Donde esta el wifi? Barcelona Part 1

Okay it has been a long time since I blogged because Barcelona was just so epic!! I was overwhelmed at the prospect of capturing the experience in a blog post. It could be a short story! I've decided to divide it up, per the advice of Samantha Nania. Also Zachary Kitt's surly comments have proved motivational as well.

So here is Part 1 of my trip to Barcelona:

A few weeks ago I went to Barcelona with a California friend Jeremy, who just so happens to be studying abroad this semester in Salamanca.

At first I was incredibly nervous since I don't speak any spanish and Jeremy has the spanish competency of a 2 year old (his words, not mine), but it actually ended up not being a problem at all.

This trip was one hell of an adventure, i'll start at the beginning.

I departed Thursday. I flew the notoriously cheap airline, Ryanair. They have low airfare prices but they make up for it with all of their easily accumulated fees. I didn't check in online 4 hours prior to my flight (missed it by literally 15 minutes), something that i didn't know i had to do, so when I got to the airport I had to pay a whopping €60 fee to check in.


Ryanair service is astoundingly bad. I was shocked to find that I couldn't get water on the plane without paying for it.

What's really funny though is that whenever a ryanair plane lands, they sound the trumpets....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGjj9wfzJdM

meaning that ^ plays over the loud speaker, quite loudly.


Once in Barca I headed to my hostel, which was....decent but not great. I pretty much dropped off my stuff there and then went out looking for food, hoping to spend time not in the hostel.

I stumbled upon a vegan bar/restaurant called the catbar. This place was awesome! I was astounded by their prices, very cheap especially for vegan food.

The food I got was absolutely delicious, and I decided to get a girly, blended drink. When I asked the bartender for suggestions she suggested a smoothie. I chose a shot of rum as my liquor choice and she blended it up. As she handed it to me, the owner/other bartender grabbed a bottle of vodka and poured about 2 shots into my smoothie. As he was doing it she said

"no I already put the alcohol in..."

to which he replied,

"noo you always put the alcohol in last"

as he continued to pour.

basically, that guy kicked ass.

After drinking my smoothie and eating my food I decided to head back to the hostel as I'd have to wake up early the next day to greet Jeremy.

And, after a horrible night's sleep, that's exactly what I did!

On Friday morning Jeremy met me at the hostel and we started wandering around Barcelona.

 We saw a lot of amazing stuff, from old, gothic cathedrals, beautiful parks to awesome graffiti, Barcelona really is overwhelmingly beautiful.

At this point we didn't know where we were going to be sleeping that night (or any of the following nights) and so we had our luggage in tow. The result of this was that the whole day we felt homeless.

For Jeremy the breaking point was when he ate an orange, the amount of trash produced by the peel made him feel especially homeless for some reason. My breaking point came after the fourth time I had to lay out my suitcase on the sidewalk, open it up and pull something out of it.

Living out of a suitcase in the public streets of Barcelona will make you feel homeless.


In between eating oranges and living out of suitcases, we stumbled on an amazing Dali gallery. Jeremy and I had a lot of fun there, and Jeremy was able to take a ton of pictures. Seriously this Dali gallery and the Picasso museum we would visit on Sunday were the highlights of the trip.

Now we had applied to several people on couchsurfing.org the week prior hoping to find a local to host us during our visit. One of them replied to my email on Friday morning and I was able to read it while in the hostel, where I had wifi.

But we needed to keep checking the email to find out how to get to his place, so most of the day, aside from sight seeing was spent searching for wifi.

Which in Spain is pronounced "whiffy"

Sooooooo

"Whiffy aqui?"
and

"Donde esta el whiffy?"

became frequent utterances.


While we were hunting for a place with free wifi, we were approached by many beggars.

According to Jeremy it isn't just common in Barcelona, but also in Salamanca. Basically older women approach you and beg for money. But they're picky about who they approach, preying on tourists, *ahem* AMERICAN tourists.

That's one thing about being American in Europe, you find out that you're a target for a lot of things. Petty crime, short-changing, begging.....we have a reputation for being gullible.

Anyway, Jeremy and I went to a juice stand and while we were picking out juices a woman approached me and kept asking me for money. Now I frequently give money to anybody who asks for it. Seriously I give out money a lot to panhandlers. My philosophy is that if I'm well enough off to not be begging for money I can spare a dollar for somebody who isn't. However, this woman (amongst the other Barcelona beggars) just seemed so full of shit.


There was something fishy about her, and I wasn't comfortable giving her money. I politely said no to her but she wouldn't stop asking me.

Now....as I mentioned earlier I don't speak spanish. I wanted to say something like "I have nothing" to this woman.....what came out was
"de nada"


yeah....I said "it's nothing" or the spanish equivalent of "you're welcome" to a woman asking me for money.

I immediately realized how wrong this was and quickly walked away with Jeremy, who rubbed in just how awful that was.


Yeah I'm a bad person....don't worry, I paid for it later.


So after finding some whiffy we were able to get the address of the couch we would be sleeping on.

We decided to walk there but kept getting incredibly arbitrary directions from tourists. Eventually we settled on a cab and thank god we did because we were about a 10 minute ride down a bunch of side streets away from our destination. Basically we would've never found it.


