We took the train back home, where at this point, I ran out of fucks to give about being polite to anyone around me. I ran over old ladies and slammed into anyone that didn't get out of my way when trying to exit the train. Yes, it was a dick move, no, I don't care.
We got back to our jellyfish mecca and changed. We had decided to pool all of our remaining euros and have the most expensive amazing final dinner in spain we could find, hopefully involving steak.
I somehow convinced tracey that wearing my heels was a good idea because we were only going to go just up the road to placa mayor, a place we had stumbled into when we first arrived and was filled with restaurants on all sides of the square. As it turns out, however, I am terrible at navigation and it was much, much farther than we had remembered and her feet had swollen to equal the size of mine. We also forgot about the spanish golden hour for dinner, which means you can't find anything to eat past 10PM. We found the square by asking someone on the street "donde esta placa mayor?" and just going in the direction they pointed since we couldn't understand their directions, then asking another person and going in the direction they pointed and then asking again.
As soon as we arrived (and ran into the damn golden goat man), we browsed the menu at the stand in front of the first restaurant, where they told us that the entire square would stop serving food within the next 10 minutes and so we should just sit. We ignored his advice, and walked to the next one, and then the next. Each time, the hosts would be obnoxious and we'd move on, telling them we were looking at all the menus first. By the time we got to the end, the 10 minutes had passed, and it turned out that first guy was totally right. We had decided that all the menus were roughly the same and so we'd just eat at the place that had the nicest host. As we sat, they told us no food even though they were still bringing out plates to others sitting down. Shit. Ok, next one. No food. Dammit!
We had no choice but to settle on the only remaining restaurant, museo de jamon. The museum of ham. Which also had the worst menu of the whole bunch. We were sad, and browsed the menu dejectedly. Tracey and I were really set on steak, and the ham museum had precisely none of it on the menu. I asked Tracey if she was OK with this, and she said "yeah...I'll find something." I told her, "this is the last meal here. Don't settle. If you don't want it, we will find something else in the city."
Obviously, the decision was to leave. Unfortunately, the waitress chose that exact moment to come over and try to take our orders. I jumped up, yelled, "sorry! An emergency just came up! I'm so sorry" and we literally ran out of the square until we were out of sight. Tracey's feet were dying thanks to cobblestones, and the clock was ticking to find a place fast. Restaurant after restaurant had stopped serving food. Finally, in the placa del sol, we saw a little place on a side street that looked nice, had great steak on the menu, and was still serving. Hell yeah!
And so we sat, and waited. And waited. And waited. The waitress even looked in our direction several times, but quickly looked away. We realized they might just be drawing it out so they didn't have to take our order and therefore didn't have to make us food. Fortunately, the drink guy had come by and given us fantastic rum and pineapples with ron barcelo and so we were well on our way to drunk and didn't care that much.
Eventually, our meals arrived. Tracey and I split the most expensive steak we could find on the menu, and Ang ordered some ravioli in a truffle sauce. We didn't even speak. We just shoveled food in our mouths, moaning around the bites. It was so, so, so good and worth every damn penny. There was some dipping sauce for our steak, some bread, and I also swirled the steak around in Ang's truffle sauce. It was everything we had ever dreamed of and more. I don't even remember the name of the place, it was fate.
Tracey and I swapped shoes so she wouldn't have to wear my heels anymore, and we made our way back to the hotel. We had the bottles of wine from Toledo, and the leftover salt from the night prior. We drew up a foot-soaking bath and polished off the first bottle of wine in no time. We still had my rose bubbly , though, and no room for it in the suitcases. Problem was, it was corked and we had no bottle opener.
Angie's solution was to go to the front desk of our super-fancy hotel in our (tiny) pajamas and ask for a bottle opener. Half-drunk, it was a solid plan. The two of us walked up to the front desk like we owned the place and Ang thrust out her bottle, made corkscrew motions at the top of it, and said "necesitoooo?" and the guy laughed and another ran off to find out a corkscrew. They opened it for us and complemented us on our choice of wine and told us it was better cold.
And so, drunkenly, we all packed our suitcases one last time passed out sometime deep into the morning.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Toledo
We got up and made our way to the Madrid train station. Before we got in, however, there was something across the street that stuck out.
[baby heads]
I have no idea. None. But I'll have nightmares, I promise you that much. I actually refused to go near them and Ang took one for the team to get the shots of these, telling us "they were so much worse than you thought."
We got on our train and took our obligatory 30-minute nap. I don't know what is with vacations and not sleeping, but the naps prettymuch died in Barcelona. We arrived in Toledo and were greeted by a gorgeous train station. It was old, and pretty, and...yeah, old.
[picture]
We went inside and looked for any indication of where to go. We had once again failed to plan beyond the stage of "get there" so when we saw the sightseeing open-top bus sitting out front, we basically instantly decided that was what we were going to do.
This tour bus was different than the ones in Barcelona, however, in that you had 5 or so different "plans" you could buy. All we really wanted was a scenic (or, really, any) way to get into the city, so we looked at the board and then approached the harried woman selling tickets. We asked her if she sold any tickets that just gave us the bus tour plus access to the castle, and she gave us a surly "no, we don't sell that."
Fortunately, we excel at reading comprehension and told her that the advertised yellow plan was exactly what we had just asked for and she went, "oh, yeah. You can buy tickets for that."
Thanks.
We bought tickets and got on. I hid in the middle to avoid the sun, and we were off. As it turns out, the tour bus was (once again) worth every penny as it took us around the circumferance of the city with a stunning view of the outside. It was a straight-out-of-the-textbook medieval walled city. There was one stop-off point for pictures, and a group of girls asked us to take their picture. An eye for an eye, they took ours, and we basically took their exact pose:
[picture]
The bus dropped us off at the "castle". Unfortunately, they had carved out the whole thing and made it into a terrible museum, so it wasn't nearly as good as the one we saw in Segovia. We gave it a solid chance, too. When we went through the massive exhibit of plastic figurines that they made to fill out the rest of the exhibit in the museum, we decided that it was officially the worst museum we had ever been to and that we had to leave. We tried to go to the bathroom, and the security guard kept shoving us toward the patio where cannons and trebuchets were. Angie eventually just told the guy she had to pee and marched past him. The best part of the castle was the gift shop, where I got a sweet miniature mace. Not the oh-god-my-eyes kind, but the spiky-ball-on-the-stick kind.
We left the castle as fast as we could, and immediately began hunting for food. We found a misty awning place and sat down in front of a fan. The fan seemed like a good idea at the time, but really, all it did was blast you with hot air while dispersing all of the mist in such a way that you didn't feel it at all. We ordered our food and drinks, and after the waiter put his little automatic order-taker thing away, Tracey asked for a glass of water. Apparently, this was akin to asking for his firstborn, because he gave her a look of death, sighed, took his order-taker back out, and asked if we were sure there was nothing else we wanted. Wanker.
The food kinda sucked, forreal. It was the worst croquetas and sangria to date.
We started shopping, because we had all basically failed at the shopping thing and this was the last chance to get souvenirs. One of the first stops we made was a jewelry store. It was cheap, the jewelry was nice, and no one item was the same.
We were there for over an hour. At first, we felt rushed, and kept edging towards the door. But then we decided that fuck it, we like shiny shit.
At one point, I found this giant disco ring that was amazing and I loved it and it was gaudy and oh my god. Ang and Tracey took one look at it and told me to put it back. I snuck it into my little basket, and when neither of them were looking, bought the shit out of it for 2 euro. Best. Purchase. Ever.
I spent the rest of the day waving my ring around as Ang and Tracey groaned and told me that they couldn't concentrate on anything but my ring when they saw it.
[picture of my ring] I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEIR PROBLEM IS
We continued shopping, melting, and coming up with almost no success in the souvenir department except for some porcelain bulls that were actually really pretty. We did find a delicious chocolate place, saw a lady with a ridiculous hat, and then found that the entrance to a castle or something was closed. We were tired, shopped out, and hot so we decided to figure out ahead of time which bus to get on before getting food.
As soon as we walked up to the bus area, an old man heard us trying to figure out which bus we should take, and pointed to the bus that everyone was currently climbing into. Since it was easier than trying to figure it out on our own, we climbed on (after yet again being shoved aside by people that refuse to even look at you as they streamed into the bus).
