Barcelona!

After just a short 1 1/2 hour long flight, we arrived to Barcelona around 10pm on Wednesday night, Sean's birthday! Sean and I have slightly different views of traveling. In regard to finding a hotel, he thought, "ah, we'll figure it out when we get there." I, on the other hand, like to know where to go once landing in an unknown country, and knowing that I will be in a clean, comfortable accommodation. Since we were short of time, I decided to just trust Sean's method of traveling. So, after walking around Barcelona late night for a good 2 hours, we came across a hostel....my worst nightmare. Since I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep, I decided that should be fine for our first night. It actually was ok. It was clean, and simple and was a decent place to sleep for the night. Plus, we had a lovely Peruvian woman greet us with a smile, and I felt much better. Of course we were in a 4 star hotel by the last night, which was way nicer... We saw all the sites of Barcelona, the Picasso museum, all the Gaudi architecture around the city, the marina, the beaches, the parks, the Sagrada Familia....everything. On the flight over, I told Sean that I couldn't wait for tacos, and burritos. He laughed and said "we aren't going to Mexico!" He was right! Not a taco or burrito in sight. You basically had your choice of tapas, paella or bocadillo (sandwich). Since all the tapas and paella consisted purely of sea food, I stuck to the bocadillos. I loved the Spanish tortilla which was just egg and potato on bread. I ate about a hundred of those, along with all the sweets you could imagine. And it was extra nice to be able to sit at a table without paying the extra tavolo fee, like in Roma. We saw a few Starbucks too, which seemed totally out of place and odd to see. I actually thought about going in and ordering a latte, but after much debate, and considering we actually live in the cappuccino capital of the world, we just couldn't do it. I have a feeling Starbucks won't be making it's way to Italy any time soon. It was nice that we were able to communicate better since Sean speaks fluent Spanish. It's kind of funny because in Roma, when people realize we don't speak Italian, they start speaking Spanish. We couldn't believe it when in Spain, the man at the hotel started speaking Italian to us. We realized that our guidebook was in Italian, and he must have seen that. He must have been really confused when he saw our US passports. He still kept speaking to us in Italian the whole time too...geez. Overall it was really fun, and we walked a good 10 miles each day we were there. It is nice to be back in Rome too...and we are already thinking about where we want to go next!