6/11: Barcelona

Today we got up somewhat late, just 20 minutes or so late for breakfast. Drat. But I score a muffin from the nice Canadian girl in the next bunk and split a Clif bar with Brett, and am strangely not hungry even though I haven´t really eaten that much since a paltry sandwich at like 4:30 yesterday. What´s cool about this place, though, is that it has free breakfast AND free dinner, which is good because they don´t have a kitchen that we can use. We went out to walk around a bit in the morning, and also to try and find a towel and sunscreen, particularly since I happen to have forgotten my bath towel in Dublin. I have a degree, I´m smart, I swear. Anyway. Wandered around for a while, went in El Corte Ingles, which is this HUGE store with everything from clothes to jewelry to sporting equipment to groceries. However, the particular one we went in was pretty small and did not have sunscreen or towels. No housewares department, I guess. But we did find sunscreen at a pharmacy along the street and bought gaudy beach towels from a street vendor for the appalling price of 10 Euro. Oh well. Walked to the beach (10 minute walk, my ASS) in our flip flops which gave me a blister between my toes. That´s the first time I´ve EVER gotten that type of blister from flip flops. Go figure. I need to be super careful in the showers from now on, until it heals, so that I don´t get some awful infection. I already wear my flip flops in the shower, but caution is important!

Hung out at the beach, which had a fantastic breeze that kept me from getting too hot. The sand is very strange at the beach here, more like a mixture of kitty litter and dirt than the sand we´re used to in the States. We´d been warned that it would be dirty and crowded, but maybe it´s just that we´re from a beach city, but the beach seemed totally fine to me. There´s all these people that walk around trying to sell stuff, and there are particular racial divisions in those people - the Indians sell beer and Fanta and stuff (and coconut pieces, for some reason), the asian women try to get you to buy a massage that SUCKS - lots of slapping and weird maneuvers. My parents would be just appalled. Those women are VERY aggressive, also. Oh well. The water is beautiful, but colder than I expected, with a weird drop-off not too far out. Very salty, also.

Drank gazpacho as we walked there/back, ate bananas and apples, and generally just hung out- we realized that this is our biggest responsibility right now, just hanging out and not getting sunburnt. Went back to the hostel to shower and put on real shoes, then walked around and took pictures, and now we´re going to go out on La Rambla and drink a jug of sangria at a street side cafe (there are TONS AND TONS) and maybe buy postcards.

I love it here. I could totally live here. It´s so fucking beautiful.