Turns out that old guy saved our ass again, because we were sitting there absently watching out the window, and he tapped us and pointed to the train station that we were about to miss. Had we not followed him onto the bus and been alerted to where we were supposed to get off, I doubt we would have figured it out. The problem, however, was that we had accidentally arrived nearly three hours early to the train.
We start walking, decide to see if there is any coffee place nearby or something. Failing that, we ducked into a little convenience store to pick up some booze to drink. The ladies in there were not happy to see us, and followed us around as we browsed. If we picked up a bottle to look at it, she'd be there to carefully move it a millimeter to the side to make the label perfectly facing out after we put it back. Eventually we picked a few bottles of wine, some chocolate, and headed to the door. There was a little old quarter machine sitting at the entrance and it had pokemon something or other inside. Naturally, Tracey and I freaked out and bought two of them.
We wandered to a bench in front of an empty restaurant, and opened our prizes. They were little cellphone screen wipers, and I won pikachu. Score. LIZARD!
Eventually we got bored (or, they got tired of me waving my disco ring and pikachu) and we decided to try and see if we could get an earlier train out at the station.
We walked into the train station, asked the man if he spoke English, and he angrily replied, "no." We know that you're not supposed to do that, but everyone is nasty to us no matter what we do, so screw it.
No problema, senor. We're practiced at this. Angie starts pointing to the train schedules, and he yelled at her, "NO! NO! Look! LOOK! You not look, is too late, no." while stabbing his finger at the schedule.
Ookay, thanks for the help. We had just missed the train, so now we were stuck there. Fortunately, there was a little cafe with shitty wine and beer so we sat at a table outside and waited for the train for about a year before it arrived.
[baby heads]
I have no idea. None. But I'll have nightmares, I promise you that much. I actually refused to go near them and Ang took one for the team to get the shots of these, telling us "they were so much worse than you thought."
We got on our train and took our obligatory 30-minute nap. I don't know what is with vacations and not sleeping, but the naps prettymuch died in Barcelona. We arrived in Toledo and were greeted by a gorgeous train station. It was old, and pretty, and...yeah, old.
[picture]
We went inside and looked for any indication of where to go. We had once again failed to plan beyond the stage of "get there" so when we saw the sightseeing open-top bus sitting out front, we basically instantly decided that was what we were going to do.
This tour bus was different than the ones in Barcelona, however, in that you had 5 or so different "plans" you could buy. All we really wanted was a scenic (or, really, any) way to get into the city, so we looked at the board and then approached the harried woman selling tickets. We asked her if she sold any tickets that just gave us the bus tour plus access to the castle, and she gave us a surly "no, we don't sell that."
Fortunately, we excel at reading comprehension and told her that the advertised yellow plan was exactly what we had just asked for and she went, "oh, yeah. You can buy tickets for that."
Thanks.
We bought tickets and got on. I hid in the middle to avoid the sun, and we were off. As it turns out, the tour bus was (once again) worth every penny as it took us around the circumferance of the city with a stunning view of the outside. It was a straight-out-of-the-textbook medieval walled city. There was one stop-off point for pictures, and a group of girls asked us to take their picture. An eye for an eye, they took ours, and we basically took their exact pose:
[picture]
The bus dropped us off at the "castle". Unfortunately, they had carved out the whole thing and made it into a terrible museum, so it wasn't nearly as good as the one we saw in Segovia. We gave it a solid chance, too. When we went through the massive exhibit of plastic figurines that they made to fill out the rest of the exhibit in the museum, we decided that it was officially the worst museum we had ever been to and that we had to leave. We tried to go to the bathroom, and the security guard kept shoving us toward the patio where cannons and trebuchets were. Angie eventually just told the guy she had to pee and marched past him. The best part of the castle was the gift shop, where I got a sweet miniature mace. Not the oh-god-my-eyes kind, but the spiky-ball-on-the-stick kind.
We left the castle as fast as we could, and immediately began hunting for food. We found a misty awning place and sat down in front of a fan. The fan seemed like a good idea at the time, but really, all it did was blast you with hot air while dispersing all of the mist in such a way that you didn't feel it at all. We ordered our food and drinks, and after the waiter put his little automatic order-taker thing away, Tracey asked for a glass of water. Apparently, this was akin to asking for his firstborn, because he gave her a look of death, sighed, took his order-taker back out, and asked if we were sure there was nothing else we wanted. Wanker.
The food kinda sucked, forreal. It was the worst croquetas and sangria to date.
We started shopping, because we had all basically failed at the shopping thing and this was the last chance to get souvenirs. One of the first stops we made was a jewelry store. It was cheap, the jewelry was nice, and no one item was the same.
We were there for over an hour. At first, we felt rushed, and kept edging towards the door. But then we decided that fuck it, we like shiny shit.
At one point, I found this giant disco ring that was amazing and I loved it and it was gaudy and oh my god. Ang and Tracey took one look at it and told me to put it back. I snuck it into my little basket, and when neither of them were looking, bought the shit out of it for 2 euro. Best. Purchase. Ever.
I spent the rest of the day waving my ring around as Ang and Tracey groaned and told me that they couldn't concentrate on anything but my ring when they saw it.
[picture of my ring] I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEIR PROBLEM IS
We continued shopping, melting, and coming up with almost no success in the souvenir department except for some porcelain bulls that were actually really pretty. We did find a delicious chocolate place, saw a lady with a ridiculous hat, and then found that the entrance to a castle or something was closed. We were tired, shopped out, and hot so we decided to figure out ahead of time which bus to get on before getting food.
As soon as we walked up to the bus area, an old man heard us trying to figure out which bus we should take, and pointed to the bus that everyone was currently climbing into. Since it was easier than trying to figure it out on our own, we climbed on (after yet again being shoved aside by people that refuse to even look at you as they streamed into the bus).
Turns out that old guy saved our ass again, because we were sitting there absently watching out the window, and he tapped us and pointed to the train station that we were about to miss. Had we not followed him onto the bus and been alerted to where we were supposed to get off, I doubt we would have figured it out. The problem, however, was that we had accidentally arrived nearly three hours early to the train.
We start walking, decide to see if there is any coffee place nearby or something. Failing that, we ducked into a little convenience store to pick up some booze to drink. The ladies in there were not happy to see us, and followed us around as we browsed. If we picked up a bottle to look at it, she'd be there to carefully move it a millimeter to the side to make the label perfectly facing out after we put it back. Eventually we picked a few bottles of wine, some chocolate, and headed to the door. There was a little old quarter machine sitting at the entrance and it had pokemon something or other inside. Naturally, Tracey and I freaked out and bought two of them.
We wandered to a bench in front of an empty restaurant, and opened our prizes. They were little cellphone screen wipers, and I won pikachu. Score. LIZARD!
Eventually we got bored (or, they got tired of me waving my disco ring and pikachu) and we decided to try and see if we could get an earlier train out at the station.
We walked into the train station, asked the man if he spoke English, and he angrily replied, "no." We know that you're not supposed to do that, but everyone is nasty to us no matter what we do, so screw it.
No problema, senor. We're practiced at this. Angie starts pointing to the train schedules, and he yelled at her, "NO! NO! Look! LOOK! You not look, is too late, no." while stabbing his finger at the schedule.
Ookay, thanks for the help. We had just missed the train, so now we were stuck there. Fortunately, there was a little cafe with shitty wine and beer so we sat at a table outside and waited for the train for about a year before it arrived.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Mooooooat
We woke up late and mildly hungover. We figured it would be no problem to just roll out of bed whenever and catch a train to Segovia when we got to the train station, because we thought the left every hour. Which is a lie. After figuring out the metro system again and making it to the right train station, we stand around in utter confusion at the ticket vending machines. None of them said Segovia. Shit.
Well, there's a place with a bunch of people running ticketing booths. Let's stand in line. Oh, wrong line? Oh, we need a number? okay. How about two numbers because we can't even figure out the machine that gives us a ticket to get us to a person that gives us a ticket? Goddammit.
