Ramblings from Ramblas (mostly pics tho)

Insane move by me to schedule an international redeye on the recovery day of a bachelor party. My brain was not able compute much or take in the "culture" for the first day after the lack of sleep/too many beers. It was pure survival mode. This is door from the Sagrada Familia can give you a live look into my thoughts that day:

Cry for me for this beautiful first world problem. I felt fine by the next morning though and enjoyed being able to slow down and take in the normal movements on a weekday in a foreign land.

The kids running to school in the city, the motorcycles rushing around in a choatic frenzy, storefronts cleaning off their outside areas, construction workers hauling in their materials for the day. Today the morning was rainy and slippery and I enjoyed a cappuccino on a corner and watched this dude Roberto take an unfortunate header slipping down into the street. Another lady and I helped him up and I've never met someone so grateful for something so simple he wanted to kiss us, shoutout Roberto.

More on the cappuccinos later too, I've found (after spending 15 total days in Europe but speaking like an expert), that my favourite way to explore a city is to get their baby size cappuccinos at 3 or 4 different spots and walk streets in between. I drink boring black at home but they don't really do it over here and this way you can try places/see the city and not overdose on coffee. The cappuccino crawl; might deserve its own post.

BEST FOOD ITEM YET: PATTY MELT BOCADILLO FROM BAR TORPEDO - burger patties, tomatoes, cheese, burger sauce, diced onion, and some other ingredient I couldn't put my finger on:

Main tour facts I've learned is they love their man Antoni Gaudi here and all of the buildings and parks we've visited thus far have his fingerprints on them. Sagrada Familia his masterpiece, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo (this one's trippy-looking):

and Park Guell where he lived:

The Park was sweet and had a place that looked like the game of thrones scene when the viper fights the mountain (believe that's who it was, supposedly also the cheetah girls were there):

It was an unfortunate end for the their guy Gaudi though, he got smoked by a tram walking through his city from la sagrada one morning. His legacy is alive and well though!

Back to fun facts.

I also learned from the tour guide, whose name was Conchi (shoutout Conshy), the word rambla is actually arabic, and means a torrent, as in a stream. The famous streets they now call las ramblas were originally seasonal streams when the arabic people lived in what is now Barcelona. On another note about streets, I'm addicted to the small, tight streets in european cities in the morning as they open up. Here they call them carreros or passeig (passageways). They look like this:

Alright, the stream of consciousness has ended for the day, got a paella cooking class and cruise at night, I'll check back in when I feel like it.