Barca

Barcelona, one of the best cities I have been to in recent memory and also where I met Mike Hicks for the first time. Mike was there teaching English, and I was there on vacation. He was living with a mutual friend that I knew through Drew, so we all hooked up and hung out. We talked and Mike mentioned he was moving back to Texas and I invited him to stay with Drew and I for a bit and the rest is history. So, Brooke has had to endure us talking about how cool Barcelona is and how good the food and architecture is, blah blah blah, so it was built up in her mind. We spent 5 days there which is an eternity when you are traveling like this. We stayed
up in the Eximaple, a bit away from the touristy areas. Barca has good transportation, and walking a bit is no problem when you have some time. It was nice to be able to really take it slow when seeing things.

Barcelona is a city I could see myself living in and we really wanted to soak up the atmosphere. It has always reminded me of San Francisco but warmer. Big, progressive, clean with beautiful archeticture and a creative edgy populace. Gaudi and the modernista architects had a huge influence on this city and Brooke came to quickly appreciate their style.

Between the medievel old town and the modern Exiample the quirky flowing lines of the modernistas really sets the tone. We walked around a lot just soaking in the atmosphere. Barcelona has been experiencing a bit of a Renaissance since the Olympics in `92. It is one of the top cities for young people in the EU to move to.

It was fun hanging out at nights in our hood, eating and drinking at the cafes up and down the street. We had chicken and cheese crepes one night which was basically like a burrito, ate tapas, had cava and generally enjoyed ourselves. We hung out in a square one night just full of people our age drinking beer and playing with their dogs. We took up a spot in a cafe and ordered some tapas. Now, we have been in Italy for a month and I have been trying to speak Italian by modifying my Spanish a bit. The languages are very similar but just different enough to confuse me. I have really been working to say `di` instead of `de` and `senza` instead of `sin` and pronouncing all my c`s as `ch` and now it bit us in the ass. We order what we usually order in Italy, a bottle of `vino rosso`, red wine. Now from being in Mexico both Brooke and I know that in Spanish, red wine is vino tinto (colored) and vino rosso is some pink crap. So here we are, with all these hip Barcelona kids drinking a bottle of pink wine. It was gawd awful and embarassing.

Single gentelmen, listen up. We saw this place in our guide book and gave it a cursory glance (perhaps Brooke`s glance was more steadfast), until we saw it was free on Monday. This being Monday we headed over. Free to get in and a free bar of choclate per entry, the chocolate museum was the place to be. Where else can you see a choclate Pieta, I think this is much better than that crap by Michelangelo, this should be in the Vatican.

Now, I was tired and while Brooke was in a fantasy land of choclate history and sculpture I had a seat, where I made the astute observation that the chocolate museum is a great place to pick up chics. I think I was the only man in the place and was surrounded by women under the magical spell of the cocoa bean. There was also an exhibit on the Barcelona soccer team, I assume to give the attached men in the audience some entertainment. I had a hard time reconciling why the soccer stuff belonged in a chocolate museum, but it was free and I was tired so I sat quietly and ate my chocolate.

So the people in Barcelona are on average young and progressive. Hash is basically leagal here and people take full advantage of this. I want to draw some sort of correlation between hash consumption and hairstyles here. The mullet is insanely popular. A guy from Barcelona that we met in Mexico even had a mullet. Fine whatever, you want to rock the mullet, you are European, I will give you some leeway. Now what I have never seen is the dread mullet. These are people whith short normal hair on top and with mullet dreadlocks. Some dreads are short, others longer, but it is just wild to see. It is not isolated either, in our time here
we saw perhaps 30 or 40 people were rolling with this style.

We did a lot in our time here, saw the Picasso museum which had a lot of his early work and stuff from his blue period. We saw the Joan Miro museum which is pretty out there but pretty fascnitating. The Sagrada Familia, Gaudis unfinished masterpiece.

We went to the Gaudi designed Park Guell

which is a wonderful hodgepodge of fantastical structures. We got to make a pilgramage to Montjuic, home of the `92 Olympics where Oklahoma native Shannon Miller began her quest of becoming the most decorated female gymnast in US history.
One night we caugt some classical guitar at a gorgeous old theater. It was a nice treat to catch some music and see some top notch Spanish guitar.

We took a daytrip to Monserrat

which is a Monestarry perched on a huge cliff. We hiked to the summit which was wonderfully scenic and afforded close-up views of all the unique rock formations.

There were several that were supposed to look like things, a pregnant woman for instance, but we just made up our own things which was a lot more fun. The hike was a lot of fun and reaching the top had some pretty decent views even though it was cloudy. Apparantly on a clear day you can see the island of Mallorca.