We get in line, but we're still confused. Is this the right line? We want to buy tickets for Toledo, too. Can we do both here? Well, we don't need a ticket to be in this line...so, how about we wait here, and then someone else goes to another line after our number is called? what the hell is going on?
We stood there staring at our slow line as the number called got higher and higher. Finally, we got to the window, and the guy thankfully spoke English so we bought our tickets rather quickly. As soon as we finished with him, our number was called for the ticket line for Toledo tickets.
"Do you speak english?" "no."
Fuck it. I think he said that to get rid of us, but he underestimated how tenacious and stupid we are. We took out a notebook and wrote "Toledo?" and he gestured and said "manana?" "si!" and then asked what we assumed what time we wanted to leave. I wrote 01:00h and ang was like, "no, 13." so I'm all "I know!" and wrote 01:00h again, crossed it out, and finally managed to write "13:00h?" and he took the notebook and shook his head and wrote out times. We circled one. He took it back and wrote more times down for the return trip. We argued, and circled another one. Bam, tickets, bitches.
Unfortunately, the train didn't actually leave for another couple of hours. There was a restarant across the street from the station, and we were starving, so we made the mistake of eating there. We got our required croquetas and some stuffed peppers. The parts of the peppers that were warm were delicious, but the still-frozen half was not so good. Ang had made it her mission to conquor cafe con hielo, and we figured out you are supposed to dump the sugar in BEFORE you pour it over ice. There was a guy standing in the corner the whole time pulling the lever on a slot machine without even looking at it. Classy joint.
Our train arrived after a while, and we all took 30-minute power naps on the way to Segovia. We pulled in at a tiny little train station that appeared to prettymuch be in the middle of nowhere. We had no idea what we were supposed to do, there were no notices or bus schedules or anything, but everyone seemed to be climbing onto the single bus that waited outside. It seemed obvious after the fact, but once it left we figured that was our bus and there wouldn't be another for 20 minutes.
But hey! A coffee shop!
We went into the little coffee shop at the train station and ordered cafe con hielo. Angie and I walked away, but apparently Tracey was at the counter long enough to hear the lady serving us hiss at her coworker, "Americanosss!" as if the devil himself had entered the store. It was an enlightening moment. We thought we were just being crazy up until then that the Spanish didn't like specifically US, but that confirmed it. And we were not advertising we were Americans in any way - we were doing our best to look and sound the opposite, trying to speak spanish as much as we could, but it didn't matter. Apparently they could figure us out instantly.
The bus arrived and we got on it, eagerly staring out the window for a giant castle to come into view. As we went over a hill, there was certainly a castle - but it's so small! That can't be THE castle, can it? I think it must be it. I mean, there can't be any more castles hiding around here, right?
It was totally the castle. To be fair, much more impressive close up.
We got off at the aqueducts, and hacked out some spanish with the driver to figure out when to be back at the bus stop for our train back. We went to the info booth, where the lady there outlined a route for us to take up to the castle and then back, hitting all the important sights along the way. And, there actually WAS another castle - bonus castle high five! She told us it would take 15 minutes to walk to the first castle and then another 10 or so past that to the Alcazar de Segovia, the disney castle.
It was a lie. As we began walking, the streets were lined with shops, and we had to stop at prettymuch all of them. It took us probably two hours to walk the 15 minutes she had claimed it would take. That's okay, though, because we found dicks.
We walked into a little souvenir shop, not even a good one, and were about to leave when I looked down and found a basket with 3 carved wooden bottle openers. In the shape of dicks. I grabbed one, and presented it to Tracey, who lit up like a Christmas tree and demanded to know where I had found it. We decided that it was fate that there were 3 of us and 3 dicks to be had. Snickering and full of shame, we brought our dicks to the register and the little old lady didn't even bat an eye as she carefully wrapped each one in neon green wrapping paper with bright pink flowers all over it. When she finished, we all looked at eachother and asked her, "mas?" and she nodded and left the store to get more dicks for us. We bought 8 in total. And that lady wrapped them all, only cracking a grin when Ang shrugged apologetically and told her, "americanos."
[video]
We stopped into one little grocery store to see if they had the wine we took a picture of from the madrid sangria place. They didn't have that, but we did buy some of these:
[picture]
Eventually, we got to the first castle. Right next to it was a shop with a nasty old man that yelled at a kid for touching something. I took a stealth picture of KKK members on the shelf. I undertand they're probably crusaders or something, but c'mon:
[picture]
Also, I just googled the first castle, and it's not even a castle. It's a cathedral. Built in 1525. We probably should have read some history of...anywhere.
[pictures of cathedral]
At this point, we realize it has taken us two hours to get through a supposedly 15 minute walk, and we had somewhere around two more hours to finish the rest of the walk, go through the castle, and then get back to the bus stop to make it to the train in time.
We ran the rest of the way and pined at stores we wanted to go in. We did grab some castle-shaped sangria pitchers that are ballin', though.
The castle itself was impressive the closer we got to it. It was one of the castles that was the inspiration for the Disney castle, and you could clearly see it with the blue-capped pointed spires and A MOAT
[moat picture]
[moat video]
I was obnoxious as I just repeated, "moat moat moat moooooooooooat moat moat it has a moat moat". To be fair, the moat was sorta dry, but it was totally there. And glorious. Exhausted, we thought we would have time to sit and eat and enjoy the castle-y goodness, but the time constraints required we march on. We went to the ticketing building, and the guy running it told us that we could pay a bit extra to be able to take 153 stairs to the top. I said hell no, especially after seeing the warning sign for "people who are unhealthy should not attempt this".
We divided and conquored. We sent the high-heeled and rather healthy Ang up to the top with the good camera while Tracey and I ran through the rest of the castle with her phone camera. The castle was pretty small on the inside, or at least what was available for viewing was. There was a room with a bed, which would be fine, but this statue stared down at the bed like a creeper:
and then there was this:
[boy]
ZOOM
[boy's eyes: not. okay.]
We also played the "ladies in waiting" game, that I failed at but that Tracey was clearly born to do:
And there were super detailed ceilings:
[ceilings]
and more creepers.
[me behind column]
We eventually reach the end of the castle and had a brief moment of "oh shit, where do we meet Ang?" before she came running from down a hallway. We had managed to accomplish our missions at exactly the same time. Which was more impressive from our perspective, because she had to climb 153 of these things up AND down:
[ang stairs: and IN HEELS.]
But I think it was worth it, because she got these pictures at the top (BUT NO SELFIE WTF):
[pictures]
We trekked back a different route, with noticeably less shops, through the jewish quarter. I kind of wish I had more history on this area, it was actually really pretty.
[picture]
Our feet fucking fell off, though. At least mine did. And we kept going uphill. It really wasn't okay. Eventually we made it back to the aqueducts - shit, did I mention aqueducts yet? Yeah, there were sweet roman aqueducts, too.
[pictures]
We got on the bus early and stuffed our faces with grapes because we hadn't actually eaten anything besides half-frozen peppers before we got to Segovia. Because we're smart like that. We took a nap on the train again, and had the brilliant idea to get off at Sol, and go back to the spot we were at the night before. I don't know about everyone else, but I had a severe craving for pasta. I love pasta. Pasta is the shit. And last night, we had noticed the restaurant behind the awesome sangria place served some mighty fine-looking pasta.
As soon as we found the street again and sat at the pasta place, the sangria guy noticed us and was all, "hey!" and we assured him we'd be going there next. Ang and I went back and forth with what to order before Tracey told us to let her get her own bowl of pasta. Then I wanted my own bowl, and Ang ended up with her own bowl by default. Which basically marked the first time in the whole trip we all ordered something for ourselves. I got a bacon carbonara, which was fucking amazing, and Tracey got some shrimp pesto thing, and according to her, it was also amazing even though the shrimp still had their heads. I tried shrimp once again, and still didn't like it, and Tracey and Ang confirmed that if I didn't like that shrimp then I would never like shrimp and I felt like I could finally lay my socially-driven need to like shrimp to rest. Ang got a rather lackluster bowl of pasta. Sucker!
