Barcelona for now ...

I think Barcelona may have been hyped a little more than it should have been. It was a good time, but I guess I was expecting more. One problem is that I´m comparing it to some other cities (Amsterdam, Athens), which may not be fair.

We did have a few adventures though, the most interesting being as follows:

Our new Kiwi friend, Luke, and Finnish friend, Maria, led us to a local bar, which was very cool (mentioned briefly in previous post). By some miracle, Jon and I find it again on our own the next night. At closing time, Jon meets an American who owns a hostel here along with another American who does billing software for pr0n sites. They lead us to a Brazilian place, where we stay for a drink. There the hostel owner finds out about an illegal bar. We go. There is a locked door, where a door man sticks his head out and waves you in saying, ¨Rapida, Rapida.¨ There is then another locked door that he opens for you. Inside, it´s packed. It´s mostly locals, but there were definitely some Americans we ended up meeting. We had a good time, drank too much, then wandered back to our hostel .... after GPS tagging the place ::grins::.

We met up with Maria again the next night. She took us to a place that she claims has the best sangria she´s found here. We stay for a drink, then bar hop a little. We end up taking her to the illegal place. She´s amazed that we actually found our way back there. This night, we run into the girl from Maryland (mentioned briefly in the previous post) again. Small world, right? She´s living and working in Barcelona. One of her jobs is bar and restaurant critic. I ask her about this place, and she says, ¨Öh, this place is not on the map,¨ so I guess this was truly ¨underground.¨ It was way too packed on Saturday night, so we had a couple of drinks then stumbled back to the hostel.

We hit the beach yesterday and planned on doing the same today. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate today. Tonight, we fly to London to do more damage to our livers. We´ve got about 4 days left on this trip, and I think Jon and I both agree. We need a vacation from our vacation ....