By this point we're both exhausted, having been up all day, walking around Barca with our luggage, we just wanted to have a couch. But when we got there we intercommed up to the room and nobody answered.

Jeremy felt defeated but I reassured him.
"Don't worry" I said, " I have an idea"

and then i proceeded to call up to every single apartment on the intercom.

I felt like Elf when he gets in the elevator for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3oNBnEqu8

a bunch of people responded, in spanish.


Yeah I didn't really think that one through.

I kind of just stuttered some "hola"s and then explained that we were looking for a friend but didn't know his number....basically nobody understood.

and then a woman called down to us and we could hear a loud baby crying.

The woman sounded very stressed.

Jeremy looked at me like "what did you do?!"



yeah.....once again, I'm a bad person.


we admitted defeat and went and sat on a bench down the street. 10 minutes later we decided to go back up and try again.

SUCCESS!!!

V's roommate Maika answered!

We went up and she greeted us, as we entered her living room my eyes immediately went to the couch.

Now this section of my blog is not for the faint of heart.

There, on the couch, was a dildo.

yep, that's right.

A DILDO.

Maikai noticed it and smoothly picked it up and put it on the end table behind some other junk, assuming we didn't see it.

Oh, we saw it Maikai. It's hard to not notice a fucking dildo on a couch when you're COUCHSURFING.


Anyway, our host V was out and about so Maikai hosted us. She was really cool and easy to talk to, we discussed films and music. After a while V arrived. Now V is short for Viviar, which is pronounced like "BBR" so I'm just calling him V.


V was a cool guy. He was in his late 20's, working on his PHD in Philosophy. He earns money translating stuff between English, French and Spanish. He was very smart and a little pretentious. But mostly pretty cool.

He took us out to get tapas, which are basically spanish appetizers. In Spain, everyone eats tapas like all the time though. They don't go out to bars without ordering tapas. Jeremy even went on a tapas tour back in Salamanca.

I can see why, they were excellent!

And so easily vegan.

It felt great being in southern Europe where the food actually has flavor, quite a contrast to northern Europe. As one of Maikai's friends would tell me on Sunday, Northern Europe is not known for it's food.

So true, English and Irish food is the worst. Soooo boring.

Well after the tapas we went back and Jeremy and I went to sleep.

Now I bet you're thinking, "hey chelsea, we want some more pictures."

Don't fret dear readers, there are tons of pictures, including one of our sleeping quarters. In fact there are 450 pictures, which can be found HERE, on Jeremy's photobucket. Definitely worth looking at, we saw a lot of cool stuff.

But obviously I cannot put all 450 pictures in this post.

So our sleeping situation was grim at best. We had to share a mummy sleeping bag, so we were both pretty cold.
(For those of you unfamiliar with mummy sleeping bags, they're a type of sleeping bag which is form fitting, meaning it's very slim in the feet. This is different than a regular sleeping bag which is the same width at the bottom as it is at the top.)

So really it was only wide enough at the bottom to cover one set of feet, and divided between two sets it didn't cover any feet.


yeah it kinda sucked. but hey it was free.

This concludes Part 1 of my Barcelona trip. Like I said above, please check out Jeremy's photobucket, these pictures don't even began to capture the epicness of our first day. But to avoid confusion I recommend stopping when you get to this picture below, I'll explain the later photos in my next post.

^our sleeping arrangements. For fun, let's play "Can you spot the dildo?"

Donegal! (tons of pictures)

Hey there dear readers,

I went to Donegal last weekend, specifically Malin Head. It's the most northern point in all of Ireland. It was absolutely beautiful, and it was a much needed reminder of what brought me to Ireland in the first place. The locals were absolutely charming and the scenery was divine. I did, however, come back incredibly sick. Turns out I developed bronchitis while there, which has also been the reason for my lack of blog posts.

Radhika is here with a UC (University of California) program and a bunch of people in her program arranged a trip to Malin Head, they had some spots and Radhika invited me to come along. That's how I managed to find myself in rural Ireland with a bunch of Californians.

We stayed in the best hostel ever. It was my first time ever staying in a hostel, but i've seen the movie, so my expectations weren't very high. This place though was clean, cozy and charming. The owners are this sweet old couple who were more than helpful.

From the common room you could see the beach.

 The view from that window a bit closer...

I loved the decor and style of this place, it's so beachy and rustic.

One of the rooms (they all slept 12 people) also had an amazing view of the beach, we were all starting to miss the sun.

First view of wildlife! These sheep were grazing right behind the hostel

We all decided to go on a walk and explore. For about 5 minutes we were all together, after that Radhika and I totally lost the whole group due to our incessant photo taking.

More sheep! We soon discovered that they were everywhere...

Some strange ruins I couldn't tell you anything about.

Nerd alert.

We were so happy to have sun!!! Even if it was still cold.

I just thought this was adorable.

More sheep? No way!!!!

It's a lil black baby sheep!

Then, out of nowhere, it started snowing/hailing(we're Californian, we don't know the difference)

That snow/hail storm was brief, but it was followed by freezing random bursts of wind and rain.