We eventually finished eating and left the restaurant immediately. And by left, I mean we walked two feet to the table next to us that belonged to the sangria-of-the-Gods restaurant. By then, we had checked a few liquor stores out and so we could buy the overpriced wine there relatively guilt-free. We told the guy we wanted 3 bottles of wine, and he was so happy about it that he gave us a glass of the wine on the house. It was a red, and I don't like reds and have no level of sophistication when it comes to wine, but I'm pretty sure that was a mighty fine red. We got the bill, and he had taken a good 10-15% off the bill just...because. We thanked him, gave him a ridiculous tip, and wrote him a note that he and the sangria were our favorite out of all of Spain. He gave us kisses on our cheeks and pointed to the trip advisor sticker on the front of the restaurant and told us (I think) his name was Daniel. We were kinda in love with him. And, unfortunately, couldn't go back on our last night because it would just be stalking at that point.
[daniel]
After that, it was about 1 or 2 AM or something like that. I don't remember. It was late. We went back to the hotel, and I told everyone that since it was our last night that we could stay out late, we had to go clubbing. We took a good hour and a half to get ready. I had printed out a list of best Madrid nightclubs, and the first one on the list was Ohm, which was within easy walking distance. Dressed once again like hookers, we went to Ohm, and ended up having to pay something like $15 EACH to get into the place. Which should have tipped us off, but whatever. We went in and got drinks and stood there for quite a while before we realized that we had accidentally gone to a gay strip club. For real. It took us a good 10 minutes to even realize that because everyone dresses way too damn nice in Europe. Even worse, the strippers were actually really bad dancers. Actually, I think all the Spanish are kinda bad dancers, but if you're being paid to do it (and do it naked) you should probably be able to do better than stand there swaying your hips. One guy tried to hit on Tracey in rapid-fire Spanish and she smiled and nodded until he went away.
At that point, they told me we they wanted to go. Which, frankly, since it took us over an hour to get ready and a 15 euro cover was involved to only stay for 20 minutes, made me walk off back to the hotel and leave them for dead.
Mooooooooat.
Well, there's a place with a bunch of people running ticketing booths. Let's stand in line. Oh, wrong line? Oh, we need a number? okay. How about two numbers because we can't even figure out the machine that gives us a ticket to get us to a person that gives us a ticket? Goddammit.
We get in line, but we're still confused. Is this the right line? We want to buy tickets for Toledo, too. Can we do both here? Well, we don't need a ticket to be in this line...so, how about we wait here, and then someone else goes to another line after our number is called? what the hell is going on?
We stood there staring at our slow line as the number called got higher and higher. Finally, we got to the window, and the guy thankfully spoke English so we bought our tickets rather quickly. As soon as we finished with him, our number was called for the ticket line for Toledo tickets.
"Do you speak english?" "no."
Fuck it. I think he said that to get rid of us, but he underestimated how tenacious and stupid we are. We took out a notebook and wrote "Toledo?" and he gestured and said "manana?" "si!" and then asked what we assumed what time we wanted to leave. I wrote 01:00h and ang was like, "no, 13." so I'm all "I know!" and wrote 01:00h again, crossed it out, and finally managed to write "13:00h?" and he took the notebook and shook his head and wrote out times. We circled one. He took it back and wrote more times down for the return trip. We argued, and circled another one. Bam, tickets, bitches.
Unfortunately, the train didn't actually leave for another couple of hours. There was a restarant across the street from the station, and we were starving, so we made the mistake of eating there. We got our required croquetas and some stuffed peppers. The parts of the peppers that were warm were delicious, but the still-frozen half was not so good. Ang had made it her mission to conquor cafe con hielo, and we figured out you are supposed to dump the sugar in BEFORE you pour it over ice. There was a guy standing in the corner the whole time pulling the lever on a slot machine without even looking at it. Classy joint.
Our train arrived after a while, and we all took 30-minute power naps on the way to Segovia. We pulled in at a tiny little train station that appeared to prettymuch be in the middle of nowhere. We had no idea what we were supposed to do, there were no notices or bus schedules or anything, but everyone seemed to be climbing onto the single bus that waited outside. It seemed obvious after the fact, but once it left we figured that was our bus and there wouldn't be another for 20 minutes.
But hey! A coffee shop!
We went into the little coffee shop at the train station and ordered cafe con hielo. Angie and I walked away, but apparently Tracey was at the counter long enough to hear the lady serving us hiss at her coworker, "Americanosss!" as if the devil himself had entered the store. It was an enlightening moment. We thought we were just being crazy up until then that the Spanish didn't like specifically US, but that confirmed it. And we were not advertising we were Americans in any way - we were doing our best to look and sound the opposite, trying to speak spanish as much as we could, but it didn't matter. Apparently they could figure us out instantly.
The bus arrived and we got on it, eagerly staring out the window for a giant castle to come into view. As we went over a hill, there was certainly a castle - but it's so small! That can't be THE castle, can it? I think it must be it. I mean, there can't be any more castles hiding around here, right?
It was totally the castle. To be fair, much more impressive close up.
We got off at the aqueducts, and hacked out some spanish with the driver to figure out when to be back at the bus stop for our train back. We went to the info booth, where the lady there outlined a route for us to take up to the castle and then back, hitting all the important sights along the way. And, there actually WAS another castle - bonus castle high five! She told us it would take 15 minutes to walk to the first castle and then another 10 or so past that to the Alcazar de Segovia, the disney castle.
It was a lie. As we began walking, the streets were lined with shops, and we had to stop at prettymuch all of them. It took us probably two hours to walk the 15 minutes she had claimed it would take. That's okay, though, because we found dicks.
We walked into a little souvenir shop, not even a good one, and were about to leave when I looked down and found a basket with 3 carved wooden bottle openers. In the shape of dicks. I grabbed one, and presented it to Tracey, who lit up like a Christmas tree and demanded to know where I had found it. We decided that it was fate that there were 3 of us and 3 dicks to be had. Snickering and full of shame, we brought our dicks to the register and the little old lady didn't even bat an eye as she carefully wrapped each one in neon green wrapping paper with bright pink flowers all over it. When she finished, we all looked at eachother and asked her, "mas?" and she nodded and left the store to get more dicks for us. We bought 8 in total. And that lady wrapped them all, only cracking a grin when Ang shrugged apologetically and told her, "americanos."
[video]
We stopped into one little grocery store to see if they had the wine we took a picture of from the madrid sangria place. They didn't have that, but we did buy some of these:
[picture]
Eventually, we got to the first castle. Right next to it was a shop with a nasty old man that yelled at a kid for touching something. I took a stealth picture of KKK members on the shelf. I undertand they're probably crusaders or something, but c'mon:
[picture]
Also, I just googled the first castle, and it's not even a castle. It's a cathedral. Built in 1525. We probably should have read some history of...anywhere.
[pictures of cathedral]
At this point, we realize it has taken us two hours to get through a supposedly 15 minute walk, and we had somewhere around two more hours to finish the rest of the walk, go through the castle, and then get back to the bus stop to make it to the train in time.
We ran the rest of the way and pined at stores we wanted to go in. We did grab some castle-shaped sangria pitchers that are ballin', though.
The castle itself was impressive the closer we got to it. It was one of the castles that was the inspiration for the Disney castle, and you could clearly see it with the blue-capped pointed spires and A MOAT
[moat picture]
[moat video]
I was obnoxious as I just repeated, "moat moat moat moooooooooooat moat moat it has a moat moat". To be fair, the moat was sorta dry, but it was totally there. And glorious. Exhausted, we thought we would have time to sit and eat and enjoy the castle-y goodness, but the time constraints required we march on. We went to the ticketing building, and the guy running it told us that we could pay a bit extra to be able to take 153 stairs to the top. I said hell no, especially after seeing the warning sign for "people who are unhealthy should not attempt this".
We divided and conquored. We sent the high-heeled and rather healthy Ang up to the top with the good camera while Tracey and I ran through the rest of the castle with her phone camera. The castle was pretty small on the inside, or at least what was available for viewing was. There was a room with a bed, which would be fine, but this statue stared down at the bed like a creeper:
and then there was this:
[boy]
ZOOM
[boy's eyes: not. okay.]
We also played the "ladies in waiting" game, that I failed at but that Tracey was clearly born to do:
And there were super detailed ceilings:
[ceilings]
and more creepers.
