A City of Ugly People

Hi All,

It's been awhile. Nice to see you again. I didn't really know this would happen, but thought it might--I've been busy! Once summer started I've had lots to do. Granted, it is still doing fun things like softball and cooking and concerts, but I've hardly had a second to get to the ol bloggy blog. It also took a few days to get over the anger disappointment of Heather's deleted guest blog.

First, a big week for shout-outs. My oldest friend Dana is getting married. My parents had their anniversary this week. Trevor and Claudia should have their baby any minute now. Love you all!

So if you have never been to Barcelona, don't bother. It sucks. Just stay away and leave it alone. For me.

If there is one glaring problem with Barcelona, it's the pickpockets. We had read the guidebooks and seen the websites that warned us about them. I had heard similar warnings about other cities in Europe, but had never really encountered pickpockets before. When we arrived in Barcelona I did my usual practice of switching my wallet to my front pocket and swallowing my passport sealed in a ziplock bag. We got off the train at Las Ramblas. It was a full train. I hear this smack and crash, then this guy in a suit is running and grabbing this other guy. He (the suit) is coming up behind the other guy and smacks his wallet out of the other guy's hand, then grabs it off the floor. Let me explain. This is what the pickpockets do---The pickpockets (pp's) go against the traffic coming off the train. One guy causes a distraction (the crash was one of the pp's kicking the roller suitcase out of the suit guy's hand), then another one bumps into him and grabs the wallet. In this case, I believe the target had been through this before, because he didn't even try and pick up his suitcase and went straight for the wallet. The pp who took it from him was trying to pass it off to one of his partners.

So here is where the funny part starts......

We see this happen and figure out at least two of the pp's. We start walking towards the exit, except the opposite one that most of the people have gone out. There are about 20 of us. So we get to the end of the platform and it is locked---it was closed about an hour sooner. So we all turn around and start heading back to the main exit and we are with the two dudes who grabbed the wallet and they are talking to some other dudes in the group. I try to slow my pace, but they just slow down too and keep up with us. Then this security guard comes around the corner and blows his whistle and yells something in Spanish. Nobody moves....then he points his nightstick at the two dudes who we knew were pp's and also proceeds to pick out another 8-9 of them from this group of 20! So, the security guard gets us to wait, as the pp's go around the corner and the guard says "Velcome to Barcelona!" We continue around the tunnels to our transfer train and the guard ends up going a different direction. We go to this one train, I go through the turnstile first, then Jen, Jaryn and Heather's transit cards don't work and they have to go back to the machine and buy another ticket. Me? I turn around and it's the entire pp gang who we just were with! I just make sure my back is on the wall, hand in front pocket, and give a stare. They eventually get going and my gang comes along with new tickets. You also have to imagine the subway tunnels are really crowded and loud. There were a lot of people around because it was the day before the Easter weekend. Completely nutty.

We all made it out with all of our possessions to our hotel for the night. It was a little below 5 star, but not by much.

Really, it was the last hotel room in Barcelona for that night, which made it fabulous. It also made us appreciate the apartment we rented for the five days following that much more.

Our apartment was near the Sants Estacio. It was a really neat neighborhood with its own square, stores, and restaurants in abundance.

It was a rad place. We ended up having to get a three bedroom because of the Easter thing again, but the extra room was nice. It had large back courtyard, big kitchen, and two bathrooms. It was grand. I just wish agencies would provide salt and pepper when renting a full suite out. I hate having to buy it! Jerks. I'm going to give them a crappy salt and pepper review on Trip Advisor. I might give them a crappy olive oil review too.

The first day in the apartment we oriented ourselves to the downtown. We walked around the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter) which was wicked, a little around L'Exiample, and around Las Ramblas. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked. It was really busy, though, being Good Friday and all. I think Barcelona must get overrun with tourists in the summer---so many juicy wallets to pickpocket!



So because of all this walking around I had to pee. I was drawn to the golden arches to do it. It was, without a doubt, the busiest McDonalds that I have ever been in. It was a zoo. This is just the area to computer place your order.

This is more Barri Gotic and L'Exiample.

The next day Jaryn wasn't feeling so hot, so he took the day off to rest while the rest of us went up to Parc Guell---one of thetop places that I wanted to see in Barcelona. Guell was some rich aristocrat who became the main benefactor to Gaudi and commissioned him to do a lot of work, including building him a mansion in this major piece of land overlooking Barcelona. Guell actually never moved into it, but donated it to the city as a park. It is now one of my favorite places in Europe.

After getting so hopped on Gaudi, we did what every addict does...more Gaudi! We headed out to the apartments that he designed in the city to check out Casa Batillo and Casa Milo.

They were both fantastically amazing. We didn't pay to go in as it was pretty pricey, but they were so wicked. They only got me more hyped up for the Sagrada Familia the next day.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm running out of battery and Internet time and want to finish this today, so the commentary is going by the wayside.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wish I had more time to talk about the Sagrada Familia. It was so cool. Unreal actually.

We did loads more in Barcelona besides looking at Gaudi architecture. Really, we did. It's a great city and I hope you all get to go there if you haven't been....just hold onto your wallet!

Barcelona Dogs!

Barcelona is not a city for cats. I saw one and it was sickly and eating a rotten scampi claw. I did see a lot of really cute small dogs and wanted to take them home with us.

This one is Blanco.

This is Son of Blanco.



OK---Later Skaters.

CC