I had a flight from
Lisbon to Barcelona and had no idea where I was going to stay and where I was going. So while I was still in Lisbon I made sure I took some time to start emailing and facebooking with friends in Spain.
My friend Josep, that I met in my backpacking trip with
La Ruta Inka, was living in Barcelona for law school and said I could crash at his place. But it was only for that one night since he had a flight at 7am the next day. I told him that was fine and when I got there I would figure out where I would go next.
After a delayed air plain ride, not knowing what trains to take, and having to beg people to use their cell phones to call Josep, I finally meet up with him. First thing we did was go to his
piso (appartment to Spaniards) to drop off my bag and then go get some tapas and some of his favorite local beer. While eating I called another of our friends from
La Ruta Inka, Chus, and talked to her about heading down to Sevilla to go visit her. She was pumped and told me to head down in train the next day.
There were two things I wanted to make sure I got to see before we did anything else, since I wasn´t sure when and how long I was going to be in Barcelona for my next time around. Those two things were,
La Sagrada Familia and
Casa Batlló by the architect
Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi was influenced by forms in nature; insects, animals, and plants so his building were really strange since they looked like no other buildings.
I got to have a quick look at what I wanted to see and then after dropping off my camera we went out for the rest of the night, with the plans that would just pull an all nighter and pick up our bags in the morning and head the airport and train terminal. Josep took me to the walk in the amazing streets of
Barri Gòtic, which is the oldest part of the city and it feels like you're in a knight walking through a middle evil/gothic city.
Walked up and down the narrow cobbled streets for a while and then Josep asked me if I wanted to go try some Absinthe and told him "it's my first time in Europe why wouldn't I want to try some absinthe". So we went into a little bar, that looked more like a luxurious theater then a bar. We sat down at a table we ordered a round of Absinthe and the waitress brought back two glasses one forth of the way fill with a dark green liquid, two spoons, a little envelope with cubes of sugar, and with a water bottle with a whole on the top. The way you're supoused to drink Absinthe is by placing the spoon with a sugar cube cross the top of the glass with the Absinthe in it and then slowly let water drip on the sugar cube so it melts and dips into the of Absinthe, then after all that you can drink it.
After our drink we went walking on
La Rambla, which is a main pedestrian street that leads toward the harbor. Once we go to the water, we sat down to talk, reminisce about our backpacking trip in Central America, and have canned beers that we bought from guys that would walk by and sell them out of plastic bags full of ice for a euro a piece. A few hours went by and it was time to go get our bags and I had to head to the next destination on my trip, Sevilla.