[me behind column]
We eventually reach the end of the castle and had a brief moment of "oh shit, where do we meet Ang?" before she came running from down a hallway. We had managed to accomplish our missions at exactly the same time. Which was more impressive from our perspective, because she had to climb 153 of these things up AND down:
[ang stairs: and IN HEELS.]
But I think it was worth it, because she got these pictures at the top (BUT NO SELFIE WTF):
[pictures]
We trekked back a different route, with noticeably less shops, through the jewish quarter. I kind of wish I had more history on this area, it was actually really pretty.
[picture]
Our feet fucking fell off, though. At least mine did. And we kept going uphill. It really wasn't okay. Eventually we made it back to the aqueducts - shit, did I mention aqueducts yet? Yeah, there were sweet roman aqueducts, too.
[pictures]
We got on the bus early and stuffed our faces with grapes because we hadn't actually eaten anything besides half-frozen peppers before we got to Segovia. Because we're smart like that. We took a nap on the train again, and had the brilliant idea to get off at Sol, and go back to the spot we were at the night before. I don't know about everyone else, but I had a severe craving for pasta. I love pasta. Pasta is the shit. And last night, we had noticed the restaurant behind the awesome sangria place served some mighty fine-looking pasta.
As soon as we found the street again and sat at the pasta place, the sangria guy noticed us and was all, "hey!" and we assured him we'd be going there next. Ang and I went back and forth with what to order before Tracey told us to let her get her own bowl of pasta. Then I wanted my own bowl, and Ang ended up with her own bowl by default. Which basically marked the first time in the whole trip we all ordered something for ourselves. I got a bacon carbonara, which was fucking amazing, and Tracey got some shrimp pesto thing, and according to her, it was also amazing even though the shrimp still had their heads. I tried shrimp once again, and still didn't like it, and Tracey and Ang confirmed that if I didn't like that shrimp then I would never like shrimp and I felt like I could finally lay my socially-driven need to like shrimp to rest. Ang got a rather lackluster bowl of pasta. Sucker!
We eventually finished eating and left the restaurant immediately. And by left, I mean we walked two feet to the table next to us that belonged to the sangria-of-the-Gods restaurant. By then, we had checked a few liquor stores out and so we could buy the overpriced wine there relatively guilt-free. We told the guy we wanted 3 bottles of wine, and he was so happy about it that he gave us a glass of the wine on the house. It was a red, and I don't like reds and have no level of sophistication when it comes to wine, but I'm pretty sure that was a mighty fine red. We got the bill, and he had taken a good 10-15% off the bill just...because. We thanked him, gave him a ridiculous tip, and wrote him a note that he and the sangria were our favorite out of all of Spain. He gave us kisses on our cheeks and pointed to the trip advisor sticker on the front of the restaurant and told us (I think) his name was Daniel. We were kinda in love with him. And, unfortunately, couldn't go back on our last night because it would just be stalking at that point.
[daniel]
After that, it was about 1 or 2 AM or something like that. I don't remember. It was late. We went back to the hotel, and I told everyone that since it was our last night that we could stay out late, we had to go clubbing. We took a good hour and a half to get ready. I had printed out a list of best Madrid nightclubs, and the first one on the list was Ohm, which was within easy walking distance. Dressed once again like hookers, we went to Ohm, and ended up having to pay something like $15 EACH to get into the place. Which should have tipped us off, but whatever. We went in and got drinks and stood there for quite a while before we realized that we had accidentally gone to a gay strip club. For real. It took us a good 10 minutes to even realize that because everyone dresses way too damn nice in Europe. Even worse, the strippers were actually really bad dancers. Actually, I think all the Spanish are kinda bad dancers, but if you're being paid to do it (and do it naked) you should probably be able to do better than stand there swaying your hips. One guy tried to hit on Tracey in rapid-fire Spanish and she smiled and nodded until he went away.
At that point, they told me we they wanted to go. Which, frankly, since it took us over an hour to get ready and a 15 euro cover was involved to only stay for 20 minutes, made me walk off back to the hotel and leave them for dead.
Mooooooooat.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Room of Bad Decisions
Armed with wine and salt, we drew a bath. Angie sat on the counter, while Tracey and I sat on the edge of the tub. We threw more shit in the water - the salt, jasmine perfume, soap that we tried to make into bubbles, some of our shitty wine, y'know. We found the shower caps and put them on. It was glorious. Except for the wine. The wine was pretty awful. We drank it anyway.
[picture]
Unfortunately, we somehow decided (okay, I think it was my fault) that it was a good idea to (while fully clothed) get into the nasty salty-foot-wine water. We took turns being tub buddies, which ended when Tracey and I started laughing screaming at eachother "Don't pee! Don't pee!! FUCK YOU DON'T PEE"
[picture]
Let's not talk about it. yolo.
We eventually stumble out of the bathroom and get dressed up. There was a rooftop pool at the hotel, but after 8pm it converted to a bar. A bar that charges your drinks to the room. Oops. Angie ordered "ron y pina" and thought she was being pretty clear about it. The guy held up two cans of pineapple, and somehow angie ended up with ron y pina y pina - a rum and pineapple drink and a second glass of just pineapple juice. Whatever. At least it was expensive.
The roof was really pretty, but not worth the cost of drinks.
[picture]
We left there and left the hotel to try and find some dinner, since all we had really eaten that day was some croquetas. We got lazy and ended up at the place directly across from the hotel. Ang ordered nothing but some more ron y pina, Tracey got a burger because she "NEEDS MEAT" and I got some meatballs. The meatballs came out rather raw, but delicious. I think Tracey's burger was a little strange, but passable. Our rum and pineapples were delicious and made with our new favorite rum, Ron Barcelo. I force-fed Ang some meatballs after she declared that she was drunk.
We ended up in some deep girly conversation, and then more deep conversation, and then back at the hotel for more wine, and then bed. I think. I don't really remember. Gracias, ron y pina.
The land of misty awnings
We woke up at 7AM to be able to make it to the market we had left early from the day before. It was supposed to be open at 8, but after we groggily got ready and finished packing, we arrived to find it closed. Ang didn't want another Dunkin' Coffee, so we set off on some side streets to try and find the sandwich place that I had found the day Tracey broke. We failed to find that, but found a little coffee shop instead. I walked in and ordered what I thought was an iced coffee, "cafe con hielo" and what I got was a tiny little cup and a glass of ice. Ang had ordered the same thing, and we looked at our cups and glasses in confusion before shrugging and dumping the coffee onto the ice and pouring a packet of sugar on top of it. I took a sip of it, and it was like someone had walked up and slapped my face. The drink was then dubbed "the defibrilator" and we bounced our way out of the coffee shop back to the hotel.
We stopped by the front desk after grabbing our luggage, and the wonderful Mateo showed us that the train station was actually just in front of the market. Sweet! We went down into the metro and were completely blown away by how clean it was. Absolutely could-eat-off-the-floor perfect. We had no idea how to use the metro system, and we managed to tell the metro lady that spoke no english were we were going and she printed tickets for us. Stairs suck, by the way. Lots and lots of stairs. YOu have luggage? fuck you. Have 10 more stairs. We finally arrived at barcelona-sants train station, super early for our train. We milled around a bit, and they finally opened up a platform. We actually had to go through security, which is strange. Want to enter the country? Sure! go righ ahead. Want to take a train from one city to another? Put your shit on the scanner, bitch. We sat there nodding off for another hour or so, and finally our train was open for boarding. Tracey immediately passed out and I snuck her phone away to take pictures of the countryside.
[pictures]
As we got closer to Madrid, I got hungry and went on a scouting mission for food. I got a sandwich and came back to tell everyone the food was good, but Ang yelled at me for being a shitty scout and not coming back with a detailed account of the chocolate they had. I shared my sandwich, and Ang and Tracey eventually got up to get their own food.
We arrived in Madrid, and it was noticeably cooler than Barcelona. Unless you crossed the line into sunlight, of course. Then you burst into flames and melted. We figured out our route to Santo Domingo and went up a million flights of stairs and got on the train. We got off the train, and went up a million more flights of stairs. On the final flight of stairs, I threw my luggage to the top and stumbled to a bench, covered in sweat and out of breath. Unfortunately, Tracey broke her luggage on the stairs and angie ninja repaired it with a bit of necklace material. Forunately, the train station had let us out immediately in front of our hotel.