Since it was getting cold, Radhika and I decided to turn around and head back down the long road we had been heading up. But we had wanted to go into "town" (A convenience store, gas station, and pub/restaurant)  to buy some food, so we passed our hostel, braving the wind.

Thank god only about 5 minutes passed when this couple driving by stopped alongside us and asked where we were headed, we told them and they offered to give us a ride.

Eugene and Cathy, Donegal natives, live next door to the hostel. They were so sweet, they even waited for us outside the store as we bought pasta (Radhika) and soymilk and cereal (I never claimed to be a grown up). Cathy and Eugene brought us back to the hostel, and we were so grateful. It was soooo freezing out there! We went inside and decided to grab lunch as we warmed up. We then met roommates Luann and Carol, eating lunch in the common room. Luann is from North Carolina and Carol is German (although she used to live in texas and was married to an American). The two women were both in their 50's, possibly 60's and had come up from Dublin for the weekend. We got to talking and these ladies invited us to come along on their drive exploring the area. We jumped at this opportunity, it was exactly what we had set out to do on foot hours earlier but now we would have the comfort and warmth of Luann's car. So the four of us hit the road.

We discovered long haired cows!!

Oxen?

The homes in Donegal were beautiful.

Luann told us if we passed anybody in our group (who still hadn't returned to the hostel at this point even though we'd all left hours earlier) that she'd slow down so we could wave at them. She was quite a character that Luann.

Luann and Carol, showing what to do if we passed anybody in our group walking in the cold.

This shop was curious.

Radhika made a friend!

My blessing for all of you...

Another brief hail/snow storm!

That's right...

MY PIGGY BANK...fc.

Carol and Luann were the funniest duo because Luann is barely 5 ft tall, and pretty small, and Carol is about 5'9, and not so small.

They were definitely a sight for sore eyes.

 Gorgeous.

We pulled into a driveway to turn around at one point and saw a bunch of roosters with one duck.

To quote Luann, "now that's diversity."

There's a lot of fishing going on up here, and Luann and Carol had their heart set on some lobster.

We pulled into this....fish dispensary (?).....so Luann and Carol could buy some lobster. The owner informed them that "a bunch of American girls had just stopped by and bought him out." (Those American girls were from our group).

He's just covering all his bases.

After about 40 minutes of driving around, we went back to the "town" (Cathy and Eugene didn't even have to give us that ride!) and stopped at the restaurant/pub. Radhika and I both got Irish coffees, although mine was a vegan and less pretty version (no whipped cream) and a plate of garlic chips which were delicious.

Up until this point I forgot to mention that there was a wedding taking place in the tiny town of Malin head this day. We had encountered the limo and the bridal party earlier when we first started our walk. By the time the four of us got to this restaurant, the wedding party was in the pub half. One party member, self titled "big bad John", popped over to the restaurant side and made our acquaintance.


Big Bad John was a 50 something year old man who had definitely been drinking. I made eye contact with him as he was walking across the room and he stopped, smiled and waved hi to me for about 30 seconds before changing directions and coming to our table.

Luann asked him about the wedding and asked if he was with the bride, to which he replied "yeah the bride, the big FAT bride" with a huge laugh.  He then looked at me and Radhika and told Luann that we would make beautiful brides. Luann told him we were her granddaughters, hoping it would shame him from hitting on us (50 something year old men only hit on 20 year olds when their grandma isn't around, duh). After this Big Bad John turned to Carol. Now this is, quite honestly, what made the trip. Let's just say this....John was fishing and Carol was nibbling. John at one point stroked Carol's hair. After his drunken flirting had lost his charm, Luann said, "well it was nice meeting you!" and John shook all of our hands and said goodbye. But then....he didn't leave. He stood there, at our table, continuing to talk to us. About 2  minutes later we all said bye and he shook our hands again. Oh Big Bad John, you charmer.

Thank god they speak blarney!!

I took a picture of this cat food because I was so sure, up until 30 seconds ago,  that this exact brand was called something different in America. I was going to write, "In Ireland they have whiskas instead of whiskey." Then I realized....it's probably not called whiskey in America, and after googling it, I realized my hopeful imagination had tricked me yet again, and it is in fact also called whiskas back home.

Too bad, I'd definitely feed meatball some whiskey.

I just thought this cat food was funny.

As I mentioned in my blog about food, they have some pretty crazy chip flavors over here. Right now, their Lays equivalent, Walkers, is holding a "mystery flavour" challenge.

Radhika and I were curious as to what the ingredients were in this mystery bag, and to our delight, the "mystery meat flavour potato crisps" are actually vegan! No....we didn't buy them, although I was quite tempted.

Sun again!!

After a few pictures we headed back to the hostel, Carol was asking about heading back to that pub later, Luann replied, "Yeah Carol, wanna see Big Bad John again?" Carol blushed and didn't laughed off this suggestion, but we all knew she did.

Back at the hostel they had a bookcase where you could exchange a book of yours for one of theirs. I didn't make a trade because I didn't have a book on me, but I decided to borrow a book for the night when this gem caught my eyes.

They're right, there really isn't anything worse than a bent copper.


Goodnight dear readers!!