Espania Day 1: Palm Tree!

Our first day in Barcelona was not short of any of our other days of sightseeing let me tell you.  Typical us, we decided to literally do as much as remotely possible in every day that we had there and the first day started us out with a bang.  We literally walked EVERYWHERE because we had no idea where to go or what to do and barely spoke any of the language.  This is an experience that I've never had.  Being in a country where they don't speak the same language as you is very very hard especially when you don't have internet to help you either.  We were basically blind mice wandering around trying to see the city haha.  It was fun though because I've found that wandering aimlessly is the best way to discover things.  We bought a map and this was literally our lifesaver the rest of the weekend.

We got breakfast at a restaurant a couple blocks over from our flat and it was pretty good but a little overpriced in my opinion.  It was interesting because they had like middle walkways with patio furniture setup in the medians of the road and restaurants would serve there.  It was really cool though beacuse you could walk down the middle of the road and see both sides.  This is the best picture that I have to show it...

After breakfast, we navigated our way to the famous street of La Rambla.  I think it's the most famous street in Barcelona and it was packed with people.  We saw the first signs of the US on this street with good old Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway.  We wandered down this street and saw lots of vendors selling souvenirs, chain stores on the sides, hotels, souvenir stores, grocery stores, and restaurants.  There were also these creepy people all painted up and standing there like statues all down the road and I really have no idea why they were there or why people stopped and stared at them and honestly some of them were really creepy looking.  Here is a picture of one of them.

So that's what we encountered all down La Rambla and we became very good friends with this road the 4 days we were there because we walked up and down it so many times I can't even count.  We went into one of the most famous markets in Barcelona off La Rambla as well where they sold all kinds of food.  Me and the fruit vendors became very good friends the time I was there haha.  At the end of La Rambla is Port Vell and a statue of Christopher Columbus that over looks the ocean and has him pointing toward the USA.  The port was gorgeous because you could see some of the mountains surrounding the city and the Mediterranean Sea.  Here's a glimpse of what we saw...

Columbus Monument at the end of La Rambla

Port Vell with mountains in the background

Port Vell

After we made it all the way to the end and wandered around the Port a bit, we turned toward to beach.  We walked along the port and finally hit the beach.  The water was beautiful but the beach not so much. It was very crowded and dirty but I'll go into all that on the day we actually spent time at the beach.  We just kinda kept wandering along the coast and then we turned back into the city to try to find the Arc de Triomf.  After much navigation and weaving through the streets we finally came to this

I don't really know the significance of it because we couldn't google it from lack of promised internet all weekend but when I have time I'll look it up haha.  By the time we had done all this wandering, it was dinner time.  One of the girls on our trip who had been to Barcelona before suggested we go to The Hard Rock Cafe for dinner because the food in Barcelona wasn't good so that's where we ended up that night because it was on our way home.  Hard Rock was definitely a good choice after SO much walking all day and it was good to find some people who actually spoke English.  After our delicious meal, we dragged ourselves back up to our apartment to meet up with the girls who had gone to the beach all day. We were all so pooped from the day that we just stayed in and hung out and then crashed.  The only problem with sleeping there was the fact that we had no air conditioning...I'm never taking it for granted again and word from the wise y'all please don't either because sweating in your sleep every night is not fun.  Adios tll day 2!