Trip Stats:
Cities visited: 2
Broken Sunglasses: 1
Major bruises received: 1
Lost clothing: 1 pair of underwear that I think fell out of my locker in Barcelona (TMI?)
Blisters: still ow.

Only 4 days into my trip but it feels like it’s been forever. That’s probably mostly because I had less than 4 hours of sleep last night (yay for early flights…:\). I was in a panic that I wouldn’t wake up in time and so all of that wonderful sleep I’d gotten the night before was put to waste.

Rewinding:

I finished my last post while on the train to Barcelona. It wasn’t all that eventful. We ended up being able to fully recline our seats which was great (though still not all that comfortable.) Another reason it’s good to be vertically challenged – 1: beds are short 2: beds on trains are even shorter. I never have a problem with my feet dangling off of the end.

It was a pretty long 8 hours, mostly because, again, we were worried about sleeping through our stop. We got to Barcelona at a bright and cheery 7:30AM. Lucky for us the hostel was open and we could drop off our stuff until the 1PM check-in time. Unlucky for us, the fact that it was only 7:30AM meant that most of Barcelona was still asleep and finding breakfast wouldn’t be easy.

Our hostel was located pretty close to Las Ramblas which was nice. While sleepwalking our way there and through a light breakfast we flipped through guidebooks to see what to do for the day.

Before going to Barcelona I had 3 things I wanted to see:
1) The candy stand at La Boqueria. Random, I know, but back back wayyyy back in the day when I first joined Flickr, I came across this photo. I thought it was the best thing ever and it became one of the first photos I ever favorited. If you read down in the comments I vowed to see it for myself some day. That was my main reason for going to Barcelona. I’m easily pleased.
2) La Sagrada Familia – obviously?
3) Las Ramblas – seemed cool.

So we’re sitting at breakfast and I see in the guidebook that La Bouqueria is actually located at La Rambla 89 – that’s only a block or two away from where we were sitting! We’d passed it and I didn’t even realize! It had just opened for the day, so obviously that was our first stop.

The place itself is really cool. It’s absolutely packed with vendors and shoppers and everything from dangling carcasses of god know what animals to fresh fruits and everything in between. Toward the front is all of the fruit stands which is probably a good idea since I don’t think watching butchers chop off the heads of chickens is the best way to draw in a crowd (and yes…I did see that). Each fruit stand had an array of fresh squeezed fruit juices and SO. MUCH. FRUIT. I’m talking a quartered pineapple, pre-sliced, with a fork included for your convenience. Or a macedonia (fruit salad) with a bunch of different fruits large enough to count as one meal for a single Euro. It definitely puts the Ithaca farmers market (and any other farmer’s market that I’ve been to) to shame.

A bit further back you work your way into the vegetables, then to the meats (every single part of probably every single mammal out there), then to the fish. Oh the fish… how lovely they smell. Ugh. I actually saw a man rip apart a carcass of some red meat animal with his bare hands. I managed to hold back the vomit, but just barely. Needless to say, I tried to stick around the fruit as much as possible.

We went up and down each aisle of the place just to see what was there (and to find my candy stand) and after a few circuits, we finally found it. Heaven.

Despite the crazy prices (26.30/kilo…wth!?!) I obviously bought some candy. It’s my Spain souvenier, even though I’ll probably eat it all before I get home

Having only slept for a few restless hours, we decided to go back to the hostel before check-in time in hopes of just being able to hang around the lounge and maybe get on the wi-fi. I practically fell asleep on my keyboard while waiting.

Into our room, a quick nap later, and a lot of lounging around, we were off again – back to Las Ramblas for dinner. We’d decided that the best thing to do would be to go to the market and get fresh fruit and whatever else for dinner. I was craving something fresh and cool. La Boqueria closes at 8PM. We decided to go around 7:15 just to make sure we had some time to browse around. It’s a good thing we didn’t go any later! It turns out that an 8PM closing means that everything is shut down and locked up by 8PM, instead of just starting to close up shop at 8PM. The BEST part was, though, that since it was the end of the day and the market was closed on Sunday (and it was Saturday), the vendors were trying to offload as much as they possibly could. The fruit salads and juices that we’d seen earlier were now TWO for 1 Euro! I think I had 4 of those juices over the course of the day. Those things are GOOOOOOOD. I ended up getting myself a quarter of a pineapple, a giant thing of strawberries, two juices, and a small loaf of soft, sweet bread (I could not remember the word for “soft” for the life of me! I didn’t want a hard roll, but luckily I managed to say “is that not hard?”) for less than 4 Euro. You have no idea how much of a bargain that is. Amazing.

