Barcelona Adventures Part Uno: ¡Hola tío!

As promised, I am kicking off Tuesday with a quick whirl around Barcelona!  A ramble down the Ramblas, if you will.  (Yes, I am aware of how terrible that pun is.  I already regret it, but I know you will all still love me, even in this state.)  

First thing to know about Barcelona:
They are so obsessed with their football (soccer) team that
they even have their own brand of chips.   

I should've known that my Barcelona trip would be good (and by good I mean completely absurd) from the very beginning because my flight was quite.. interesting to say the least.  I met a fellow traveler from Mexico who was going to Barcelona for a few hours to pick up his belongings before he went back to school in Switzerland. -- Reasons I love Europe:  You can say things like, "I'm just going to Dublin for the weekend!" -- Everything was great until he started talking about how he was smuggling drugs and then proceeded to tell the person in the seat next to me that I was his girlfriend and asked to sit next to me.  So I ended up spending my entire 7.5 hour flight with him.  


And it was actually pretty great!  We watched movies, he tried to flirt with the very gay flight attendant to get free booze (and sadly failed), and exchanged stories about our respective homelands.  Once we got to Barcelona, he helped me with all my stuff all the way until city center.  (Yay for batting my eyelashes and not having to carry heavy things.  Except RAWR! girl power all the way I totally could have done it myself.  But in the great words of Phoebe Buffay, "Oh, I wish I could, but I don't want to.")   


Once I got to S & L's place, I got to eat the yummiest Spanish lunch ever -- homemade paella.  Yes, I asked for the most typical Spanish dish ever.  Sue me.  That shit is good and you know it.  Shortly after, JMS, who I hadn't seen in 2 years finally came!  I kind of jumped on him like a spider monkey and didn't let go for a while. 

I didn't take a picture of L's paella but this one is equally as good!
(courtesy of Flickr user jlastras)

It was really after lunch that the craziness started.  Read more after the jump!


After sleeping off the food coma, JMS, S, L, & I went out to the Barceloneta neighborhood for a night out with L's coworker & coworker's friend, both of whom I absolutely loved.  We started the night off at the champañería Can Paixano.  Think tiny bar with ridiculously cheap glasses of cava (sparkling wine from Cataluña) and tapas.  Once we got there, L found 45€ on the ground so we drank for free for a while, considering glasses of cava were going for 1€ a pop.  I know, dangerous.

courtesy of canpaixano.com

After that we went to tiny bar #2 that had a drink called leche de pantera that apparently contained some sort of house secret, which again, sounds like a poor life choice, but when in Barcelona.. get heavily drunk!  It was some sort of combination of cream, rum, gin, and sorority girl.  And it was delicious.  


I want to say that after bar #2, things got hazy.  We ended up going to 2 other places, and drinking a piss ton of vodka.  This resulted in me trying to get S to smile in a photo, which everyone knows is humanly impossible considering his former Soviet ways.  In Soviet Russia, picture takes you.  Observe: 

from left:  JMS, me, S.  Look at that stone cold glare. 

At this point, we were at bar #4, and were full of every type of alcohol imaginable (mainly vodka.)  So there was a lot of pushing, poking, tickling.  The closest we got to getting him to smile was this:  

It was worth a shot.
If you ask him, he'll say he's merely acknowledging a
humorous situation in the manliest of manners.

After this we somehow ended up at a gay night club, which I have no problems with because I don't have to worry about (in the wise words of Jenna Marbles) anyone's penis touching my butthole.  


Moral of the story:  Don't question strange beverages in foreign countries.  They give you superpowers that allow you to break through the icy cold hearts of Soviet men.  


Be sure to stop by again for more Barcelona posts!  This was only Day 1.  You can imagine the ridiculosity that ensued.. 


-Beetle, xx.