By 10:30, I was fed up and it was time that we start making the airlines pay and at least get enough clothing to last us a day or two. It is very frustrating not knowing when your luggage is going to come, or even if it is going to come, because I didn't want to waste money if I didn't need to, but I just wasn't feeling confident that they had their act together. But Erika was clearly in more dire straits because I at least had some underwear and a shirt that didn't stink too much, but Erika had shoes giving her blisters and no clean clothes. Luckily, we lived spitting distance from a modern shopping center, which I was hoping that we wouldn't need to explore, but it became inevitable.
We did pretty well, actually. They had an H&M in the shopping center and I was able to get a shirt while Erika found some nice shirts, shorts, under-roos, sandals, and a nice lightweight scarf to get her accessory fix. Prior to going to the shopping center, I was sweating the "Euro tax" thanks to the negative exchange rate, but Barcelona was surprisingly...reasonable! I was expecting to pay one euro for every dollar that an item cost (i.e. a $15 shirt would cost 15 Euros, or about $20). But we found that the prices were more along the lines of costs in the U.S. Maybe a benefit of visiting a country in a major recession?
With the shopping out of the way, we hightailed it back to our apartment to drop the stuff off and change because we had a date with life, and a date with Leif! My German friend is a pilot and had managed to get scheduled to fly out of and into Barcelona for the next three days, which meant he could hang out with us and see the city in the afternoons. But first, the luggage. Of course as soon as we got back from shopping, the airlines said that our luggage had arrived that morning! A few quick phone calls later, and they said that they would deliver the luggage sometime after 6:00pm. That sucked that it would be a while before we got it, but as long as it was coming we were happy.
After getting marvelously lost on the way to our meetup spot in Plaça de Catalunya, we finally met up with Leif for the first time in five years, and Erika finally got to meet one of the Germans that I talk about incessantly. She got her first taste of the Euros with Roland's visit in November, so of course she was looking forward to meeting Leif Knappy.
So, we're hanging out and talking, but what should we do? All of the guidebooks focus their energy on the epicenter of tourism, La Rambla. La Rambla is a long, sweeping pedestrian street that travels from the Plaça de Catalunya all the way to the ocean. It's just the kind of place that I despise, but I figured we had to at least see what all the hooplah was about. As the impromptu tour guide, I explained that La Rambla came from the Arabic word for "stream", which it was back in the days that the Moors owned Barcelona. Of course, as the city grew, the "stream" turned into a sewage system and I guess they got tired of the smell and paved it over. Now, it's a place for street performers, bird salesmen (???), tourist giftshops, and pickpockets. As you travel down along the neighborhood of the Raval on the right-hand side, you come across prostitutes and other questionable characters, which is interesting since this is tourist centro.
So, we cruised down La Rambla and headed for another prime tourist location, La Boqueria, which is the biggest, baddest, and most awesome market in Barcelona. This place was massive, full of colorful fruits, vegetables, ham, drinking holes, and little tapas bars and restaurants. I was looking forward to checking out the other markets, but I was very very impressed with La Boqueria. After smelling all of the wonderful products, we had to sample some, so we picked up a table at one of the tapas bars and gave the local malted beverages a try and snacked on anchovies (or sardines?), croquettes, ham, and a few other interesting small plates of food. They were good, but a little greasy to be honest. Of course there would be more tapas and better tapas later in the trip, but this was a nice way to ease into the local cuisine.
Sitting in the blazing sun while snacking and drinking, I realized that I had no sunscreen on, which would be definitely be a problem. I usually slather myself with sunscreen, but seeing as how it was in my luggage and my luggage was coming that night, I was determined to work on my skin cancer rather than pay a few bucks for sunscreen that I didn't even need. That's logical, right? Despite the fact that I would demand to be reimbursed for it from the airline (along with the rest of the stuff we bought that day)? Okay, maybe it wasn't such a cerebral idea, but I actually wanted to see if my epidermis was truly dead and dusted and would refuse to get any color. The result? No color (which is better than red)!!
