Spain: Day 3 Part 1

Playing: Til the Sun Came Up-Michael Holborn
Reading: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

On our third day in Barcelona, my family and I skipped breakfast because everything in Europe is just too expensive for us. We ended up walking down the Passeig de Gracia in the morning, which is Barcelona's equivalent to Los Angeles' Rodeo Drive, I think. All of the buildings were built beautifully, which is typical of Europe. I love the statues gracing this particular building that housed the Cartier store, if I remember correctly.

The main reason we visited Passeig de Gracia was to take a look at Gaudi's Casa Battlo, which cost a lot to get in, but was worth it. In my opinion, it was one of the best places we visited on our trip. The inside felt like you were underwater the way the light filtered in through the stain glass windows and the sloping ceilings felt like an underwater cave. Like the Sangria Familia, it felt like Ariel's cave, where she keeps all her treasures in The Little Mermaid. Wow, I'm eloquent.

Once we were finished exploring Casa Battlo, we crossed the street to visit Burberry. I am a hardcore Burberry fan, so I can safely say I've been to Burberry stores in over seven different countries right now. This has to be one of my favorite Burberry stores ever, since it houses everything including Burberrys, Burberry Prorsum, Burberry Sport, Burberry London, and Burberry Brit. Plus, this was the first Burberry I went to that had ballroom gowns! Definitely worth a visit!

While walking around Barcelona trying to hunt down a specific restaurant for two hours, we eventually gave up and stumbled our way to Bar Funicular on Carrer de Girona. (Let's hope Google got the right street for me!) No one spoke English there, but the people that worked there were more than friendly and showed us all of the food they had and let us point and choose. For my first dish, I got a delightful pasta salad that was refreshing and filled with delicious vegetables such as: red bell pepper, tomatoes, and green bell peppers. At first, the huge glob of mayo freaked me out, but if you mixed it in with the whole salad, it wasn't too overwhelming and was actually very good.

With their prefixed meal, you could choose two dishes, so for my second dish, I got a steak, which was served with crispy French fries and fresh tomato. Although the steak was tough, it was not inedible and the flavor was still pretty good. Considering, I ate a lot of poor meals in Spain that tasted rather bland, I was shocked to find that this little cafe served me one of my best meals in Spain. This blog wrote a full write up of it, which I can't read, but it even has a picture of the people that work there. The lady he has pictured was so friendly and treated us like family, offering us chocolate afterwards.

Right next to Casa Mila, our next stop, was Lolita Bakery. I took a quick look in and was stunned by the array of cupcakes they had, so my brother, dad, and I all got ourselves a cupcake. My brother got the banana and pineapple, which he said tasted just like a banana muffin to him, while I got the Mora Vanille one, which was fluffy semisweet blackberry icing on a dense vanilla cupcake. My dad's Tiramisu was pretty good for a chocolate cupcake, which always seem to be disappointing. The interior of the store is adorable and if you're visiting the Casa Mila, you might as well grab a cupcake. Half the people in the ticket line were munching on cupcakes anyways.

When we got to the front of the line for the Casa Mila, we finally bought our tickets and got in. I suggest looking around for the elevator to get to the top of the building because walking up eight flights of stairs is not a fun way to start your tour. By the time my brother and I had finished racing each other up the stairs, my legs hurt like crazy. Out of all the Gaudi places we visited, this was definitely the least impressive of them. The roof offered a beautiful view of the city, but then the tour took you to the attic, where it explained how Gaudi built all of his structures. Then it took you through a time capsule of what an aprtment of his might've looked like at the time it was built. We spent some time, sitting in the court of the building staring upwards and I tried talking to some Italian tourists, but all they wanted to talk about was Disneyland once they found out I was from California, so I didn't get to figure out from where in Italy they were from. Thanks for reading and do leave a comment! I'll get to writing up the rest of day three as soon as possible!

Up to Nothing Much

Playing: Everybody Talks-Neon Trees
Reading: The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

It's summer, which means I'm slowly rotting my brain away until my mum sends me to SAT prep classes or until I start panicking from all the various summer assignments I have from school. Either way, it's a lose/lose situation for me. Until then, I shall be busy eating delicious meals such as the Penne alla Amatriciana at Renata's Caffe Italiano, which is penne with fresh tomatoes, smoked pancetta, green onions, roasted garlic, onions, and fresh basil. On Chopped, judges criticize contestants for "over saucing" a dish, but I personally like having extra sauce for the bread, so I liked how there was leftover sauce once I was done with the penne.

While walking around in the parking lot by Renata's, I saw on the car next to us that they had a Hello Kitty exhaust pipe! How adorable, right? I've seen photos of this online, but I've never seen it in person, so I just had to grab a photo for all of you to see.

I also saw this at a store awhile back and I wanted to share this with you. I looked at the sign and of course, I read it, so when I left, the girl yelled at me, "You're a unicorn murderer." So there you go, I am an alleged unicorn killer.

I also painted my nails a blush borderline cotton candy pink color from Essie called Flawless. Although I like how this pink is toned down, I was disappointed to see that it chipped really badly within the one week that I wore it. I find most Essie polishes to be highly pigmented and a tad runnier than what I normally like. I'm still shocked by myself that I would wear pink nail polish. Pink is NOT my thing.

What color are your nails right now?

