It's Barcelona Baby....

So we made it.  Thank the gods, it was a hell of a long day of travel.  Ad now for the rundown of what happened on our first day abroad. I am glad that I carry abound a little notebook cause I would not remember all of this without it.  Now, let's get started.

We got to Barcelona (here on out to be shortened to Barca) at about 8:40 am local time.  They are 6 hours ahead of us in the States.  So we were tired as it was.  From the airport we hopped on the Aerobus and rode to the Placa de Catalunya and found our hotel, Hotel Jazz, which was right around the corner.  We were not expecting to be able to check in but they told us to come back in 20-30 mins and a room would be ready. NICE ONE!!!  So we wandered around, found a cafe' and had a beer.  MMMMM....Estrella Damm!!  We checked in, debated on what to do, I blew the fuse in the room and after they came to fix it, while laughing at me,  fell asleep before we knew it.  

Waking up a few hours later feeling refreshed, we took to the street. Through my super ninja google skills I located this place called Bar Jardi.  What makes this place unique is that you have to first find a store called El Mercado, walk to the back of the shop and up a set of stairs to a little roof top area.  There was a sign on the wall that read "Smoking Joints Prohibited" hehe. OK, so from there we walked through the Barri Gothic neighborhood.  It is the oldest part of town.  We wandered into the old Gothic Cathedral, now I'm not religious, but there is something humbling about places like that.  Leaving there we were feeling a little peckish and stopped in a tapas bar called Evinia vins i Tapas, had a few glasses of Cava, the Spanish sparkling wine and some Jamon, roasted red pepper and cheese on toast.  Tasty!!  I knew that we could find better tapas so we moved on.  Walked through the small winding streets of the Barri Gothic and ended up on the water right in the middle of the harbor.  We decided to head back to the hotel to change and walked through the Raval neighborhood.

After changing we headed out of the tourist area and located a place that I sniffed out on-line called Cerveceria Catalana, which is supposed to be the BEST tapas bar in the city, it did not dissapoint.  We munched on Bravas (fried potatoes like home fries) with aioli and spicy sauce, Prawn Brochette, and two types of Jamon (ham), downed a few beers and moved on.  On the way back we grabbed some beer for the room for later and decided to go out for a few beers.

While walking down the street we found guys hustling everything from cans of beer to bars of hash, not a bad price either. (sorry mom)  We found a great little rock bar in the Raval called Bar Pepino, had a few drinks and just walked around the city taking in the night sounds.  Felling tired from wandering and traveling all day we went back to Hotel Jazz and cracked a beer and passed out.  Now it's nine in the morning and I need a coffee, cause we have a long day ahead of us. 

Stay tuned....