that was interesting. And yummy! That sangria was SO good- by far the best I’ve had, ever. It was SO sweet and delicious! We spent the rest of the night there all talking and laughing and had a great time! When we were tired (and finished the sangria), we took a taxi back to our summer home (the ship) and went to sleep. What a fun, successful night!
This is me, being a sheep obviously. I thought "BAAAA"-ing
would make a better picture than smiling! :)
Told you we got 4 liters!
No comments:
Post a Comment