When we had booked the room for this hotel, we had requested "The Jellyfish Room", which as we had seen from pictures, was a room entirely covered in ethereal avatar-like murals of jellyfish and lagoons. When we reached the room, we opened it, and started running arround in sheer joy because we had, indeed, gotten the jellyfish room. It was better that we had even imagined, because it had a bidet, a private little courtyard you could climb out of the window to get to, a jet tub, and THE ROOM WAS LIT BY BLACKLIGHT.
[pictures]
We unpacked a bit, freshened up, and headed out to explore Madrid. The way we had planned it, today was the only day that we had to see Madrid, so we had to cowboy up and take off the bitch hats despite how tired we were. We walked across from the hotel with no particular plan in mind, and soon discovered the single best thing about Madrid: all the restaurants had misting awnings. It took the edge off the heat beautifully, and America really needs to get their shit together and have these things.
We sat at prettymuch the first restaurant we found, and ordered various mojitos. The dude never came back to take our food order. We were used to the long waits to get our food ordered, but this was ridiculous. I finally got tired of waiting and went inside to tell someone we wanted to order croquetas. They came, and they were not amazing, and we left. We really had to get shopping done, so we walked towards some shops and began the ping-pong shopping routine of fail. I think the only thing anyone got was Ang, and even then, it was from one of the people selling pocketbooks off the street from a blanket. Spain, seriously, what the hell is wrong with your shopping?
I was on a mission to get shoes, and we stopped in a place that looke promising. I saw an adorable pair, and asked the guy for what I guessed was my european size. As I waited, I put my foot in a different shoe, and looked at my feet in a mirror. Then, it suddenly made sense why my feet were in such bad shape - they had ballooned to twice their size. I looked down, yelled "what the fuck?!" and Tracey looked down and was like, "what the fuck!" and then Ang looked down and was like, "holy shit!"
[picture]
Great. Shoe shopping was out. I left the store dejectedly and passed by shoe store after shoe store after shoe store as if the city was mocking me.
We found our way to the Placa del Sol, which I think is the main square in Madrid. It was packed, and there were living statues around with crowds of people. We picked a sidestreet, and passed by one that was dressed as a fucked up golden glittery goat that freaked us out as it shuddered its jaw open and closed and pawed at us. We probably should have given it money and taken a picture, but it looked like a chupacabra and fuck that.
Ang swung her head to the left and yelled, "chocolate!" and we went towared the Chocolateria Gines, which we quickly figured out was a famous place that sold churros and liquid chocolate. We walked away because...I don't know why, but we did, and Tracey was really upset about it. I continued walking, and saw one of the misting awnings and made a beeline for it. I barely noticed this guy trying to get me into his restaurant during my mission, and stopped when Ang and Tracey yelled for me to come back. They pointed to the restaurant with the guy outside trying to get people to go in, and I yelled "but the awning doesn't mist!" and right then, the awning went ssssst as the mist came down. "Well then!" and there we sat.
Apparently I was way more exhausted than I realized, because Angie asked me to take a picture of the buildings behind me, and just to be a dick, I did it as a selfie. Angie yelled, "no! not a selfie!" and I snapped a picture with what I thought was my "oh really? then what is this?" face.
[picture]
I was sober, I swear. The sangria arrived and it was the best we had ever had. Either that or we were exhausted and it was like a man in the desert finding an oasis. We took a picture of the bottle so that we could try to find it in liquor stores because it was 20 euro at the restaurant. We looked in a liquor store or two, but we came up dry. Ang picked up a bottle of red wine and some salt for a foot-soak session back at the hotel, and off we went to our rave room.
We stopped by the front desk after grabbing our luggage, and the wonderful Mateo showed us that the train station was actually just in front of the market. Sweet! We went down into the metro and were completely blown away by how clean it was. Absolutely could-eat-off-the-floor perfect. We had no idea how to use the metro system, and we managed to tell the metro lady that spoke no english were we were going and she printed tickets for us. Stairs suck, by the way. Lots and lots of stairs. YOu have luggage? fuck you. Have 10 more stairs. We finally arrived at barcelona-sants train station, super early for our train. We milled around a bit, and they finally opened up a platform. We actually had to go through security, which is strange. Want to enter the country? Sure! go righ ahead. Want to take a train from one city to another? Put your shit on the scanner, bitch. We sat there nodding off for another hour or so, and finally our train was open for boarding. Tracey immediately passed out and I snuck her phone away to take pictures of the countryside.
[pictures]
As we got closer to Madrid, I got hungry and went on a scouting mission for food. I got a sandwich and came back to tell everyone the food was good, but Ang yelled at me for being a shitty scout and not coming back with a detailed account of the chocolate they had. I shared my sandwich, and Ang and Tracey eventually got up to get their own food.
We arrived in Madrid, and it was noticeably cooler than Barcelona. Unless you crossed the line into sunlight, of course. Then you burst into flames and melted. We figured out our route to Santo Domingo and went up a million flights of stairs and got on the train. We got off the train, and went up a million more flights of stairs. On the final flight of stairs, I threw my luggage to the top and stumbled to a bench, covered in sweat and out of breath. Unfortunately, Tracey broke her luggage on the stairs and angie ninja repaired it with a bit of necklace material. Forunately, the train station had let us out immediately in front of our hotel.
When we had booked the room for this hotel, we had requested "The Jellyfish Room", which as we had seen from pictures, was a room entirely covered in ethereal avatar-like murals of jellyfish and lagoons. When we reached the room, we opened it, and started running arround in sheer joy because we had, indeed, gotten the jellyfish room. It was better that we had even imagined, because it had a bidet, a private little courtyard you could climb out of the window to get to, a jet tub, and THE ROOM WAS LIT BY BLACKLIGHT.
[pictures]
We unpacked a bit, freshened up, and headed out to explore Madrid. The way we had planned it, today was the only day that we had to see Madrid, so we had to cowboy up and take off the bitch hats despite how tired we were. We walked across from the hotel with no particular plan in mind, and soon discovered the single best thing about Madrid: all the restaurants had misting awnings. It took the edge off the heat beautifully, and America really needs to get their shit together and have these things.
We sat at prettymuch the first restaurant we found, and ordered various mojitos. The dude never came back to take our food order. We were used to the long waits to get our food ordered, but this was ridiculous. I finally got tired of waiting and went inside to tell someone we wanted to order croquetas. They came, and they were not amazing, and we left. We really had to get shopping done, so we walked towards some shops and began the ping-pong shopping routine of fail. I think the only thing anyone got was Ang, and even then, it was from one of the people selling pocketbooks off the street from a blanket. Spain, seriously, what the hell is wrong with your shopping?
I was on a mission to get shoes, and we stopped in a place that looke promising. I saw an adorable pair, and asked the guy for what I guessed was my european size. As I waited, I put my foot in a different shoe, and looked at my feet in a mirror. Then, it suddenly made sense why my feet were in such bad shape - they had ballooned to twice their size. I looked down, yelled "what the fuck?!" and Tracey looked down and was like, "what the fuck!" and then Ang looked down and was like, "holy shit!"
[picture]
Great. Shoe shopping was out. I left the store dejectedly and passed by shoe store after shoe store after shoe store as if the city was mocking me.
We found our way to the Placa del Sol, which I think is the main square in Madrid. It was packed, and there were living statues around with crowds of people. We picked a sidestreet, and passed by one that was dressed as a fucked up golden glittery goat that freaked us out as it shuddered its jaw open and closed and pawed at us. We probably should have given it money and taken a picture, but it looked like a chupacabra and fuck that.
Ang swung her head to the left and yelled, "chocolate!" and we went towared the Chocolateria Gines, which we quickly figured out was a famous place that sold churros and liquid chocolate. We walked away because...I don't know why, but we did, and Tracey was really upset about it. I continued walking, and saw one of the misting awnings and made a beeline for it. I barely noticed this guy trying to get me into his restaurant during my mission, and stopped when Ang and Tracey yelled for me to come back. They pointed to the restaurant with the guy outside trying to get people to go in, and I yelled "but the awning doesn't mist!" and right then, the awning went ssssst as the mist came down. "Well then!" and there we sat.
