"Sorry Picasso... Rest in Peace!"

After about 2 hours of sleep, Shea, Trevor and I went out to Barcelona with no plans and just did whatever we felt! Trevor is our neighbor and is from University of Colorado at Boulder. He’s really cool and helped us out today when we were trying to find the Picasso Museum, some statues, and lots of other things! It was fun with just us three, and not a huge group that draws attention and is hard to keep up with! At night, you have to go with a group. It can get pretty creepy in some places.
First, we walked down Las Ramblas, and I bought a really pretty sterling sliver ring with Spanish designs. I hope to get a ring or some jewelry in every country!
Las Ramblas is a long, famous street, lined with big trees, with many vendors who sell anything you can think of, and it is notorious for pickpockets! Luckily, we haven’t experienced this yet and if we stay careful, it wont ever happen!

While we were wondering around, taking it slow and looking at everything, we walked down a small alley, out of curiosity. When we went around the corner, there were shops and restaurants everywhere! I bet it’s easy to find and everyone knows about it, but it was just really fun to know that we found it randomly! There were endless turns with a ton of shops and boutiques ranging from cheap dollar stores (euro-stores) to high fasion stores and everything in between! There were tall buildings with beautiful designs, balconies, and lots of plants hanging over the edges! We found a cute café that was empty, but had great music and a cute waiter in the front. We went in and the he made our bocadillos con pollo y queso right in front of us, was the best thing ever and no one else on SAS knows about it :) Well I’ll just pretend that no one knows about it and that it was our secret little find.

We walked around a few more streets, took pictures, shopped, and then saw a man in a park making huge bubbles about the size of a bicycle! (Weird comparison, I know, but it’s all I can think of!) Then we saw a big building that has a really cool roof, full of colored tiles and people were going in and out of it so we decided to check it out! When we walked in, it was a huge indoor market! The one everyone has been talking about and has been saying to go to! Yet again, we found another cool place, on accident. :) It was full of people, colors, spices, meats, and pastas. We walked around, took pictures,, and bought these orange smoothies that were made straight from the orange! It was basically a big glass of fresh frozen orange juice with sugar. YUM. It went well with the weather because it was 80 and sunny! Just perfect.

After that, we went to the Picasso Museum, which is full of many originals! It was only 6 Euros and there was so much to see! It was definitely cool to see. When we left, I stopped at a boutique and bought 2 pair of linen pants, hopefully to wear in Egypt and Morocco when it will be 110degrees and I have to cover my legs! Plus, they are cute to wear anyways, and this ship is so cold I’ll probably be wearing them to class daily because I only brought one pair of jeans!

P.S. There is a lot of graffiti here in Barcelona. But, the only difference from Houston is that here, it’s beautiful and creative, and in Houston, it’s trashy.

We went to dinner at a very cute café that we found just walking around Las Ramblas! You have to get off the main street to find less expensive and quieter cafes. It was called El Café de Ferran. When you walk by, it looks like a little pastry shop with a few tables. We walked in and the guy pointed to the stairs, where the dinner tables were. We went up, and it was very pretty! The ceiling was old and gothic looking, with gold plates. The tables were on a balcony that overlooked the street below. We had the seafood paella (again!) and it was even better than the first one! It was delicious and cheap.
After that we all hung out in a restaurant, full of wonderful tapas. No one really felt like going anywhere loud and crazy because we were all so tired from the day!