August 7, 2009

Yesterday was quite a long day…We hit up most of the tourist locations including La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi Park, and El Corte Ingles. Kara and I thought we were outsmarting all the other tourists by getting going at 9 am, the only problem with this plan is that nothing opens for breakfast until 10 am…not even McDonalds!!! I was so impressed by La Sagrada Familia. It is easy to imagine the finished product. My favorite part is the main room where if you look up you feel like you are in a forest looking up at the trees. El Corte Ingles is an amazing shopping center that is the combination of Wal-Mart, Best-Buy, Safeway and Walgreens. Needless to say, we found our fan here, score!

After a long day of sight seeing, siesta and a few cold showers, we ventured out for a night on the town. Our intention was to find a great restaurant that we found in one of the non-touristy tourist guides. Apparently it doesn’t exist. However we did have an encounter with a real-life “Hey chi chi” moment (I think only Todd would understand). In an effort to escape the creepers, we happened upon a great Japanese restaurant, Komomoto…it had shared tables, hip art and played 80s music and the food was EXELLENT, it was Japanese/Peruvian fusion place. I loved it and will definitely be back!

After dinner, we ventured through the ancient cobble-stone streets of El Born. We had a bottle of Albarino at a cozy wine bar then made a stop at hipster cocktail bar where we were intrigued by the hot bartender. We ended up making friends with Rodrigo and the hot bartender (I don’t think I ever did get his name) who over-served and undercharged us. Too many drinks and many hours later, we stumbled home to our sauna of an apartment. Unfortunately, the fan didn’t help as much as we had hoped.

August 8, 2009

Somehow, Kara and I managed to sleep until 4 pm today. I think it was so hot that we were melted to the sheets…not to mention the combination of the hang over and jet lag. The day was pretty much wasted. But, we finally got up and out the door around 5pm. We headed down to Port Olimpic and hung out at the beach for a few hours before having some tapas and bloodies. After dinner, we just wandered around until dark (Mainly in an effort to avoid going back to the sauna before sun down). The two major highlights were a fun little band in the park and a scary Tranny in the street that started yelling at me..I thought she/he was going to bite me!