Day 2 - Barcelona: New Hotel, New Sights

Another fitful night of sleep (with the "fits" being the instances of sleep) was had, although the final period of rest leading up to my 930am alarm was restful. Got up and got ready to get myself out of my hotel room by 11am checkout.

Checked out after paying my final .78 Euros in city hotel taxes, and headed on down la calle for more familiarity: Starbucks. Why can't I even think to do a fake name when I'm in another country?!

After spending maybe an hour total at Starbucks, I then left with my luggage to do some daytime wandering around BCN and kill time until around new hotel check-in time (Note: part of previous night's insomnia was spent looking up hotels and/or apartments for rest of BCN stay... decided to do a better hotel for 2 more nights and then decide if maybe I want an apartment for fnl 3 days, a side BD excursion, or just another hotel).

I found that people like to feed the pigeons in Spain: Plaça de Catalunya

Why did I have that song "No Pigeons" in my head afterwards? Haha.

Since I love doing mundane regular shiz in faraway places (and to pretend to be a local -- even when it's clear I am not), I was excited to stumble upon a post office branch a few blocks away from this Plaça. Took a number y waited my turn like a local. Flexed my skills in castellaño some more and got postage for ten intl postcard mailings to the US -- they were out of the single .99 Euro stamps, so guy sold me all the .495 sellos they had (and re-reminded me otra vez que "tiene que poner DOTH thellos en CADA tarjeta, ok?" Lol. My vow to not lisp my Castillian Spanish is still intact. For now. This lisp is already starting to sound normal to me. Uh oh.

Checked into hotel #2 and found it a great improvement over hotel #1. Room is twice the size, has a king bed instead of a twin, a decent view of the calle instead of a view of some back patios of residences. Paying twice the price usually gets you these kinds of things I guess. Haha. No bidet in this one though -- I'll miss pretending the bidet is a urinal HAHA. #TMImode

Within 20 minutes of getting into the room I was out cold for a solid 2 hours. Maybe I might get used to this siesta thing after all. Otra vez, vamos a ver.

Woke up and decided I needed to get myself down to La Barceloneta and see the Mediterranean Sea for the first time before it got dark. Hoofed it down there through the maze-like Gothic Quarter and eventually found what I was after.

 

Spent a good amount of time walking the length of the waterfront and back, then back up La Barceloneta (which juts out from the general shoreline as a peninsula).

Took the subway for the first time next, back up to the Passeig de Gràcia stop -- it was easy peasy. (The cab driver yesterday recommended I get the ten trip pass -- I may vey well put it to full use.)

Headed back towards Las Ramblas to buy some postcards, grab some food, and check out La Boqueria (a huge open market next to part of Las Ramblas). Turns out most of the shops in La Boqueria close a little early apparently (for Barcelona, at least). Ended up grabbing some cheap fast food -- this time catalunyan style!