The Long Overdue Vacation Day 2: Jetlagged
Merry Christmas, everyone! I first need to apologize. As usual, i overestimated my ability to write blog posts after our packed days. At this point in real time, we’re out of Barcelona, but I’ll continue to catch you guys up day by day.
So, we made it to the airport and past customs. Alan and I asked Ezeibe multiple times what happens next and the response was always “We call the place and they come pick us up at the airport.” That was until Ezeibe actually read the confirmation message and saw that we had to find our own way there.
Cool Things of Day 1:
-Our Barcelona apartment was pimpin’. Extremely well-decorated, a Top Chef worthy kitchen, and this awesome sun room that looked out into the street. Ezeibe got his own bedroom, while Alan and I shared the second bedroom with two twin beds. Our room had a balcony overlooking the street. We were only a block or two away from Placa Catalunya, which is a busy part of Barcelona. It’s where Las Ramblas kind of begins. Apartment came with a bunch of city guides and we would be attached to the hip to our Time Out Barcelona book and our City Walk cards.
The perfect chair for contemplation
-Las Ramblas and especially the La Boquiera market. It was quite an orgy of dead animals and fresh fruits and vegetables. I wish we had something like that in Connecticut. Everything looked so fresh. We had our first Barcelona meal at Ra, a small restaurant behind La Boquiera. We had a breakfast.
This little piggy went to market...
Yumm...
- While we’re on the subject, the Old Barcelona districts were pretty stunning (Barri Gothic, Born, etc.). You didn’t really have to go inside of anything, just the windy streets and old Spanish houses were pretty cool to look at. Plaza Real off the Las Ramblas looked like it was a Hollywood charicature of a Spanish square, but it was the real thing.
Plaza Real
- Random churches, seemingly on every corner. All of them very old and medieval.
- People-watching in front of a random church. A true “Holy shit, we’re on vacation…in EUROPE” moment. There was a small Christmas market in front of the church. Alan and I got some coffee and tapas. We just sat there for a long while as we tried to adjust our bodies to the time difference. A crazy guy with an accordian was being mad enthusiastic about his accordian Christmas music in the church square. I would internally declare him my BFF.
- Barcelona is CLEAN. And very green. A lot of quiet buses that probably use some alternative fuel, human street cleaners on every other block, and these well tiled sidewalk streets. It’s definitely no NYC.
Not-So-Cool Things of Day 1:
- Late lunches and dinners. I just got off an eight hour flight. I’m hungry. But alas, lunch isn’t until 2PM and dinner isn’t until 9 or 10PM. And that would lead me to…
- Les Quinze Nits in the aforementioned Plaza Real. Totally a Ruby Tuesdays in a cool setting. People lined up for this stuff. It was a total tourist trap. No one in queue was a local.
Downright Disasters of Day 1:
- Jetlag. And then walking for miles when you’re body is jetlagged. And you have to stay up for dinner because you don’t want to be further jetlagged the rest of the trip. Ezeibe was about to drop by breakfast, and only held out a few hours longer. I held out until 10′ish and then crashed pretty mightily. Alan would stay up even later as we had left Ezeibe to pass out in the apartment in the afternoon. Ezeibe would wake up at around 10PM and had gotten hungry. After walking for miles while he was sleeping, I was not about to join him. Alan was nicer, but he was dying inside.