Spain: Day 1

Playing: Papercut-Morning Blues
Reading: The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll

I left for Spain on June 30th at night, so I pretty much just slept on my flight and watched My Week with Marilyn the whole time, so time flew by for me. For my flight to Barcelona, Spain, I left from LAX to go to Heathrow and then to Barcelona. When we were about to land at Heathrow, I tried convincing my parents we should stay in London that way I could track down all my favorite British models and musicians. I'm sorry to all my favorite Brits that I didn't get the chance to kidnap visit you.

After getting to our hotel, the Fira Palace, we went down the street a block or two to the Plaza Espanya, where they were having a huge festival. The taxi driver, who took us to the hotel, laughed and told us about how our hotel was located in a part of town that had a HUGE gay and lesbian population. He said Barcelona has a large Asian population and an even larger gay/lesbian population, so that was a fun coincidence.

Turns out, the festival we stumbled upon was a Gay Pride Festival, since June is Gay Pride month and the week of July 5th is Gay Pride Week in Spain. I didn't realize I was at a Gay Pride Festival with my family until I started looking around and saw all the rainbow flags and the gay dating services there. It was atually a lot of fun.

If that wasn't enough proof, they had a show going on made up of drag queens and cross dressers dancing to pop songs like "Euphoria" and "Call Me Maybe." At first, I didn't know they were guys, so I was wondering why none of the girls had breasts or anything, especially when they were wearing bikinis and corsets on stage. Then it hit me, these were men.

Ok, I was walking past these during the festival and they were right next to the bathrooms. Are these public urinals? I mean, I saw a guy peeing in one and I turned away because it felt very awkward, but are you really supposed to pee in public like this?

After we were done going through the festival, my family and I headed to the center of the plaza and went down a street to look for food. At Restaurante Xop D'Or, my brother and I shared a tapa called Cruixents a la Mel Picant, which was fried spicy shrimp with honey. This was definitely one of the best things I ate, while in Spain. It was crunchy and sweet and overall, very tasty. In fact, this restaurant was one of the best places I ate at that week. Beginners luck, no? If you're there, you must try the asparagus and mushroom risotto, which was exceptional.

For my entree, I ordered the Confit d'Anee amb salsa d'Oporto, which was a duck confit served with grilled pineapple and fried potatoes. I noticed that the potatoes in Spain are especially buttery and delicious. Highly recommend trying the fried potatoes, while you're there. For me, the sauce on the duck was too salty after awhile and it was nice to have a break from it with the pineapples and potatoes. Since we arrived in Barcelona around 8:00, we didn't really have enough time to do a lot that day. That's why this post is so short.