You asked for it
Trip Start
Apr 13, 2010
1
18
21
Trip End
May 31, 2010
Where I stayed
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The crackers instantly turned to mush as soon as they touched the surface of the soup, like, inedible mush, like, I was holding one half of the cracker and suddenly half the cracker collapsed into the soup never to be seen again. And then, when I just brushed across the surface to get some soup flavor without meltifying the cracker. They tasted like crap.
WHERE ARE YOU TOLLHOUSE.
In the crackers defense, I did buy the cheaper brand of crackers. I’m not sure why 1 swiss franc seemed like a big saver, but it did at the time. So they might make good crackers. But I wouldn’t know, because I CHEAPED out on the crackers. Life lesson in that.
So I had bread and peanut butter. Crunchy peanut butter. That my friends, was an excellent purchase. It’s like half sized so it’s not so enormo that I’m like "augh peanut butter why did you ruin my life?!?!!" I may have already talked about my crunchy peanut butter at length but well. I like it. And it’s my blog, I will subject you to the wonders of my peanut butter if I deem it necessary! Mwahahhahahaha!
I went to bed at midnight, at a hostel. Which should be early, maybe not early, but it’s Barcelona, these people should be out partying.
They weren’t. They were all asleep in their beds. All 16 of them. I climbed up to my incredibly squeaky top bunk and then was so shamed of my noise making that I just slept in the clothes I was wearing. You know, the clothes I had also worn on the night train. And the day before that.
I showered the next morning.
Another one of those 20 second burst showers. I’m sure in theory they work, but they just aggravate me so much I try and take an extra long shower, and just keep pressing the button even if I don’t need it. It’s like the toilet paper that they make in single sheets and you have to pull them out like tissues. I just grab handfuls. Doesn’t matter if I’m not going to use it. They’re getting all up in my grill about how much toilet paper I can use. DON’T CENSOR MY TOILET PAPER.
Possibly something that just bothers me though.
So...day one and a half.
I head on down to the train station, after waiting to change rooms because they didn’t have a bed that I could have for all 3 nights. That did mean I got to escape the 16 bed dorm though, for like, an 8 bed? I don’t really remember. It was better though. Anyway, back to the train station, I looked in on customer service to see if my friend was there because I had decided I wanted to take a picture, partly so I could post it here with the caption of ‘Piece of CRAP’ under it. Mostly because I thought it would make her uncomfortable.
She wasn’t there. Sad times.
So I went to the tourist office and got a map of the metro. I’m comparing it with my free map I had gotten from the hostel, which is handy, most hostels give them out and they’re usually really useful.
The map they hand out is a ‘shopping’ map though. So they have all these big bright colored dots marked everywhere and I’m like, oh what’s that? Oh, it’s a clothing store. Awesome. So there’s all these bright colors distracting me and I’m trying to find the metro stations which are fairly tiny compared to some of these mega SHOP HERE dots.
I can find the dot on the map, but then I look on the metro map, and I have no idea where it is. I couldn’t even find the train station for a while. I finally decided that hey, I haven’t done one of those bus tours at all on this trip, let’s do that! They have a delightful map with only stops and important things on the map. No shopping! Yaaaay!
The bus is slow. I had forgotten that. The commentary is way slower. Like, they don’t have enough things to talk about so they play filler music, and I’m pretty sure that was like 60-70 percent of the tape. Filler music. I don’t remember that at all from other tours. Maybe some in the slower parts of town, but I mean, there was a crazy dictator here not so long ago, they were all loaded with cash back in the day. They were buddies with freaking Columbus! Where is my fascinating commentary?