So post-dinner I spent some time uploading photos (all of the Madrid photos are on Flickr now. You can also see them in slideshow form on my Madrid post) and then decided to call it an early night. I was in bed by 12:30AM and decided to go all out and use ear plugs and an eye mask for the evening. BEST IDEA EVER. I don’t think I heard a single thing all night. The only time I woke up was when the guy in the bunk below me got home and the bed shook. Nearly 11 solid hours of sleep later I was up and ready to go. I probably could have slept some more, but the good news is I think I’m almost over my jet lag.

Sunday was a pretty standard tourist day – La Sagrada Familia, generally walking around, etc., but we also decided to make a pit stop at the beach. I’m not a huge fan of the beach, but I had to at least see it. It was so incredibly crowded. I’m talking Jersey Shore on Labor Day crowded. We found a spot by the water, took off our shoes, and just hung out for a while. The sun peeked in and out, but it was nice to just sit down and stare at the water for a while. And yes, I did put my feet in.

Back to the hostel to recharge and then there was one thing left on our itinerary. Well, actually Marquise’s itinerary: Paella (because we all know I’m not a fan of seafood). Some quick research told us to head to Barceloneta (near the beach we’d just return from) and that strip would have the best deals on paella. Let me just say that it was certainly an experience.

Picture this: a pretty long street – probably about 6 blocks long, with really wide sidewalks and restaurants with outdoor seating the entire way up and down. Now, in front of each restaurant, place menus in 6 different languages, photos of what’s described on the menus, and, here’s the kicker, 1-4 men standing out front with business cards in hand ready to pounce if they even see you glance at the menu. “We have the best paella in all of Barcelona”, “Everyone here, they have good paella. Our paella isn’t good. It’s great”, “You come try my paella, you come inside and see it’s fresh. We make it when you order. You see my restaurant is family restaurant. We make paella here for more than 100 years. You take my card. You go check the others, you come back and you ask for me and I give you free sangria.”… You get the idea.

We walked from one end of the street to the other looking for the best deal. We ended up going for one that looked decent, was moderately priced, and was close to where we were because we were getting too hungry to walk all the way to the beginning of the block again. It ended up being decent (I got paella de verduras…or vegetable paella) and the bill wasn’t all that bad. I promise I considered getting actual seafood paella, but then the guy said something about squid and then I saw the prawns with their heads still on and decided to go for something I would actually eat.

Back to the hostel we went. I had to leave early today to catch my plane to Copenhagen. Savoring my last moments of being able to understand the people and signs around me, I hopped on the metro and to the airport. Adios Barcelona y adios Espana!

Well, I’m on the train from Madrid to Barcelona. It’s 10PM and we decided to take an overnight train to save ourselves the hostel fee and to avoid the ridiculous costs of taking one of the high speed trains. This one is an 8 hour journey overnight as opposed to what I think would be about a 3 hour trip otherwise. We couldn’t get couchettes or anything like that, so hopefully we’ll be able to get at least a little bit of sleep in our seats.

I haven’t been on a long distance train before – most, if not all of my train travel has been on NJ Transit trains between Pt. Pleasant and NYC – but this train is set up like the trains Harry Potter takes to Hogwarts. I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty cool. Now if only someone would walk around with chocolate frogs and those crazy colored jelly beans…

Anyway…back to Madrid…

To be honest, my first impressions of Madrid weren’t all that great. We got to our hostel at around 11AM and just left our stuff there because we couldn’t check in until noon. No big. We decided to walk around and get some maps and the lay of the land until check-in. Of course, we managed to find ourselves in tourist central. Plaza del Sol is modeled after Broadway in NYC (in fact they call it the Broadway of Madrid) and it’s pretty much filled with at least 5 Burger Kings, an equal number of McDonalds, and more American stores than you’d likely find on Main Street, USA. Apart from it being almost pedestrian-only, I wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t what I was expecting from Madrid at all.