Apparently I was way more exhausted than I realized, because Angie asked me to take a picture of the buildings behind me, and just to be a dick, I did it as a selfie. Angie yelled, "no! not a selfie!" and I snapped a picture with what I thought was my "oh really? then what is this?" face.
[picture]
I was sober, I swear. The sangria arrived and it was the best we had ever had. Either that or we were exhausted and it was like a man in the desert finding an oasis. We took a picture of the bottle so that we could try to find it in liquor stores because it was 20 euro at the restaurant. We looked in a liquor store or two, but we came up dry. Ang picked up a bottle of red wine and some salt for a foot-soak session back at the hotel, and off we went to our rave room.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Mediterranean!
We made it back to the hotel, and grabbed our swimsuits. Did we think to actually put them on? Nah. We started walking down the Rambla and immediately started kicking ourselves. There were street shops closing up left and right that had (presumably) exactly the kind of shit we were looking for. Dammit.
Eventually, we reached the waterfront. There was a walking bridge stretched across the harbor leading to some restaurants. We walked towards it, and saw a bunch of people selling various things off of blankets. Ang got some snake earrings from a dude selling them from an umbrella, and we walked to the edge of the pier and sat down to take pictures of the boats and shoreline. Shortly after, a woman plopped down next to angie, clutching a backback. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I assumed she was trying to sell something, and we began edging away from her. Ang wasn't moving, though, and when the woman got up and walked away, Ang explained what had happened. Apparently there were runners warning the people selling stuff that cops were coming, so they'd quickly pack up their stuff and dump it into backpacks. Reselling was illegal, but the woman made bracelets and didn't want the police to take her stuff, so she had sat next to us in an effort to look like she belonged with the group instead of being one of the sellers.
[picture]
We walked across the bridge and ended up at a restaurant called tapa-tapa, and we were happy to find out they were still selling food since it was later than restaurants usually serve food. We ordered some croquetas, squid, pork, chicken, and maybe one other thing. They were all fairly mediocre, but at least the (huge)pitcher of sangria was good. We asked the server where the actual beach was, and she said that it was a 15-minute walk away.
We stopped in at the bathroom and learned that if you aren't standing a hairsbreadth away from a door, you apparently don't have to pee. Some people rudely pushed past us and tried for the occupied doors before I threw up my hands and glared at them.
That server was a dirty liar. My feet were officially dead, and it took forever to actually get to the beach. We had brought bathingsuits, but had forgotten to change into them when we were in the bathroom. I think Ang didn't actually think we were going swimming, but who the hell goes to the beach in Barcelona and DOESN'T get into the mediterranean?!
[picture]
We ran up to the water and Ang was the first in. She had no intention of swimming, but after wading up to half-calf, she partly fell in because there was an unseen drop-off. We scuttled back to the sand, and after standing on the beach fully prepared to jut rip off our clothes, we noticed that everybody was mostly fully dressed and not actually swimming. Shit. Then we saw an overhang that would at least hide us from the people on the boardwalk above, and waited until a woman finished peeing before we walked under it and began the shuffle of skill that is putting on a bathingsuit without actually getting undressed. I didn't realize until I pulled off all my clothes that I had managed to put my bathingsuit on the wrong way, so there was a bow and boob cups on my back. Holla!
Tracey and I dove in headlong, and it was glorious. Not warm, but nowhere as cold as the atlantic. Tracey and Ang eventually switched places because someone had to be on the beach at all times to watch our crap. I basically refused to get out. I think that was the first time I had gone swimming all summer :(
We all got our fill of swimming and stood around our pile of crap drip-drying before we decided that a cab would never stop for us if we were soaking wet. Angie did the skillful changing out of suit and into clothes right on the beach as a few dudes stared at her. Tracey and I walked over to our previous spot and dressed as guys on bicycles with backpacks pedaled by asking if we wanted beer or pot. For the record, we said no.
We walked back up to the road and Angie and I hailed a cab from one direction while Tracey hailed a cab from another direction, so we accidentally got two cabs. We all got into the first one and began the awkward "hotel curious? um. La Rambla? um. Placa del Catalunya? uh, shit...Calle carme?" "calle carme? si!" "hooray!" "where on calle carme?" "shit. um, next to La Rambla?"
Eventually, after the cab driver took the long way around, we arrived back at the hotel. High five! The cab driver was actually really nice, he put on some music he hoped we liked (american pop) and talked to us about our trip.
A friend had recommended that we go to L'Ovella Negra, a backpacker's bar. We changed out of our wet clothes at the hotel and left for L'Ovella Negra, which was only a few blocks away. Ang and I followed Tracey, who began charging down streets as soon as we left the hotel. As soon as Ang and I began whispering, "does she actually know where she's going?" Tracey announced "we're here!"
The bouncer warned us that it was 20 minutes until closing and we couldn't take drinks to-go. Alright, fine. We walked in, and it was immediately like stepping into a German beer hall. long bare-wood topped tables while people loudly pounded back beers, old iron decorations including a giant bird cage(?) and gruff bartenders. I loved it, and regretted that we had not been going there since the beginning. The atmosphere was fun, the drinks were cheap, and we probably would have been able to meet peple if there wasn't 15 minutes left by the time we sat down. The place was so packed I assumed they weren't actually going to close at 3 like they had said, but sure enough, right on time the lights were flicked on and we were herded out.
[pictures of L'Ovella Negra]
Eventually, we reached the waterfront. There was a walking bridge stretched across the harbor leading to some restaurants. We walked towards it, and saw a bunch of people selling various things off of blankets. Ang got some snake earrings from a dude selling them from an umbrella, and we walked to the edge of the pier and sat down to take pictures of the boats and shoreline. Shortly after, a woman plopped down next to angie, clutching a backback. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I assumed she was trying to sell something, and we began edging away from her. Ang wasn't moving, though, and when the woman got up and walked away, Ang explained what had happened. Apparently there were runners warning the people selling stuff that cops were coming, so they'd quickly pack up their stuff and dump it into backpacks. Reselling was illegal, but the woman made bracelets and didn't want the police to take her stuff, so she had sat next to us in an effort to look like she belonged with the group instead of being one of the sellers.
[picture]
We walked across the bridge and ended up at a restaurant called tapa-tapa, and we were happy to find out they were still selling food since it was later than restaurants usually serve food. We ordered some croquetas, squid, pork, chicken, and maybe one other thing. They were all fairly mediocre, but at least the (huge)pitcher of sangria was good. We asked the server where the actual beach was, and she said that it was a 15-minute walk away.
We stopped in at the bathroom and learned that if you aren't standing a hairsbreadth away from a door, you apparently don't have to pee. Some people rudely pushed past us and tried for the occupied doors before I threw up my hands and glared at them.
That server was a dirty liar. My feet were officially dead, and it took forever to actually get to the beach. We had brought bathingsuits, but had forgotten to change into them when we were in the bathroom. I think Ang didn't actually think we were going swimming, but who the hell goes to the beach in Barcelona and DOESN'T get into the mediterranean?!
[picture]
We ran up to the water and Ang was the first in. She had no intention of swimming, but after wading up to half-calf, she partly fell in because there was an unseen drop-off. We scuttled back to the sand, and after standing on the beach fully prepared to jut rip off our clothes, we noticed that everybody was mostly fully dressed and not actually swimming. Shit. Then we saw an overhang that would at least hide us from the people on the boardwalk above, and waited until a woman finished peeing before we walked under it and began the shuffle of skill that is putting on a bathingsuit without actually getting undressed. I didn't realize until I pulled off all my clothes that I had managed to put my bathingsuit on the wrong way, so there was a bow and boob cups on my back. Holla!
Tracey and I dove in headlong, and it was glorious. Not warm, but nowhere as cold as the atlantic. Tracey and Ang eventually switched places because someone had to be on the beach at all times to watch our crap. I basically refused to get out. I think that was the first time I had gone swimming all summer :(
We all got our fill of swimming and stood around our pile of crap drip-drying before we decided that a cab would never stop for us if we were soaking wet. Angie did the skillful changing out of suit and into clothes right on the beach as a few dudes stared at her. Tracey and I walked over to our previous spot and dressed as guys on bicycles with backpacks pedaled by asking if we wanted beer or pot. For the record, we said no.