I’m not sure that they mentioned anything historical really. We went to the Olympic stadium and they were like, “this is the stadium. It was built in 1929 and then redone in 1992 for the other Olympics. The other Barcelona football team also plays here. Traaaaaallalaaaaaalalalaaaa doooododododoooo baaaanananana(this is the filler music)”
There was no ‘aliens landed here and decided to build the pyramids in Egypt where it was hotter but not before they decided to put franco in power and then invent the telescope”
I know it happened. I know that stuff happened. It’s not on this stupid recording though. They didn’t even have any lame attempts at humor. They always have a couple of jokes that just have no possibility of landing because you’re listening to a recording and you need the commentator to make like a funny face for you to be like, hehehe, but there is no face, so you’re like, Laaame.
There were none of those! It was like they don’t want people coming to Barcelona! It’s a freaking crappy bus commentary conspiracy!
Anyway, we drove by the port where all the cruise ships hang out and the commentary was like, ‘Ships regularly go to North Africa and Italy from here’
And my first thought was “how much does it cost to go to North Africa?” Clearly I had already given up on Barcelona.
I did get off on one of the stops where you could take a cable car up the hill and see some fortress from some time. I’d tell you all these interesting facts but I have no idea what they are. I was only able to find one plaque in the whole place and it only talked about one specific prisoner, plus there were these old people hogging the plaque like they owned it, so after 5 minutes of reading over their shoulder I decided I just didn’t really care that much.
It had pretty views of Barcelona from up high. Except I don’t really think Barcelona is that pretty. There’s no ‘old town’ where you can be like, Oh look at that pretty stuff. It’s all mishy-mash everywhere. It looked like any city in south California.
The Mediterranean sea was very blue and pretty.
I got back on the bus and I think I went back home for the day.
And I did laundry. Real live, washing machine/dryer laundry. And, I had brought some dryer sheets so I could cram them in my bag if it started to get stinky, so I got to use one of those too! It was so awesome! I tossed the pile on my bed and then started to look up things to do the next day. When I came back for the night there was a coat on my bed, over my clothes.
Just randomly. I thought that was very weird. So I left it on the floor. I’m sure they figured it out.
The next day I went to pueblo espanya which is a fake village that they made for some international expo(worlds fair? They never used that phrase so I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like it) that is recreations of pieces of real villages in spain. It was a nice walk through, they had lots of shops which were kind of more fun than the generic souvenir shop. I also got to see glass blowing. It wasn’t quite as magical as I imagine it in my mind though, because they pretty much had an assembly line going. Two guys were blowing vases, one guy was doing the stem, and the third guy would have them both come to him and put everything together. It was still cool to watch though. They were quick. The leather guy was all by himself, and his back was facing me, so I couldn’t really see what he was doing, so I decided not to stay.
Rick Steves said mean things about it in his book. And I was like, it wasn’t that bad to stroll through. And then I remembered I had paid like 8 euros to stroll through. And then I decided that Rick Steves was right. Good call Rick.
I was going to go to their big Catalonian art gallery which is their big impressive palace looking thing, that they also built for the expo, with OUTDOOR ESCALATORS. Yeah, they exist. Why hasn’t it caught on anywhere else? And I tried to buy a combined ticket at pueblo but the lady said, actually tomorrow it should be free because of international museum day(pfffft, really. Really they made a day for that? Seriously.) And that was great, except by the end of the day I decided I didn’t want to see Barcelona anymore and left town. Oops.
So I get on the other route the bus does, they do 3, red and blue both look good, I have no idea why they have green. And I went to see Sangradia Familia. It was a pretty wonky looking church. I’ll give Gaudi that. It’s also under construction. Like it’s been for the past 100 years or something. So that was also kind of weird. Because there were at least 4 cranes just kind of hanging out in the middle. And then when you went inside it was all very much under construction. Looked like some of the stained glass had been done, and some of the ceiling. But the whole place was pretty filled with scaffolding and men holding things that went bzzzzzzzzzzzzwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaang. (power tools. I know you knew that though).
It was interesting.
Some woman on the bus mentioned how they had KFC’s everywhere. Like she was surprised people like friend chicken. You know, chicken, the meat that is universally loved. And then deep fried? Yeah. I was ‘shocked’ too. Go ahead and ask someone if they don’t like fried chicken. I can guarantee you that if they hate it, they’re a robot. A robot in disguise who’s probably trying to infiltrate our government but they’ll never succeed because they just don’t understand humans.
