{"id":38996,"date":"2023-04-27T18:26:32","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T23:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=38996"},"modified":"2023-05-23T23:08:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T04:08:13","slug":"barcelona-day-1-part-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=38996","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona Day 1 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Barcelona Day 1 Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is what $300 a night gets you in Barcelona right off of La Rambla just adjacent to the Gothic quarter.<\/p>\n

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\nSplurged this time and got a room with a private balcony.<\/p>\n

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\nThat’s La Rambla right there. Pretty awesome hotel room.<\/p>\n

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\nWhat’s not awesome is me forgetting to bring my European plug adapter. I had to borrow one from the last hotel and this one too. This adapter, while being the same exact one I’ve got at home, doesn’t work very well. It would only make good contact in a certain way and RL eventually helped wedge plates under it to get it just right.<\/p>\n

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\nWhy is it that these same palm trees do not look half as amazing sitting on a Texas beach? We are hungry after that train ride, unloaded our stuff and now out looking for a late lunch.<\/p>\n

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\nJust a random pair of underwear on the street. Madrid is definitely cleaner than Barcelona, at least cleaner than the area we are staying in. Also, this particular street smelled soooo strongly of urine that we could hardly breath while walking down it.<\/p>\n

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\nBut man, they’ve got some cool buildings here.<\/p>\n

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\nMuch more durable grout than the stone.<\/p>\n

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\nLunch spot, as recommended by an online friend.<\/p>\n

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\nHell yes.<\/p>\n

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\nBlood sausage with onions. Man, the food is Spain is just so consistently good.<\/p>\n

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\nSoo soo good. I need to make this back at home in Austin.<\/p>\n

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\nTime to meander through these small streets back to our hotel for a short nap.<\/p>\n

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\nWoah!<\/p>\n

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\nSome baklavas…they turned out to be mediocre, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

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\nThere are so many mobil phone stores here run by Indians or Pakistanis.<\/p>\n

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\nFever gone, but I’m still coughing so gonna take some of this. Just finished napping, so time to head out, walk around, get some dinner, then get some drinks. Let’s go!<\/p>\n

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\nSuch amazing weather.<\/p>\n

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\nNot an actual weed shop selling thc weed. These are, I believe, CBD based…but supposedly you can get thc weed at a members only club that uses some loophole. Either way, we were smelling the smell of weed regularly while walking around Barcelona but not so much Madrid.<\/p>\n

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\nLa Rambla leads to Placa de Catalunya. Originally I looked at staying at the Iberostar hotel here across this square, and now in retrospect, glad we didn’t. This part of town is just a little too commercialized to our liking.<\/p>\n

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\nGothic quarter with their narrow streets. Upon more research, we found out that most of the buildings in the gothic quarter are more recently built in the past hundred years or so. So, really not all that gothic. I guess they kept some of the gothic super narrow alleys and streets.<\/p>\n

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\nCool photo mosaic. This “kissing mural”.<\/p>\n

\"\"The whole mural is made up of photos submitted by the community in the area (I believe). And the artist compiled them into a mural of two people kissing.<\/p>\n

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\nBarcelona Cathedral.<\/p>\n

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\nShame on the church and shame on Samsung. It’s in such bad taste to sell ad space on the renovation screen. Seriously?<\/p>\n

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\nI bet the homeless and the tired have been sleeping on those benches for centuries. Some things never change.<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s see, where to now…looking for food.<\/p>\n

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\nWe actually did not end up eating here. We came in, and immediately, it felt like a Chili’s to us. This is in the actual Gothic quarter, and this restaurant felt more commercial than anywhere else we’ve been in Spain. When the waitress took forever to come to our table, we just decided to get up and leave so we didn’t waste a meal eating mediocre food.<\/p>\n

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\nThought about eating at one of these outdoor restaurants along Placa Reial, also in the gothic quarter. But again, these seemed so touristy and and the food looked just ok, so we skipped.<\/p>\n

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\nPretty location, but wish they had better food.<\/p>\n

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\nFrustrated by not being able to find food to our liking in the gothic quarter, we crossed La Rambla to our side of the gothic quarter…which we’ve soon realized is not technically gothic quarter since we are on the other side of La Rambla. The gothic quarter is much more touristy and cleaner and commercialized. Our side has pretty much the same small alleys and buildings but it has a much grittier look and feel…but at the same time, it feels just right at home to us.<\/p>\n

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\nWe walked by this bar on our hotel side of La Rambla (apparently this area is called El Raval) earlier and RL wanted to come here for a drink. Since we can’t find a good food choice yet, let’s get a drink first.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oh, this is IT! Walked in and immediately felt comfortable. This felt exactly like East Austin did about 15 years ago. This is where the bohemian crowd hangs out and this is exactly where I’d like to hang out myself as well. No pretense, decor that hasn’t been updated or painted in decades. Perfection.<\/p>\n

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\nCan it get any better than this, they also serve absinthe. RL and I both decided this is our favorite spot that we’ve seen here and we are coming here every night they are open. This feels like home. This is apparently the oldest bar in Barcelona and has been around since 1820. Apparently Hemingway and Picasso used to drink here regularly.<\/p>\n

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\nSo happy.<\/p>\n

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\nApparently our bartender’s resting face is a slight smile. He’s probably some artists’ muse.<\/p>\n

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\nNow that we are slightly drunk from the amazing bar, let’s do a second round of searching for food.<\/p>\n

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\nWe found this spot on our phone, it looked empty.<\/p>\n

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\nBut unlike most restaurants, they decided to seat all the patrons in the back of the restaurant first, so empty at the front but pretty good crowd here in the back.<\/p>\n

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\nNext to us sat a couple who looked like twins. lol.<\/p>\n

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\nYes.<\/p>\n

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\nYes.<\/p>\n

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\nYes!!!! Sausage and mushroom paella. Yum.<\/p>\n

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\nAs a parting gift, they also offered us a free local liquor on the house. Nice. Love it.<\/p>\n

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\nThis will be on the late night dining list one of these nights.<\/p>\n

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\nTo us, Barcelona started off by smelling and seeming like Bourbon Street in Nola, and not in a good way. But we ended our first night here with Barcelona like East Austin 15 years ago, bohemian perfection and we love it.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Barcelona Day 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Barcelona Day 1 Part 1. This is what $300 a night gets you in Barcelona right off of La Rambla just adjacent to the Gothic quarter. Splurged this time and got a room with a private balcony. That’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":38377,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38996","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38996"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39839,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38996\/revisions\/39839"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}