After checking in we decided to take the Paseo del Prado which is pretty much the main drag of museums and such (obviously, this is where the Museo del Prado lives). Apart from some nice architecture and some decent little pedestrian walks, once again I wasn’t impressed. It sort of felt like a combination of Washington DC and New York City. Lots of government buildings, a bunch of museums, and a whole much of stuff that’s more “look but don’t touch”. Sure you could go in the museums if you wanted, but I wasn’t feeling in much of a museum mood and my feet were already killing me. After making it most of the way through the Paseo we decided to hop on the Metro (thank god for the 10-trip pass. Great bargain and we needed exactly 10 trips!) and headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap.

Over two hours later we woke up and around that time our roommates for the night had returned from their excursion. We all sort of lounged around for a bit longer, reviewing travel guides and just generally chatting (they both go to Brown and are studying abroad in France. It was a very Ivy room). We decided to go out for tapas. It’s sort of a requirement when going to Spain, right? Our travel guides pointed us to a bunch of places around this one Metro stop (Anton Martin) so we figured it would be best to go there and just walk around until we found something we liked.

Enter Plaza Santa Ana.

This place MADE Madrid for me. I was really not enjoying the city. It was nothing like I’d expected and I was ready to just spend my next day in a park with a book until it was time to get on the train to Barcelona. Thankfully, our wandering brought us to the one place that was authentic – it was this great plaza bookended by two awesome looking buildings that were lit up to show off their architecture (not tacky at all). The plaza itself was completely filled with cafe tables and chairs. Each restaurant along the plaza set up a bunch of tables each designated by different table cloths or chairs or something like that. We estimated it to be around 500 tables in the entire place. With four seats at each table that’s 2,000 seats. Granted there were a few tables with only 1-2 people at them, but even so, there was not a SINGLE EMPTY TABLE IN THE ENTIRE PLAZA. NOT ONE! We walked around for about 30 minutes just hoping that one would open up. No such luck. Unfortunately our roommates had plans for the evening and had to leave before we got a table. When we finally did, it was totally worth it.

First of all, tapas menus are really intimidating when you’ve forgotten most of your food vocab words. Sure, I remember things like carne and pollo and can obviously read things like salmon, but gambas? I remembered hearing it before, but that wasn’t much help at the time. We decided to order the 6 tapas option – choose any 6 from the list. Couple that with a glass of sangria each and we figured we’d be good to go.

When the sangria came, I pretty much entered my version of heaven. There I was, sitting at a table in this amazing plaza in Madrid surrounded by ACTUAL Spaniards (read: tourists are no fun) and I was drinking the best sangria I’ve ever had. Seriously, this stuff was out of this world. It was so much fun to just look around and watch how people interacted with each other – the two-cheek kiss, what they ate, what they drank, how they lingered over their meals for well over two hours – it was fascinating and it was JUST what I was looking for.

From that point on, Madrid went from just “eh” to “wow, I would definitely consider living here at some point.”

Then our food came. Let’s just say my guesses about what some of the things on the menu translated to weren’t exactly correct. Here’s a rundown of what appeared on our plate:

1) Curry chicken. No big. I was expecting that one.
2) Tomatos, mozzarella and pesto. That one was Marquise’s choice
3) Jamon (Ham, but nothing like the American kind, so I’ll call it Jamon).
4) Salmon over mayonnaise or something like that (I think it was called Salmon Ahumado con something or other).
5) These strange not-quite-round looking things in something that resembeled mayo. The menu said Gambas en ajillo. I knew what ajillo was and I’d heard of gambas before, so I figured it couldn’t have been all thatbad. It turned out to be shrimp in garlic mayo type sauce. I wasn’t a fan.
6) I really can’t remember what it was called but something like P_____ (can’t remember what the word was, but it begain with P) con patatas. Oh great, potatoes! I can handle that. WELLLL my friends, that one turned out to be nothing other than OCTOPUS. YES, OCTOPUS. Needless to say I didn’t even put my fork near that one. No siree, no octopus for me.