If vegetables tasted like fried chicken we wouldn’t have enough farmers to keep us satiated.
I’m just saying, you know. Duh lady.
So that’s what I had for lunch.
Then I cruised around the blue line some more. I realized that the bus takes FOR-EV-UR to get around. It was insane how much time I ate up just sitting on that bus, listening to some crappy commentary. I never just unhooked my earplugs either. I didn’t want people to think I was weird. So I listened to it over and over again.
So I decided the last thing I wanted to do in Barcelona was go to one of the Gaudi houses that he made all crazified. I get there with plenty of time, 40 minutes till close. I start to walk to the ticket line and this lady stops me and says that there isn’t enough time to go through the whole thing. I was like, you close at 8. She told me it took an hour and a half to go through. Yeah, sure, if I read everything. Which is probably in Spanish, so no need to worry about that! I’m sure if I had been like “I don’t care’ she would have sent me on my merry way, but I was again aggravated that Barcelona was out to get me and I was like FINE! I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR STUPID HOUSE! IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S MELTING ANYWAY!
It wasn’t as colorful as the other one either, but I heard the inside was more worth my time/cheaper. But I ended up seeing neither because I was going to Montserrat tomorrow! Screw this town!
So I got on the train, trucked out there, with all my bags. Looked for a locker at the station but there weren’t any, they’re probably at the top I think to myself. I get on the cable car to take us up, I’ve got tickets and books in my hand. The cable car guy is like, hey, take off your bag and put it on the floor.
Sure, that’s not a huge pain in the ass, and I don’t have to then drag it out by one strap because I can’t put it back on with all the people. I was the last person on the car! Last! There was room. Right there! Also I’m mad because Spain is having a freak storm of big fuzzy things that like to fly up into my eyeballs and even my sunglasses aren’t protecting me.
So we get to the top, they’re kind of weird looking mountains, but um, not really amazing either. I go looking for info to stash my bag, the guy in the funicular station says oh, over there. I go ‘over there’ but didn’t see anything. Information is conveniently located right next to ‘over there’ so I ask them and they say ‘there are no lockers on Montserrat.”
Sure. I came up to go hiking on a mountain with my 50 pound(probably closer to like 20) bag. Because I like that kind of thing.
So I decided that to spite Montserrat I was going to climb up to their high up view point and I was going to throw a big fat rock off the edge and say HAH! SUCK IT MONTSERRAT!
It was a rough climb with the bag. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was going to be a rough climb without the bag. And then halfway up a maintenance driver passes by, and locks and closes the gate behind him. I stand there ready to have a major freaking melt down. Plus there aren’t any rocks here so I’m really mad.
And then I realized that there was a little side access for people walking. Oops. Little preemptive freak out. Still mad anyway because spain is spain.
I finally get to the top, there are people there. Crap, I can’t do my plan with people around, they’ll think I’m crazy and call the mountain police. I wait around, and wait. People leave, but then more people come. There’s a cross on the view point. People have carved their name into it. Wouldn’t jesus probably frown on that kind of stuff? I’m just saying, maybe carve your name into the fence instead, you are out in the open, next to a GIANT metal conductor. Maybe not the time to get smited, smoted…smote, hah, word says it’s smote. I prefer smoted.
Then a bunch of people come. I give up on my official plan. I take some pictures. It’s not a bad view, it’s just…kind of a blah view. It’s like if you put up a mountain in North Dakota and looked out from it.
It’s not the epic beautiful of Switzerland, so maybe I was holding that against it. But really, there was just enough plant life to make it not barren looking, which would have been kind of beautiful in a crazy Libyan desert kind of way, but there weren’t trees or anything special. Just boring hills with some boring shrubs. Kind of disappointed in that.
