Barcelona Day 2

So after class, me and Sarah were planning on going off to the beach, when the 40 year old woman in our group asked if she would come with us and we were like ohhh, sure…    well that was interesting for about half an hour until we found out she wanted to go to a different beach than we did and she (fortunately) went her own way. So most of the rest of the group was off to go tour the empty soccer stadium for a few hours, we headed to the beach.  Which required navigating  through the Barcelona subways… actually quite easily. I  stopped at a pharmacy to get sun tan lotion. The farmacias aqui son arragend very differently. There is nothing but actual chemical health care products and drugs… no magazines, snacks, candy, or even deodorant or toothpaste. I have no idea where to get these things or detergent or anything else like that. Anyway, I couldn’t find the sun lotion until I realized they keep it all behind the counter, so I asked the cashier for it, and he asked me how strong, and I said 30. So he brought me two bottles, one spray on, one lotion, and asked which I would like. Seeking a bargain, I asked how much they were. One was 20 euros and the other 30. I think not. 40 bucks for sun lotion is a little steep. I just borrowed Sarah’s. (Which was 85 spf, fyi.) Next we stopped for lunch, and decided after reading the entire menu in English and halfway through again in Spanish, that we would just get icecream bars. And they were delicious.

La playa itself was extraordinarily crowded, so we decided to just walk along next to it instead of lay down our towels. We saw a bunch of interesting and crazy people.

It was like a self tour at a slow pace, much better than a guided tour. There are no clocks anywhere so everybody looses track of time here, which is just what we did.

My favorite part of the beach was the jungle gym Eiffel tower made of ropes. J That was quite fun to climb on.  Even though it was crowded, we took turns cooling off in the water, which was amazingly refreshing. Swimming would have been nice but I guess I’ll wait until I get to Greece.

We passed more cool street performers, this time a band was playing Bob Marley’s “no woman no cry.” Lo me gusta. We also passed a few more markets on the street, and on the way home stopped for a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant.

We also saw, way on the hilltop and appearing very small, a perfect silhouette of a castle. We are not sure what it is exactly, but on the way home it was lit up and pretty so we will go check it out tomorrow. But by the time I post this, it will be today... or possibly tomorrow again… since of course the internet is once again not working. Only in Europe…