The Post-Travelling Blues #3

Barcelona PT. II ft. Tea

Song of the day: Flume - Bon Iver

Image by me - Little Streets

Let's pick up from where we left off shall we? Barcelona in the spring time is not too shabby. Its not particularly cold but then it isn't particularly hot either. Think of it as a nice cup of tea. You boil the kettle, stick a teabag in, your sugar (if you do that like I do because I love sweet things and will probably get diabetes), pour your freshly boiled water and then the milk like normal people do. Milk always comes last. I mean how can you see the colour of your tea and determine whether or not your tea is made the way you like it? Okay I realised I'm getting sidetracked here, maybe I'll do a blog post dedicated to tea and the art of tea making across the world or something I don't know.

ANYWAYS. What was my point? I had a really good point about the tea and how it's like Barcelona weather in the spring and it was very beautiful. Like a poem. It'll come back to me.

They say the best things in life are free. Since Debbie and I are low-cost people, we decided to walk around the city and do everything that we can  for free. Barcelona is a very pretty city. Filled with little paths that go into little idyllic narrow streets. It was nice to have a wander around. With artistic buildings with small balconies catered for nice big windows or doors. I kept thinking how much I wanted to live in them. Just picture waking up, sun filtering though, open the door to the balcony, chill with a tea or a cigarette and stare at the view before you start your day. It was bliss for me, and was basically what I did every morning I was there at my friend Jenny's flat.

Image by me - Hospital De Sant Pau, Barcelona

Getting back to the point. We looked up all the major sites that we can walk to and have a gawk at the splendour that awaited us. There are little information booths scattered across the centre of the city, which was handy. We grabbed a map off one them and narrowed down where to go.

We saw many beautiful buildings, a lot were designed by Gaudi of course such as La Perdrera and Parc Guell. Then there were buildings not designed by Gaudi such as Barcelona Cathedral or aka The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. I really liked the Barcelona Cathedral. It's a massive gothic structure. I personally love gothic things. Especially gothic literature. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is my favourite book. Go literature! So maybe that's why I was impressed by this cathedral in comparison to the other things we saw that day. The roof is cluttered and draped with little gargoyles and other little animals and creatures. Statues of saints lined across the arches. Something like Notre Dame.

We later strolled down La Rambla, which is a long street in the centre of Barcelona. It's filled with many bars, restaurants and shops. Along the way you can see the Liceu Theatre, a pretty famous opera house in Barcelona. Further down you can also see Barcelona's oldest theatre, Teatre Principal.

Image by me - Barcelona Cathedral

The long street goes towards the harbour. At this point, after a long day of walking around, Debbie and I decided to take this opportunity to find a beach and drink wine. Funnily enough, from the harbour about another 15-20 minute walk depending that you know where you're going, there's Barcelona's well-known beach, Placa de Catalunya. We managed to find the closest corner shop to the beach and bought a few bottles of wine and some crisps. IT'S SO CHEAP AND NICE. We plopped ourselves onto the beach and voila, we got drunk. Drunk on fine cheap wine, the sun and crisps. We attempted cartwheels. Well I attempted and failed like most things in my life while Debbie managed to do them flawlessly. A man was selling mojitos at 5 euros a drink. Let's just say that they looked a bit...off. They were very green in colour. Plus our bottles of wine was cheaper than that one drink. We politely declined and had a little chat with him. The man was nice enough and off he went to sell the remaining drinks he had. He came back about 20 minutes later and gave us the last two he had for free. I think he just wanted to go home. That boy was done with work for the day.

Towards the end of the day, we were drunk on the beach and after many cups of wine, watching the sun go down, rolling in the sand, talks about life and photo sessions... our phone batteries died. We had no clue how to get back. I don't know if it was sheer luck or what, but in our drunken states we managed to walk to an underground station and catch the train back to Jenny's flat.

That was the end of that day. There's more to come. Keep a look out for the next post!

Cheers

xxx