I did get halfway down the trail and there was a clearing in the shrubs and no people around, so I did chuck a rock over at that point, but there was no way to watch it, so it wasn’t as therapeutic as I was hoping.
I got down and checked out the monastery which was pretty cool looking, I guess it was technically the church part. I also went to touch the orb that Mary was holding. I haven’t gotten a rash, and I wasn’t immediately struck down by lightning when I exited, so I think me and jesus are still in friends status on facebook.
I wandered over to the restaurant they had because I was like, I know what will cheer me up, a cooked meal. I’ve gotten a little too peanut butter dependant, warm food will help.
“Reservation?”
“Uhm. No.”
“Hotel?”
“Not that either.”
“We’re closed then.”
Cool. I can see why you’d have a restaurant up at the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere that only accepts reservations and the people who are at the hotel. Makes total sense to me.
I bought some chips ahoy and Pringles in the store down the hill. It was a delightful lunch.
I took the train back. Pretty much disappointed with Barcelona. I went to hang out in the train station to catch my night train to Paris. I didn’t want to sit in the main station area and get pooped on like the last time.
So I wandered over to the side of the station that said ‘restaurant/café’. The doors were glass, so all you could really see was a reflection of what was behind you so I didn’t discover that it was totally freaking empty until I opened the door. It was this huge hall area though, all marble floored and columns, it was crazy. I decided to hang out there because it looked to be pigeon proof. And then I decide it would be fun to go investigate. The upstairs has all the furniture that used to be in the main area, the tables are all set up together so it’s like, mega table! And if you put blankets around the edges it would have made a kick ass fort. They have an empty bar area, and a little half kitchen area behind that. It leads to spiral stairs back down the main floor and so I wandered through their empty kitchen, it’s huge back there. It then leads to stairs that go up for like 3 more stories but I can’t get there because it’s padlocked closed, I could go downstairs, which is just a series of empty/utility rooms. But then I saw a water bottle and was like “ah! homeless people might get me!” So I went back upstairs and promptly decided that this would be my zombie-pocalypse hide out of choice.
The windows are already tastefully barred. There’s a kitchen. There’s several more floors to spread out to when we start to collect other survivors, which also have bars over the doors. Also looked like there was roof access so we can put up our ‘hey, we don’t eat brains’ sign. And there were lots of ‘retreat’ rooms, in case you were lazy and let the zombies get in, you still had a back up door, and another, and another. Plus it’s at the train station, so when society decides to go back to normal, we have access to main railways.
Or we can keep everyone in the dark ages and control them and supplies by the railway.
Either way, it’s a winner.
Listen, I had 2 and a half hours to hang out in the place and if I didn’t find something I liked about Barcelona I was going to puke. Plus I like zombie movies. And I have a slightly overactive imagination.
A big cyclone mix of all those things.
It was also funny to watch all the people try and come looking for food only to be disappointed just like me. One lady came back 3 times. Like maybe it would be ghosts who were just hiding. Three times. And she saw me sitting in the corner writing, without any food. What a doof. Keep the dream alive! It will be here next time!
And then my train came, and I had to leave my Palace D’zomb-ocolypse. For the terrifying claustrophobia of the night train. Seriously. Those hallways are so itty bitty. Every time I think I’m not going to be able to get my bag through the door and be trapped on the train somewhere, unable to turn around because of the goliath strapped to my back.
All four people showed up in the cabin. Crap. It was a lot hotter than last time, so I didn’t get as great of a sleep. It was still fine though. I also snuck into the bottom bunk through no fault of my own. The bed maker lady put my backpack on the bottom bunk and the other girl who didn’t speak English just hopped on top.
And then I got to Paris and was like Yaaaaaay no more spain! And I was all excited because people were waiting to pick other people up at the station and I was like, that’s gonna be me in like 5 days! I get to see my boyfriend and turn him against spain with me! Yaaaay!
And that’s how my spain portion went. And that’s why I haven’t written about it for like a million days. It was just poopy. Capital P.