Spain: Day 2 Part 2

Playing: Runaways-The Killers
Reading: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Welcome back to my day two in Barcelona! After we visited mare magnum, we walked back to Las Ramblas hoping to eat at a famous cafe, but it started raining horribly, so we pulled aside to eat at whatever we found. However, I get so little rain in southern California that whenever it does rain, I get this stupid grin on my face that shows everyone I'm thoroughly enjoying the rain. Walking around in a downpour in short shorts was a bad idea. Later that night, I got a bad headache and fever, while I was cheering on Spain in the Spain vs Italy EuroCup game. Sorry Italians, but it felt more appropriate to be cheering on Spain, while I was in Spain!

We ended up at Carta de Vinos-Torres, which is near the end of Las Ramblas, for lunch. We ordered our first taste of tapas with this combo aptly named Tapas 3. It came with fried potatoes with spicy mayo, octopus with spicy topping, grilled lamb, chicken wings, shrimp with garlic butter, and clams with garlic butter. This was one of the best things we ate, while in Spain. Everything was just so tasty.

Since we were afraid it wasn't going to be enough food, we also ordered the Fideuada (Fisherman's Style) and the Hand Made Assorted Pates. The Fideauda was described to us by the waiter as a noodle version of paella, but it tasted like seafood instant noodle to me. It was good, but probably not worth ordering. The pates were pretty average, but my mum found them too strong, so I'd stick to the tapas, if I were you.

After lunch, we headed off to the Cathedral de Barcelona, which was pretty creepy, I'm not going to lie. I personally find medieval religious art to be pretty disturbing and depressing, so I've never been a fan of medieval cathedrals. My dad enjoys visiting cathedrals, so we always end up visiting them and they're considered must-see spots, so it's only me that has this issue. My favorite part was going on the roof of the cathedral to see the city below me, but other than that, I was freaked out for most of my time there.

While walking around the  Barri Gotic, my family stopped off for gelato at La Campana. Since the USA doesn't have a lot of blackberry flavored food, I ordered the mora (Spanish for blackberry). It was very refreshing for the first few bites, but towards the end, I found it way too sweet. I have to admit this particular store was very quaint and for all of you that don't like gelato, it served other desserts.

Afterwards, we went to the Sangria Familia, which was designed by Gaudi. I absolutely loved the Sangira Familia even though it cost a small fortune to get in. It was so beautiful inside and felt surreal. This is how I think churches should feel: happy, welcoming, ethereal, etc. As I've hinted to before, I dislike churches that have the depressing, violent vibe that many medieval things have. The Sangria Familia was just amazing and unlike anything I've ever seen before and I highly recommend it.

At the end of our day, we went back to our hotel and rested until it was time to go out for dinner. It was still raining, so we went to Rias de Vigo, which was very close to our hotel. I ordered the Solomillo de atunn a la Provenzal. The tuna was meaty and well cooked, not too dry for me at all, but I found the tomato sauce to be too tangy and it left my tongue feeling tingly. Is that weird of me to say? Also, the waiters were very funny and they could speak Spanish, English, and French! After dinner, we went back to our hotel to watch the Spain vs Italy EuroCup soccer game. When Spain won, people set off fireworks, opened up windows to cheer, honked horns, and ran around the streets screaming, so I took it as a sign to cheer to. I opened up my window and cheered until my mum told me to be quiet. Well that's the end of my first full day in Spain...

Spain: Day 2 Part 1

Playing: Awakening-Yellow Card (Their new album is coming out soon!)
Reading: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

For my first full day in Barcelona, my family and I started our day off at Plaça De Catalunya. It was a large plaza surrounded by stores and restaurants with fountains and sculptures in the center. Mostly an area for looking around, it was fairly free of tourists in the morning, but when I went back at night, it was packed with people and musicians.

One of the stores surrounding the Plaça De Catalunya, was El Corte Inglés, which is one of Spain's biggest department store chains and the one in Barcelona happens to be one of the biggest in Spain. We went down to the bottom level, where the super market was, to look at all the food they had there. There was a bakery, specialty goods store, deli, and so much more down there. Their seafood selection was huge!

Afterwards, we walked down Las Ramblas, which was a super tourist-y area, but I didn't see any Americans there, mostly other Europeans. They were selling these cute bouquets made up of small, neon colored flowers that I really liked. They were so happy. Along this street, they also had news kiosks, flower stands, portrait artists, gelato stands, a pet store, and little baked goods stands plus tons of stores and restaurants to eat at.

We stepped onto a side street to get to the Plaça Reial. (You can spot my brother in this photo in his khaki shorts and grey v-neck.) The Plaça Reial was crowded that day with a bunch of vendors selling random stuff like a stamp collection, old postcards, and keys. It felt like a swap meet was going on, when I went.

Afterwards, we made our way to Mirador de Colon, where there's a huge Columbus statue. I don't believe in celebrating Columbus Day, since it's been proven that both the Vikings and the Chinese found America before him, so I just cropped him out of the photo. I still thought it was necessary to share with you that I visited this touristy place, though.

 We continued our walk to the marina, which was lovely. They had a model of an old galleon there that you could go on, but it was expensive, so I didn't go. We just kept on walking across the bridge, which was called the Pbla. de Mar, I believe, and looked at all the fish in the water that were literally doing flips.

We ended up at a shopping center called mare magnum. They had tons of seafood restaurants surrounding the area that specialized in tapas, which is like Spanish dim sum. I liked the way this building curved up and how everybody was reflected in its walls. As you walked up to it, it appeared, as if you were walking on the ceiling.

 A funny little store they have in the mall is 2theloo, which is a pun on "tood-a-loo" and was basically a store, where you pay to use the loo. Although the store is a rip off because I'm way too cheap to pay to use a toilet, I still found the name hilarious. Hopefully, I'll get the rest of Day 2 up soon and I hope you'll enjoy all my Spain write-ups!