The rest of Barcelona

So it's been a while since our last post and a lot has been going on. I'm personally sitting in a very nice hostel in Berlin sans Josie, but I think I'll start at the beginning first. I believe Josie left off with us about to hit up the night life in Barcelona. And boy did we do that.

As she mentioned we would do, we took a bike tour of Barcelona in the afternoon, which is a great way to see ALL of a given city in a very limited time. We saw (and took pictures) of all of these things: the famous, uncompleted Gaudi cathedral, the Cataluyna Parliament, the "offices" (more like a castle) from which some Spanish monarchs ruled, a gorgeous fountain (again by Gaudi), the pier, and probably several other areas that I'm forgetting. All this in four hours.











Probably the greatest benefit of the tour was meeting the tour guide, an Irishman named Peter. He mentioned to us that all his friends would be watching the Champions league final (more on this in a second) and wouldn't mind showing us around some bars as he was looking for company anyway. So after the tour, ourselves and a few others started bar crawling. At the first place, I saw that there was a TV showing a birds-eye view of a giant, packed stadium. There were no words on the screen except, "Madrid" as if the sight needed no explanation. I felt it was something important so I asked one of our fellow bar crawlers what was going on. Of course, this was the aforementioned Champions League Final, essentially the super bowl of soccer. In some respects, its bigger than the World Cup.

Naturally, many of the bars we visited were absolutely packed and there wasn't a television screen that wasn't showing the game to be found. Peter seemed to know all the proprietors or bartenders of every bar we visited and shots kept appearing out of nowhere. At one quieter tapas bar, Peter procured three jugs of "panthers milk" which apparently is made from real panthers, or at least that's what the owner claims. We also enjoyed many tapas (essentially appetizer sized plates of random goodies) here. As I haven't known the time this entire month, it's hard for me to say how long we stayed out. It might have been until sunrise as had been my goal; when in Barcelona... Regardless it was an enjoyable night filled with new friends from many different places.





The next day was a little more tame, seeing as we went to the beach, well the nude beach to be exact. In general, we found ourselves rather wishing it was not a nude beach. But it's all part of the Barcelonian experience. This all occurred several days ago so I'm trying to remember exactly what we did after. I can say that at night we went to this fountain light show, which was absolutely stunning. We have many many pictures of it and basically there are 15 minute segments every half an hour of this giant fountain spraying water in rhythm to various forms of music. We did a little bit of climbing around some of the surrounding terrain to gain an amazing (and illicit) vantage point. All in all a great way to cap off Barcelona.