We walked back up to the road and Angie and I hailed a cab from one direction while Tracey hailed a cab from another direction, so we accidentally got two cabs. We all got into the first one and began the awkward "hotel curious? um. La Rambla? um. Placa del Catalunya? uh, shit...Calle carme?" "calle carme? si!" "hooray!" "where on calle carme?" "shit. um, next to La Rambla?"
Eventually, after the cab driver took the long way around, we arrived back at the hotel. High five! The cab driver was actually really nice, he put on some music he hoped we liked (american pop) and talked to us about our trip.
A friend had recommended that we go to L'Ovella Negra, a backpacker's bar. We changed out of our wet clothes at the hotel and left for L'Ovella Negra, which was only a few blocks away. Ang and I followed Tracey, who began charging down streets as soon as we left the hotel. As soon as Ang and I began whispering, "does she actually know where she's going?" Tracey announced "we're here!"
The bouncer warned us that it was 20 minutes until closing and we couldn't take drinks to-go. Alright, fine. We walked in, and it was immediately like stepping into a German beer hall. long bare-wood topped tables while people loudly pounded back beers, old iron decorations including a giant bird cage(?) and gruff bartenders. I loved it, and regretted that we had not been going there since the beginning. The atmosphere was fun, the drinks were cheap, and we probably would have been able to meet peple if there wasn't 15 minutes left by the time we sat down. The place was so packed I assumed they weren't actually going to close at 3 like they had said, but sure enough, right on time the lights were flicked on and we were herded out.
[pictures of L'Ovella Negra]
Once you see it you can't unsee it
We woke up early in an attempt to accomplish all the things. I had set the alarm for 10:30, thinking that we'd all get up and go to the free breakfast downstairs. The reality was that Angie and Tracey played dead while I went to the free breakfast downstairs. I grabbed some croissants, and made a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches. In fact, I stole all of the ham, because apparently you were only supposed to use a dainty slice or two, but fuck 'em. Angie appeared at my side disheveled and in her PJs and and we chugged OJ while the nicely dressed patrons stared at us in disdain.
While we smuggled our goods to the elevator, the doors slid open to reveal a Tracey, who also had come down to steal shit and chug OJ. I'm sure this hotel loved us.
Angie had seen that there was a dunkin' donuts (called dunkin' coffee here) a few blocks away from the hotel, and demanded that we have the coffee from there. We walked down, and then discovered the dunkin' coffee was actually in a giant outdoor market. We wandered through the stalls, buying juices for .50 euro and I got spices for Jim to bring home.
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Eventually, the draw of coffee got to us, and we made our way to the outdoor seating for dunkin' coffee. Before our butts even touched the seats, an employee ran out and told us we had to purchase something to sit there. Yeah...dude, we haven't even sat yet, calm down. Angie went inside to get the goods while Tracey saved the table and I went back into the market to get more fruit juices to try. I came back to find angie staring at her coffee with this defeated/confused/angry look on her face. Apparently, this was no dunkin' donuts. This was a fancy-ass, many-thousand-dollar-expresso-machine-owning, barista-employing,latte-slinging establishment, and the coffee was the best she had ever had. She was legitimately mad and muttered that America needed to get their shit together. They even had boston creme donuts that were better than the "real" ones.
[picture]
Tracey suddenly stood up, announced she had to "go" and left. We waited for her, and waited for her, and eventually Angie asked where the hell she had possibly gone. I said that she had probably decided fuck it, and gone back to the hotel. Just then Tracey appeared, and told us "I said fuck it, and went back to the hotel."
We went back into the market for a bit, and I was hit with the same sudden urge tracey had to "go". We all ran back to the hotel (which, thank fuck, Tracey had found a short-cut to) and we took turns blowing up the bathroom. Well, Tracey and I did, anyway. I think Angie was fine, and determined that only Tracey and I had eaten the sandwiches from breakfast and this was my karma for stealing all the ham.
After a good hour of this, we started googling "Why am I peeing out of my butt?" to see what the internet had to say about it. Suggestions ranged from "you're sick" to "you're dying". Eventually, after the 8th round of shitting, Angie perked up and announced she had Immodium. After a lot of yelling at eachother when I realzed I also had some super-duper anti-diarrheals from going to India, we drugged up. The shitting did not stop, so I sat up, yelled "fuck it! I'll just shit myself, ain't nobody got time for this!", and started stuffing my purse with underwear and napkins. I never thought I would actually have to prepare to shit myself, but spoiler: the immodium hit just in time.
We got on the bus, and made our way to the Sagrada Familia. It was built by Gaudi, an architectural genius who build many landmarks around Barcelona in the early 1900s. I knew it was "the" thing to see in Barcelona, but as we came upon it, it was truly the most awe-inspiring building I had ever seen in my life. I had been sitting inside the tour bus (so I didn't burn like a lobster) while Ang and Tracey were up top armed with the cameras. I ran off the bus, screamed up at them to get off, and ran back on the bus so it couldn't leave without them getting off. The driver started yelling at me "no, no, no" and making shoo-ing motionions while I told him "my friends, no, my friends" and poined to the top deck until they appeared. Most of the Spanish were kind of dicks, honestly.
We did a walk around the block looking at the Sagrada Familia taking pictures and selfies.
[pictures]
Eventually we realized we were hungry, and I made it our mission to get paella. There was a conveniently placed paella restaurant directly across from the Sagrada Familia, and we sat down and ordered chicken paella, cheese, and croquetas. The paella takes 25 minutes to cook, and arrives in a hot-ass still-boiling frying pan. I wanted to love it, but it tasted a bit fishy. The waiter came over and poked our bowl of lemons and nudged them toward us and walked off. Sure, I like lemon. We doused the paella in lemon and some goddamn magic happened to it. It was amazing and we ate so much it hurt.
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We began walking around the block, taking more pictures and selfies as we went.
[picture]
Eventually, as we always do, we stop caring about the sights and settle into the shopping. We hit gift store after gift store, coming up mostly empty. I don't know what it was about Spain, but the shopping was awful. We figured that we only had one more place to see we really cared about (Guell Park), and it was only 7:15 or so and the bus didn't stop coming until 8:30 anyway. Then we realized: shit. We still had to get there, go through the whole place, and be back to the bus stop by 8:30.
We ran back onto the bus, and got off at Guell. No, sorry, we got off at the bottom of the giant hill that the park sat on. Research is not our strong suit. We walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and then we finally arrived at the gorgeous park that Angie promptly ruined by chanting, "Once you see it you can't unsee it! ONCE YOU SEE IT YOU CAN'T UNSEE IT!"
[picture]
And, indeed, I could not unsee it and now I just have dicks in all my pretty pictures. I had thought that Guell was just a tiny park we could see in, like, 10 minutes...but, like I said, research is not our strong suit. We began running through the park as the minutes ticked by until there would be no bus for us.
[picture]
There was this lizard statue water thing that everyone sits on to get a picture of, but these little kids kept running up and jumping on it while Tracey waited patiently for their parents to finish taking pictures before she got on it. Eventually, I yelled that "ain't nobody got time for this" and told her to just sit on them.
[picture]
We wander up the stairs into this cavern-like place with columns everywhere and patterns on the ceiling where the columns meet. We separated for a bit, and I saw Tracey taking a selfie. I had, somewhere along the way, become obsessed with selfies.. Tracey took her selfie and when she saw the picture, laughed so hard she legit peed herself.
[picture]
We both stood there laughing so hard people started to stare. Ang walked by and pretended not to know us. We finally managed to make her stop and showed her the picture, and creeperpictures became a thing.
[picture]
[picture]
With the clock ticking, we ran up another (long) set of stairs, and decided we were fucked and there was no way we'd see the whole park. We ran the rest of the way, took a few pictures, saw more stairs, said fuck it, ran down, took more pictures, and then began running down back to the entrance. The same little kids were surrounding the lizard statue and refused to move, so I may have run a few of them and their grandmother over on the way out. Sorry.
[picturessss]
We ran down the hill and managed to catch the bus early. Not even that, but it wasn't even the last bus. High five!
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