Barcelona was nuts.
Not in a good way either. It was like Kings Cross X 1000. Fine by day but at night fall it got super seedy. It didn’t help either that we were staying in the sex district half of La Rambla, the busiest street in town. Sketchy guys were either trying to sell you something, or they were trying to rob you. Even the pubs were selling “I got robbed in Barcelona” T-Shirts which only added to our paranoia. Any guy holding a 6-pack of cheap beer was a drug dealer whispering “coke, hash” as they went past you and prostitutes latched onto bystanders, grabbing their nuts.
Mum has an Indonesian passport which caused a lot of hassles with visas so she had to stay back in Rome for 3 more nights. My sister Jamie stayed back with her and in some ways we (Suga, Richie and I) were really glad that they did as we didn’t think they’d really dig Barcelona.
A bonus for Richie was that 2 of his brothers were hooking up with him and we got to hang out for a few nights which made Barcelona more fun.
We got to check out a bit of Gaudi and Dali’s work, which was great, we got to see and hear so many amazing street musicians (blew me away actually, makes me feel nothing but hate towards the untalented pop stars who “make it”), we also hit the beaches where women of all ages being topless was the norm (yes we all had a great perv), but I still can’t shake off just how freaky the area we stayed in was, not to mention the smell of urine and sewerage up and down every street. It just didn’t feel safe, Suga especially hated the vibe at night.
I can’t say I’d recommend visiting Barcelona, maybe if you had a big group of mates and all you wanted to do was get hammered? Even then I can’t quite see the attraction of potentially getting robbed every night.
Bicycle rental on our street. Crazy traffic and people but cyclists persisted and were seen absolutely all over the place.
Pic of our backyard. We got to our front door and the guy with the keys wasn’t there. Richie managed to get into the building but he found our flat occupied by 9 guys. Our key guy finally came, he spoke no English at all. The airconditioner was faulty and leaked all over the kitchen, the apartment smelt like bad cabbage and the guys downstairs were party animals which cranked up the music late at night every night.
We finally got out of the apartment (the key guy held us back for hours). We were starving so we headed down the road and found this place where you can make your own falafel roll, was damn good actually!
We then found this cool pub, sat at the bar and got a little trashed. The 2 bartenders were awesome and we met a few guys from the States and England too. We crawled out of there at 2am to hunt down a foose table (bartenders tip!).
We found one but it was broken. Shame!
Richard Murphy boozed up.
The next morning we waited for an aircon guy to come fix the leaking unit, we learnt that when they say 11am it means 12. Half of our day was lost and the aircon guy turned out to be the damn key guy again, who did absolutely nothing but waste more of our time trying to fix the aircon himself (he didn’t fix it either). Hung over, tired and angry we set out to get lost in the many side streets off La Rambla, this knife shop was the first shop that caught our eyes.
Every street was packed and Barcelona had almost a festival vibe about it, like everyone from everywhere was here.
Skull coverd with Swarovski crystals.
Bong shop.
That afternoon we caught up with Richie’s brothers. Richie left, Chris in the middle and John on the right. Both Chris and John are musicians and awesome company. Chris doesn’t drink booze (he’s a smoker) but has over 10 coffees a day, John downs a beer (or any alcoholic beverage he can get a hold of) at any opportunity he gets which made for a hazey few days of drinking!
We were all starving so we hit up our 1st Paella (was semi decent) and Suga managed to polish off this entire jug of Sangria all by herself which got her nice and tipsy.
We stumbled on the Dali museum and it was surprisingly awesome. None of his paintings, which was a shame, but hundreds of early sketches and many sculptures too.
The venue itself was intersting with many little rooms and you had to walk through red curtains to get to new sections of the exhibit.
Dali was into bikes?!
A skull made of type. His signature on one of the works.
La Rambla, a steady flowing stream of people day and night.
By day La Rambla is lined with some crazy human sculptures.
In trying not to make eye contact with sketchy people I often had my eyes on the ground.
These demon guys were awesome.
There was also a crazy pet market on La Rambla by day.
Nom nom nom.
Dudes.
That night we checked out the pier, which was again very similar to our Darling Harbour. We found a restaurant that served up one of the best steaks I’ve ever had (I actually ordered fish but had a good taste of Suga’s). Was up there for Richie and Suga too.
No matter which country you visit, you can’t escape the digeridoo. These guys were cool though, the guy on the left played that crazy UFO looking dish thing on the floor on the left side. It was insane.
The Murphys.
Suga and I.
Our 2nd paella was yummy and we found it in a beautiful restaurant that we stumbled upon in a tigh side street.
Suga nom nom. I couldn’t stop admiring the cute little french girl on the table behind, she was soooo cute. Me getting maternal? Noooo?!
Dead bikes on our street.
Yes the city has a bicycle service too, again, why the hell don’t we have this?!
On La Rambla I found this genuine Miro you can actually walk on!
He even signed a tile.
Cool 3 wheel rentacars.
Christina and I checked out the Erotic Art museum which was pretty lame.
There was a huge food market on La Rambla which had some crazy produce on sale. This was an animated table full of crawling stuff.
MMM! Inners!
Huge eggs.
We also checked out the Wax Museum which was pretty good. This guy was so real, he freaked me out hard. The more I looked at him the more spooked I got.
Mum and Jamie joined us on the 3rd day and we started to check out the Gaudi stuff which was out of the seedy area we were living in so that suited us all just nicely.
Our last dinner with Richie’s brothers was in this lovely little restaurant but getting there was hardcore as we had to go through one of the dodgiest little streets we encountered. Drug dealers and prostitue which was well fended off by John.
Mojito’s was where it was at for Suga.
Goodbye drinkies.
The boys a little burnt from the topless perving session on the beach.
The following images are of Gaudi’s amazing work. First the Gaudi Park, then the amazing Sagrada Família church which is still unfinished, then Casa Milà and lastly his amazing Casa Batlló apartments.
Gaudi Park. Was a super hot day which made it a bit uncomfy, but there was an amazing musician at every turn which made it awesome.
Sagrada Família, insane organic goodness.
Ceilings are taller than you think too, gob smacking in real life.
Casa Milà was lovely on the outside but a little bit of a let down inside.
Interesting forms on the roof.
You can see the Sagrada Família in the distance in this shot.
Casa Batlló
Paris tomorrow! I’ve got some videos of the musicians to upload to YouTube too at some point.