So all it all it ended up being a really decent dinner. I ate the chicken, the ham, and yes (brace yourself, mom) even the salmon. Not just salmon, but RAW salmon. If you’ve ever shared a meal with me you probably know that fish and I do not exist in the same sphere. Well, I tried it. I can’t say I have much of an opinion on it. I didn’t dislike it, but I don’t think it had much flavor. The ham on the other hand? So tasty! (why does ham look so funny? It should be spelled jam…but I suppose that’s a different fruit entirely and by that rule my name would be pronounced hennifer… so I suppose we should just stick with the way things are…)

Anyway, I digress. So we finished our dinner and headed for this place that, according to our guidebooks, had “EUPHORIC” ice cream. It was only a block away from the plaza so we figured we’d head there. It ended up being a gelato place and my wonderful spanish meant that I got to try a flavor before I bought it. I ended up getting a small scoop of half-fragansa (strawberry) and half-pina colada. It WAS euphoric. I don’t know if it was because I was craving something sweet or because it’d been so flipping hot out all day, or if it was because I chose a fantastic combination of flavors, but I was pretty much on cloud nine.

Then we decided to walk back to the metro stop and go home, but not before getting lost for about 30 mintues and finding ourselves back at Plaza Santa Ana. How we managed to walk in a complete circle is beyond me, but at least we ended up somewhere familiar. Back to the hostel we went and finally, around 1:30AM (that’s 7:30PM at home) we got to sleep.

Conveniently for us our hostel was located on Gran Via, one of the main thoroughfares in Madrid. It was great because it meant that we were really close to the metro stations and it was easy for us to get anywhere we wanted. Unfortunately, though, it also meant that the street didn’t quiet down until 6AM when everyone was done partying for the night. I slept really sporadically until around 7PM where I think a combination of silence and the fact that it was 1AM at home finally allowed me to crash and get a few REM cycles in.

Obviously, we weren’t shooting for an early wakeup. Although Plaza Santa Ana made Madrid a much better place, we weren’t sure if it was just because it was nighttime or because it was actually cooler than we had judged it to be. We had to be out of the hostel by noon and left sometime soon before that.

First stop was to the train station – we wanted to drop off our backpacks and get our tickets for the evening’s train. As I mentioned earlier all of the sleep compartments were full but we at least managed to get seats in the same cabin. After a huge fiasco with the locker system (I didn’t know the word for locker so it became “una caja para poner las mochilas.” Turns out the word is consignos). And then we didn’t have exact change and security guy was getting annoyed and the change machine was “afuera de funciona” and we were pretty much S.O.L. Luckily I found a candy store, bought a lollipop and ended up having enough change to appease the consigno (and the security guard).

We decided that today was just going to be about a leisurely walk around a few places and if we didn’t hit them, no big, but we were just going to take it easy and mosey around. There were 3 places we had in mind: the Plaza Mayor (another requirement if you’re going to Madrid), el Parque de Buen Retiros which seemed to be the Madrid-equivalent of Central Park, and also this old train station that Marquise (a transit nerd) wanted to see. We had 3 trips left of our metro pass and had to use them wisely.

A pit stop at the old train station, a quick stop for lunch (dos coca colas por favor!) and then off to the park. I only wanted to see one thing: the palacio de cristal. I’d seen a photo of it online and it looked amazing. Like every other large park I’ve ever been to, we managed to get lost, but luckily stumbled upon this awesome little lake and monument (to Alfonso, of course). It reminded me a bit of the WWII memorial in DC, but way cooler. It was fun to just sit by the water and watch people row around in rent-a-boats. Not to mention that the weather was so, so, so much more pleasant! A cool breeze, a decent temperature. Madrid isn’t such a bad place after all!

We found the Crystal Palace (it wasn’t as cool as the photo made it out to be, but I managed to snag a few shots of my own before the security guard came in and yelled no fotografia at me (turns out it was written on a very small sign near the door. oops!). Nice park, decent way to kill time. Good weather. Good stuff.