After exploring La Rambla, admiring and trying to figure out how the hell the levitating men floated in the freaking air, and going up and down La Rambla searching in vain for Palau Guell (one of Gaudi's first designs) and some famous theaters, it was time to head down to the waterfront and relax on our way back to meetup with our beloved baggage. We hung out on some steps leading down to the smelly, polluted water (or maybe it was the cruise line exhaust we were smelling?), and eventually started heading back to Barceloneta and bid adieu to Leif until the next day.
Back in our apartment, it was time to figure out what was going on with our luggage. Lucky for us, our "roommate" was a pretty awesome guy and let us use his phone so that we could make all the phone calls that we needed to in Barcelona to get the information we needed. We had dinner plans that night with one of Erika's friends and, sure enough, the airline decided that that was a perfect target for the delivery time. So our luggage arrived at 10:00am, but they wouldn't deliver it to us until between 8:00 and 11:00pm. Although it was going to cause problems in our schedule, getting our luggage was priority number one, so we cancelled our plans and begrudgingly rescheduled for later in the weekend. It almost worked out better this way, because we had some pig shopping to do.
One of the things that Spain is famous for is their legs o'ham. Much like Italy has their prosciutto, Spain has their Jamon Serrano. I've head a lot about this, and had black pigs jumping over fences and landing between two pieces of buttered bread in my dreams at night. It was definitely on my agenda to eat at least four portions of fatty jamon for each meal, so we embarked on a trip to our local mercado to go pick some up.
Usually, when I visit a city, I try to find out the local customs and visit some more authentic areas (isn't that the dream of every traveler, though?). Typically, it doesn't happen, but we lucked on this trip because our apartment was situated in just such a place. Overlooking Passeig de Joan Borbo and it's constant flow of tourists and locals flocking to the beach, who would believe that just one block deeper into Barceloneta was a feeding ground for local residents. The mercado, just a few three or four minutes away by walking, was my destination of fairy tales because it was a meeting place of families of the area and inside they had a lovely little market with several jamon stands. We ended up picking one to stick to and it became our ritual to visit this place on a daily basis to pick up a variety of ham to eat for breakfast, snack on, or make sandwiches with. Our meat cutter (scientific term ;o) told Erika all about the different varieties he had such as regular serrano vs. serranita vs. black pigs that were fed only chestnuts, etc. He let us sample the different types and was in no rush to get us out despite the fact that the place was closing down by this point. This: is the life! We matched the jamon up with some cheeses that he had and went across the street to Barceloneta's top bakery where for a small pence, we were able to get some delicious fresh bread that would be our breakfast the next day.
Back at the homestead, we waited for our luggage some more. Finally, at 9:00pm, Ricardo got the call that our stuff had arrived and we rushed downstairs to embrace my handicapped bag (it desperately needs some new wheels!)!! It was such a relief to finally be able to change into something cool and fresh after two days of offending the people around us ;o).
After our things arrived, we decided to head out to get some sangria and maybe a bite to eat in the immediate area, but Ricardo recommended that we head of to the Born neighborhood, which was the next neighborhood over. We were met with more narrow streets, dark alleyways, and throngs of sharply-dressed people in this burgeoning and fashionable neighborhood. We felt totally out of place with my sandals and baggy shorts when everyone was dressed to the nines, but we wandered around in search of anything that was not jammed pack with people and that had some outdoor seating for us to enjoy in the comfortable weather. The tapa bars in this area were amazing full and it brought a great energy to the area.
At the same time, I felt like the neighborhood had a dark side to it. There were some really dark streets that we walked down and some shady characters that seemed to be around us all the time. After being warned repeatedly about the pickpockets, it really unnerved me when people would walk like two feet behind me. Luckily, I was with Erika (haha!) who had no problem in these situations, which was why she was the one in charge of carrying the cash and any valuables :o).
In any case, we eventually stumbled upon a culdesac that had several restaurants and we settled on pizzas and fresh sangria at Pizza Paco. This area was really hopping and it just felt great to finally be carefree, relax, and enjoy the sites and smells of Barcelona :o)
J. Riley, it was a long first day!
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