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.

[picture]

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.

[picture?]

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!