Last on our list was the Plaza Mayor. We’d been nearby a bunch of times but didn’t realize it. I figured we had to go otherwise we’d have missed on of the major sights in Madrid. It was a nice plaza, much bigger than the one from the night before. Nice architecture and all of that, but it was nothing like the Plaza Santa Ana. Where the Plaza Santa Ana was authentic Madrid (at least in my opinion), Plaza Major was pretty much Disney World. Literally. There were characters everywhere. Not one but TWO Winnie the Poohs, TWO Uncle Sam Mickey Mouses, and a Tigger. I believe we might have also passed an easter bunny or two. It was so crowded with tourists and all of that. We ended up spending a lot of time (and a jarra of sangria) there, mostly because we didn’t have the energy or tolerance for pain left to go anywhere else (blisters are really not fun), but as soon as we got to the point where we were shivering from the cold, we hopped on the metro and used our last ride to get to the train station for our journey to Barcelona.

And that brings us to now! Detailed? Yes. Interesting? Possibly. Entertaining? I think so.

So far so good. Though I’m having major internet withdrawal, I’m trying to get by. Photos will be uploaded as soon as I can dig my USB cord out of my backpack (and get ahold of a decent wifi conneccion). I’m getting less weary of looking like a tourist by having my camera out, so hopefully I’ll have a lot more to show for Barcelona.

We’ll be in Barcelona around 7:30AM and hopefully I’ll be able to get some shuteye during this trip.

Here’s to another city and another adventure. One down and about 21 to go (I think?). G’nite!

(photos slowing making their way to Flickr. Slideshow will update automatically)

It’s 7:25PM, but my brain thinks it’s about midnight. I’m kind of fuzzy on what day it is (Thursday according to my calendar) and I’ve already managed to develop blisters from all of the walking. It’s hot as all heck and I seem to be insatiably thirsty, but it’s awesome so far!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a phone at the moment. I’ve poked around in various shops but all of the cheap phones don’t have SIM cards. I’m already starting to miss my iPhone. I’ve gone to pull it out a few times and then realized that I couldn’t use it. Ah withdrawal…

The good news is: I’m not completely Spanish illiterate! Yay! I’ve managed to survive the last 11 hours without too many problems (though trying to sort out the cell phone logistics was pretty interesting. Note to Spanish teachers everywhere: teach some practical things like cell phone terminology how to tell your hostel keeper that you canceled your second night but would like to apply that night’s downpayment to tonight’s stay because you canceled the second night with enough notice to receive your downpayment back.) It also turns out that I’ve completely forgotten most conjugations for tenses other than the present. There are a few frequently used ones that have stuck in my head, but for the most part it’s present tense all the way. I’m just glad that when I do get a full sentence out, it doesn’t contain too many uhs and ums and I don’t sound like a classroom-Spanish American. w00t.

So now we’re (we = me + Marquise, a friend from Cornell) hanging out in our hostel post-siesta and are trying to sort out what to do for dinner. My feet are telling me to eat the granola bar I have in my backpack and call it a night, but my more practical side is telling me to go get some tapas and sangria. Hopefully the sangria side will win that battle.

To those of you who were asking about my itinerary, that’s coming up soon. I worked it out on Tuesday (finally) so it’s only in pencil on a piece of paper folded up in my backpack, but when I have the attention span to transcribe it I will. I can tell you that my next 3 stops will be Barcelona (tomorrow evening, overnight train), Copenhagen (super cheap airfare from Barcelona. Win.), and then Palermo in Sicily (also by super cheap airfare). After that I think I’m headed to Venice to begin the nearly one-month long tour of Italy I’ve mapped out hitting the likes of Rome, Naples, Capri, Pompeii, Florence, Cinque Terre, and Pisa. Who knows what else will fit in there. Then there’s the entire month of July and a few days in August. I’ll spell those out later.

And, I’m sure the next question will be: “But Jenn! Where are all of the photos!” Well, they’re coming. I’m probably going to work on them on the train to Barcelona tomorrow night. I haven’t taken many yet because we were mostly just wandering around past the museums, but I think tomorrow will be a much better photo day.

So that’s all for now. I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but this is already longer than I anticipated! Have a good Thursday and I’ll be posting again soon with my itinerary!

Adios!