Monday August 20-friday August 24
On Monday I had the day to myself. I spent the morning grocery shopping (the stores were all closed on Sunday), wandering around Barcelona, and eating empanadas.
Gràcia
I had my first real tapas experience and saw lots of foods that are far too bizarre for my comfort. I ended up getting some patatas bravas, bread with a soft cheese and jam, some other tapas that I've already forgotten, served with a glass of sangria. Then, I hopped on a train to head to the airport to pick James up.
On Tuesday, James and I ventured into Barcelona, having a cute breakfast at a little cafe. In the afternoon we went jet skiing. James didn't want to drive, so I ended up driving our jetski. I wasn't the best driver, but we survived the ride and it was mildly terrifying and fun. After our jetski, we hopped on segways and took a 90minute Segway ride along the beach. It was a beautiful evening to enjoy the sunset. My Segway ran out of battery, and as a result, our guide traded segways with me and walked, pulling the broken Segway behind him until someone from the company brought us a new Segway. We finished the day with an authentic tapas experience where we got to pick tapas up from the bar, ordering our hot tapas and ranciones. We had some yummy veggies in bread, cheese on bread, potatoes, and cake.
Wednesday, we had a relaxing and slow morning, starting the day with another leisurely cafe breakfast. Then, we took a bus and train to get to sitges, a resort town. There were lots of little (air-conditioned) shops that we wandered thru. We had a nice lunch with salad and a margarita-esque pizza with honey, and of course a pitcher of sangria. Later, we took a “tour” of Casa Bacardi. It was the most bizarre tour that I have been on, with our tour guide throwing in lots of excessively long, ackward pauses. The highlight was the cocktail making workshop where we were taught to make 3 cocktails. One of the cocktails had muddled kiwi in it and it was really gross. James and I both chose to make a mojito. We learned the proper way to slap the mint leaves to enhance their flavor and how much to muddle the lime without bringing out the bitterness. We spent a good chunk of the day relaxing at the beach, in the balmy Mediterranean. We finished the day at NEM, a well-reviewed tapas restaurant. We had some delicious mozzarella, bread with tomato spread, a very spicy patatas bravas, and an amazing hummus with croutons.
We woke up early on Thursday to go kayaking in Costa Brava. We got to the meeting point early, but as it got closer to 8, we began to wonder what was happening, as there was no one else at the square. By 820, with still no sign of a tour bus, I went back to the cafe we had breakfast at and asked to use their phone. I called the tour company, and they were perplexed saying they did not have a tour today at 8am. They saw that I did in fact have a reservation for an 8am tour and apologized, offering us to go on the 1045am tour. We went to a local park and took a much needed rest, before returning to the meeting spot, this time finding a much busier square. We hopped on the tour bus and enjoyed a 90min bus ride to Costa Brava. We got on our tandem kayak and began paddling. Our first stop was a little cove with a few cliffs we could jump off. I jumped off of the shorter one, probably about 2m high. Our second stop was a little cave that we got to walk in a bit. The last stop was a little reef area. I hopped out, put on my snorkel, and got to see lots of fish and an octopus. It was really cool as the water was super clear. We finished the 3+hour adventure with sandwiches. The sandwich options were cheese (kind of a mild Swiss), cured meats, tomatoes, lettuce, barbeque sauce, mustard, and mayo. It's interesting to see the similarities and differences between sandwiches in the US and here. They like to put this tomato spead on everything, I think it's just pureed tomato. James got a sandwich in Iceland (on his layover) that had salmon and hard boiled egg on it.
Friday was out last full day in Barcelona. We had a yummy lunch where we ordered “fried brie tacos with tomato jam”. Somewhere, Google translate got confused. What we got in no way resembled tacos. Rather, we were seved fried brie balls. But they were delicious.
After lunch, we tried to go shopping to find James new gym shorts as he threw them away in Nashville due to possible contamination with bed bugs. However, most of the shorts were more European style and short, and not James' style.
In the evening, we walked around the Gràcia neighborhood where we got more tapas including a weird eggplant, onion, and red pepper dish, an empanada and some cookie and dark chocolate ice cream.
It's been a fun 16 days in Spain. I've eaten lots of different foods, pickled veggies, tapas, lots of baked good, potatoes, and sangria. I've practiced my Spanish, visited countless churches, seen works by Gaudi, relaxed on the beach, and enjoyed art.
Today, we are flying to Budapest. I'm curious to experience a very different culture, strongly influenced by it's communist past and participation in both world wars. James studied abroad in Budapest when I was in London but did not sightsee much when he was abroad