We fail at Spain

now play "Spot the Americans."

We arrived at the Barcelona airport, got our passports stamped with no questions asked, and we marched through the empty customs area into the airport proper. We get our euros from the ATM, conveniently dispensed in 50 euro increments.

I went to the sandwich shop and pissed off my very first spanish dude, where they got mad at my 50 and muttered something I didn't understand, and then continued to complain to the person behind me about my transgression. I probably should have purchased more than a (disgusting) 2 euro soda, but I feel like they should be prepared for that at an AIRPORT where people arrive and only have money from the ATM they're next to that only gives 50s.

We made it outside and at the bottom of the ramp is the bus to placa de catalunya, which is the bus that takes us to our hotel. We get on, panic that there is more than one stop, and eventually decide to just get off when everyone else does. It was a solid plan that worked more than once.

now play "Pretty or Gay."

Our stop dropped us off at the top of La Rambla, which is "the" street in Barcelona. Our hotel was on a side street shooting off of La Rambla, calle de carme. Hotel Curious is a (sort of?) themed hotel, where each floor is earth, wind, fire, etc. We walked in and were greeted by Mateo, who is basically the shit. Our room wouldn't be ready for an hour (which was 5 hours before we were even supposed to be there), so we dropped off our bags with him and set off to find coffee.

We found our coffee down some side street, stood around like idiots while everyone ignored us until we finally asked one of the servers what we were supposed to do. She told us to sit down, and we stared at the menu before just asking her to suggest something. She didn't understand that, so she pointed to the case with sandwiches and we pointed to which sandwiches we wanted. We ordered cafe bombon and congratulated ourselves on navigating our first restaurant experience with spectacular failure. Tracey's sandwich had mold on the bottom, and mine tasted weird, but we pretended not to notice. We decided to tip, but didn't know HOW to tip, and eventually left change on the table and pointed it out to the waitress.

We got back to the hotel, and our room was ready. After a quick rah-rah session to go back out, we waited downstairs for meeting a friend's friend that had asked these people to show us around town. We had never seen or met them, had no cell number, and had only agreed through e-mail to meet at noon outside of the hotel. After an hour, we decided that they had seen us, said fuck that, and abandoned us. Shortly after, though, they showed up and we began the awkward ritual of try-to-shake-hand-oh-god-they-do-the-kiss-thing-which-cheek-goes-first-now-i'm-just-making-out-with-you. They saw our confusion and asked how many kisses Americans do to greet someone, and we had to tell them we just shake hands. I think they forgave us. Maybe. Probably not. Fuck.

We had agreed in advance to do a free Sandeman tour of Barcelona, which I knew took 3 hours from checking the website first. They took us through some beautiful side streets and eventually brought us to a tapas place where their other friend met up with them and they all ignored us to drink beer and speak to eachother in spanish, which was a language we utterly failed on brushing up on before we left for the country where it was spoken. The sangria was amazing and the tapas were delicious, so that's a win, right?

We left for the tour (late) and an extremely excitable British guy launched into the tour the moment we showed up. The first thing he showed us were little statues of people with their pants down taking a shit. No, really. He explained that in Catalan tradition, children would set out a ceramic poo log for the month of December and give it food and candy and such that the parents would hide at night. On Christmas day, they would break the log and sing "poo log, poo log, give us our presents!" and their parents would bring out the gifts that were delivered by the poo log. Or..something. According to the spanish people we were with, this is a legit tradition. I googled it, and not only were they telling the truth, the tour guide was making it more family friendly than it actually is. The real song goes something like this:

Shit log,

shit nougats,

hazelnuts and cottage cheese,

if you don't shit well,

I'll hit you with a stick,

shit log!

After an hour into the tour, we all started walking slower and slower and...oh, oops, we lost the tour. Oh, you're going to join your spanish friend on the spanish version of the same tour you abandoned her on to hang out with us? Cool, yeah, e-mail us and we'll meet up later tonight for drinks and dancing. We need a nap.

They were really, really nice, and I'm glad we had time with them, but we did not click in the slightest and it was just awkward. We had spent the entire time on the tour trying to figure out how to politely bitch out and take a nap, and it turns out they were, too.

So, we bitched out, and went back to the hotel for a sweet, sweet, siesta.