Barcelona, Spain

Our trip out of Paris to Barcelona was through Port Bou at the border of France and Spain. We stopped at the train station for slightly over an hour and had arguably the worst tasting pizza imaginable. So much so that even Vilas (The Spaghetti Addict) commented on the poorness of his Spaghetti. We continued on to Barcelona where we stayed at Barcelona Mar Hostel. Nice place, but shady neighbourhood. but then again, the entire city of Barcelona was shady in my eyes. It's a weird city, with modernism and traditionalism mixed in together. We stayed about a 30 minute walk from the beach so as soon as we checked in, we got out in search of sand and saltwater. Walked through some of the historic buildings in the city. (no we did not go see any of the gaudi masterpieces since we were only in the city for the day)

The beach was colder than we anticipated. It was not the warm mediterranean waters we were promised but we jumped in anyway. How often are we gonna get a chance to jump into a beach in Spain? What threw me off guard was the number of times we were offered beer for 1 euro by people who looked Indian at the beach. I later found out that they didn't just look Indian, they really were Indian. (More on that later) After the beach, we decided to grab dinner at a local restaurant and the only one we found was definitely very shady.. we went in and ordered a plate of nachos and something else. (TERRIBLE FOOD.. UGHH) To make things worse, as we were eating, we noticed cockroaches crawling on the wall behind us.. but we had already eaten the nachos so if roach eggs were to hatch in our bodies, there was nothing we could do about it now.

We got out of the roach-infested hole in the wall as fast as we could and noticed a liquor store across the street and rushed in. After walking in, we find out that it's not a liquor store but a grocery story whose entire front wall was stocked with CHEAP CHEAP liquor. We ended up getting a 500mL bottle of Lychee Liqueur, 500mL of coconut Rum, 1L of Sangria, all for 6-7 euros. UNBELIEVABLE.. we took it back to the hotel and decided to head out that night to some bars. This was the first time in the trip when I really had too much to drink. I don't remember a whole lot from the night but I do remember walking to the club and walking back. EN route to the club, more desi dudes tried selling us beer on the street. When we got out of the club, we were quite tipsy and decided to ask one of the beer-sellers directions to our hostel. This was the conversation.

Raj: We're looking to get to carrer sant pau. (that's saint pau square)

Beer Seller: haan haan.. you speak hindi?

Raj: No, but she does. *pulls ashita to the beer seller*

Ashita: *Asks the guy in Hindi*

Beer Seller: *gives directions entirely in hindi and says* "When you get to that corner, you'll see another Indian guy selling beer. Ask him and he'll tell you the rest of the way"

Raj: *stares in amazement*

sure enuff, we followed the directions and reached the other indian guy, but luckily we didn't need his directions since we knew where we were at that point and just walked our way back.

The next day we shopped and learnt the value of bargaining and boy were we good. We used our desi instincts to get deals we never knew we could have. We started the day with a nice authentic spanish Paella meal. (no we didn't have tapas because it was full of meat) The Paella was tasty and was sure enough prepared by an Indian. LOL. (welcome to Barcelona) We then went to a few souvenir shops, and bargained our asses off. I think by the end of the day, we bought 10 shot glasses, 4 t-shirts and a bunch of keychains all for under 50 euros. (that's cheap for the place) The souvenir shops were all owned by Indians again and they certainly enjoyed talking to us in Hindi. After talking with one such souvenir shop owner for some time, we found out that Barcelona has more than 100,000 people of south asian origin (mostly indians and pakistanis). What's even more surprising is that most of them speak as many as 6 languages. The store owner we were talking to spoke English, French, Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, German, Portuguese, Hindi and Gujrati and was able to make sales in all these languages. IMPRESSIVE..

We decided to finish off the day by going back to the beach and just sipping some sangrias and sitting on the deck overlooking the bay. It was relaxing and peaceful to say the least. We slowly walked back to our schedule 7PM meeting point and found some members of our group were missing. We waited for about 45 minutes before realizing that we had to hurry in order to catch our Cruise to Rome. But luckily, en route, we met the other members and were able to give them their cruise tickets and they promptly took a cab to meet us on the cruise with more than enough time to spare.

Stay tuned for the Cruise.. :)