Barcelona Day 1

I finally arrived in Barcelona!!! After having a lovely Easter Brunch in Geneva with some friends, I hopped on a bus, train, then plane headed west to Spain. The traveling was pretty easy, except for teh 18kg extra bag I'm carting around to give to Mom and Dad when I see them next week so they can take it home for me--my hope is that for once when I come home permanently (in July) I won´t have to pay for excess baggage weight. So yeah, my arms are pretty sore from lugging that around the city getting to my hostel, but I'll live. The hostel is nice, as hostels go. It's in what appears to be a very safe area in this great big old building with a winding marble staircase a really old (safe? maybe) elevator running up the middle. It's surrounded by a street of designer shops, which makes me feel safer--Chanel wouldn't set up in a bad part of town, right? The only bad part of the hostel is that somehow my sheets have disappeared. I left them on my bed yesterday, and when I returned in the evening they were gone...I'm still waiting to ask the maid. I mean, who steals sheets???

So anyway, I started my first full day here with an aimless walk down Pasieg de Gracia toward Plaça de Catalunya--a lovely little park at the head of La Rambla, which is the most famous street in Barcelona. The weather was gorgeous all day long for my strolling. So then I wandered down La Rambla with all the other tourists. It's a beautiful tree-lined street with restaurants and street entertainers all along the way. There were some of the most elaborate "statue people" I have ever seen--you know, those people who paint themselves a metalic color and stand really still until they pop out and scare someone? There were some truely amazing ones on La Rambla. As it was Easter Monday, a lot of the shops and such were closed, which helped keep me from shopping. However, I did lose an obscene amount of money at one of the only open Change offices. I had been unable to exchange money in Geneva before leaving because Alice didn't pay me until Friday night, and (again, Easter weekend) everything was closed in Geneva all weekend. So, I needed to exchange money--a lot of it, mostly for use on this 2 weeks of traveling and some to send home with M&D to put in my bank account. Anyway, the sign said ¨no commision¨ which is great. So this is how it went:

Me: I need to change this to Euros.
Guy: Okay.
Me: No commission, right?
Guy: Si, no commision.

I hand over the money, he does his thing, I sign the receipt, he hands me the Euros and my copy of the receipt, and I walk out as I look things over. Then I stop abruptly when I see on the receipt ¨Service Fee: 358Euros¨WHAT?? The ¨No Commision¨place charged me a 358Euro (more than $400) fee to change my money! So I went back in to demand an explanation,

The guy explained: ¨there is no commission when we are buying Euros; when we sell them it's an 18% commission¨
Me: but you said there was no commission when I asked, and obviouly I was buying Euros, not selling them. You lied!

The guy looks confused, his manager comes over, I explain. The manager says there is nothing he can do. I yell a little--money is really tight right now, I can't afford to just let this go. Yelling doesn't work, so I cry a litte (I know it's girly and wrong, but they were real tears of frustration) and he finally relents and gives me back 1/2 of the commission they took--179 Euro, which means it still cost me 179Euro to change the money, but there was no way I was going to get it all back.

So that really really sucked, and I'm still mad about it, and it ruined my day for a little bit, but then I reminded myself that I'm in Barcelona and I can't change what happened and I should just have a good time. So I did (until my sheets were stolen--bad luck that day--but I got over that too).

So, I continued down La Rambla toward the Monument to Christopher Columbus, then walked along Port Vell. The boardwalk along the port is a great place to just stroll--it's somewhere I would go running if I lived here. There are people just sunning themselves, and ice-cream vendors and restaurants (I had a burrito, it was awesome), and the guys sellling illegal handbag and sunglasses knock-offs who have to pack up in 2 seconds everytime the police drive by. It's lots of fun. So I followed the port until I broke off to head toward Santa Maria del Mar--a gorgeous church. It was closed--doesn't that seem like the one place that should be open on Easter Monday? Apparently not. I'm told I have to go back so that I can go inside. From there I walked over to the Catedral in the Barri Gotic district--the Old Town of Barcelona. It has wonderful narrow streets and cobblestones, and in several places there are men sitting outside playing the Spanish guitar. The Catedral was gorgeous, and I was able to go on the rooftop for an amazing view of the city. My favorite part was the Cloister--a wonderfully cool and quite garden with a beautiful and simple fountain, and the afternoon sun was just perfect, and I could faintly hear a street guitarist playing. That was a perfect moment. After leaving there, I watched the street musician play for a bit, and bought one of his CDs as my Barcelona souvenire.

I wandered the old town a bit more, then headed over to the Arc de Triomf--nice, but couldn´t really compare to the Arc de Triomph in Paris. It's courtyard, though, leads to the Parc de la Ciutadella, which is the perfect place to hang out on a perfect afternoon. There were tons of people just laying out, reading, listening to or playing music, playing a bit of soccer, etc. It looked like the city's entire youth population was on the lawns of this park. So I sat for a while, listened to my iPod, and thought of afternoons just like that at Barton Springs in Austin. Then I got up, made my way back to the Port for an ice cream, and wandered my way back to the hostel along La Rambla and Passieg de Gracia.

It was a good first day, other than the couple of mishaps. Today, I think I'm going to head up to Montjuic and Tibidabo--both are supposed to have some great views of the city from hilltops. I'll let y'all know how it goes...