Barcelona

First off, I promise I tried to post monkey pictures, but blogger keeps flipping out when I try to post photos. I don’t know what it is. I assume the shoddy at sea reception, but I donno. Sorry. So far I’ve taken more than 150 photos. No, they’re not all going to be posted here (good lord...) but at some point I promise I’ll find a way to get some up.

Today was Barcelona. I LIKE that city. A lot. While the other places have been really cool in a number of different ways, Barcelona had a particular flavour that I enjoyed. It had all kinds of awesome history, shown in its art, architecture, monuments, culture, et cetera, but it’s also a vibrant modern city. I love the new meets old effect. We didn’t get to see nearly as much of this city as I wanted to. While the other cities had a lot going on, and I’d love to go back there, Barcelona tops the list for an active desire to return. I would put effort into going to this city again.

We got off the ship and took the shuttle into town. Then we took a cab to the top of the main shopping street, La Ramblas, so that we could walk down it. It’s quite a long street and we didn’t have the time nor the energy to walk both up and down it all. We took in a number of cute boutiques, the cutest of which were actually a block or so off La Ramblas when we decided to venture that way. We found a really cool food market, kind of Granville Island market like, that was full of colours and sounds and people that were just fascinating to take in. We found an awesome little hand made jewellery story where I got stained glass earrings and Chelsea got a nifty bracelet.

Chelsea really wanted to see the big cathedral, so we went a bit off our main track to try to find it. Along the way we found this other really cool cathedral, but not the big gothic one we were looking for. I don’t know how the city managed to this church as well as it did, but we gave up after a bit. We only had so much time before we had to get back to the ship. While looking for this cathedral though we came across the historic city hall, in front of which there was this massive protest going on. Now because I cannot understand Spanish I have not the slightest idea what they were protesting, but my goodness they were entertaining about it. There was this big raft they kept pushing around, and balls, and castenets, and bicycles. It looked like a really fun riot. There were a million police around though, so there was likely a reasonable chance things could have gotten ugly.

On our way back to the main road we stopped at an Irish pub. I know, kind of amusing. While in there we partook in the national drink of Spain – Sangria. Mmm wine... We all know how I enjoy that. My sister had her first illegal drink in a pub. We couldn’t remember if Spain was one of the European countries with a drinking age of 16 but it turned out it was 18. No asked for ID thought so she was okay, but it was kind of amusing.

We finished our walk down La Ramblas, passing the flower market and the portrait artists along the way. We did a few more tourist souvenir shops and then had to go back the ship. It may sound like not a huge amount, but we spent hours ashore. I could have been there hours (or days) longer. I would love to see some of the original Gaudi, the Dali and the Picasso as well. More of the Gothic architecture. The Catalina cultural stuff. There’s just so much, and I so enjoyed everything I saw.

Tomorrow is Cannes, which I’m really looking forward to. An easy day at the beach. Yay! And a chance to speak more French. Also cool.

You guys seem very entertained by the food and I’m sorry you’re not getting a complete catalogue. I can do today’s dinner though! I started with an appetizer of twice backed goat’s cheese soufflé, and then had strawberry and thyme infused lemon sorbet, followed by pork tenderloin rubbed with cocoa and served with ratatouille and garlic potatoes. Dessert was called “Menage a trios” and consisted of a nice vanilla praline icecream kind of thing, and chocolate cake, and strawberry mousse. It was nice.

After dinner, I went to the show where I was hypnotized. Yeah. My mom talked me into that. I went up there all like “I don’t know if I can be hypnotized” and then the lady explained that it was basically a deep meditation, nothing else, and I was like “crap, I KNOW I can meditate...” So that was amusing. There were a bunch of people on stage, many of whom had to do funny things. Pretty well all I had to do was the group activities, which were sleeping on demand and then the finale... which involved me rapping in Cantonese and dancing. Yeah, that was special. So now I’ve spent the rest of the night avoiding my fans. One lady asked if I take dance lessons because was amazed by my moves and thought I ought to be on a commercial or something. Another said I was fantastic and that she’d never laughed that much in her life. So glad to be amusing, lol

Well it’s pretty well bed time. I was all rejuvenated after my extended meditation, but now it’s past 1am and I have to be up at a reasonable time to go into Cannes.

Cheers!

OH BOY -- a bonus! I got blogger to let me upload one little picture. Well here's a Gibraltar ape, and that's my cruiseship in the background. Yay!