The sun had already set in Barcelona when Cheeseman and I checked back into the Barcelona Rock Hostel after our two-day foray into the neighboring village of Torrelles de Llobregat. Cheeseman went out to meet with his old swing partner from Appalachian State that evening, a lovely young lady named Alix, who was in Barcelona studying abroad for a semester. So while he went out, I made new friends in the hostel lounge playing some familiar college drinking games, which were hosted by the hostel’s own Partyboy Dave. I made fast friends with an Australian guy named Nick and a group of rowdy and dazzling Brazilian girls. When 11 pm rolled around, Partyboy Dave announced he would be leading a pub crawl in 10 minutes, and everyone around me cheered with enthusiasm. Figuring why not, I decided to join in, hoping that it would be better than the first pub crawl I had gone on with Partyboy Dave.
As our boisterous assembly filed behind Dave into the streets, Cheeseman appeared with a cheerful smile on his face. His date had apparently gone well, and I insisted he tell me all about it on the pub crawl. It was an entirely new set of bars and clubs this time around, and Cheeseman and I got along famously with the Brazilian girls. When our group finally rolled into a packed nightclub at 2 am, we all felt like lifelong friends. It was a decidedly better club than the one we had been to a few nights ago. This one was one big dance floor with a half dozen raised platforms for enthusiastic dancers to climb and show off their moves from. Strobe lights and laser danced over everyone’s heads in time to the music mixed by a live DJ on stage, and every half hour an explosion of confetti would fall out of the ceiling into the mass of dancing bodies. It was the kind of place I had previously thought only existed in movies.
When Cheeseman and I finally stumbled out of the club with the Brazilians at 5 am, we were nearly deaf but exceedingly giddy from all the drinks and dancing. We wandered into a 24-hour shop for sustenance, opening packaged junk food in the aisles before paying with all the dignity of grazing cattle. The girls had bought half a dozen frozen pizzas to make back at the hostel, and Cheeseman and I joined them in the kitchen as the morning sunrise crept in through the floor to ceiling windows. We casually asked if they were free to go out to the beach later that day, but were both shocked a disappointed to learn that the girls were actually flying to Paris in three hours! This was their last hurrah in Spain before continuing East on their grand Eurotrip. I must admit I was impressed by them. We ate pizza, exchanged contact info, and talked about our favorite places we’d traveled in the world for a while until the girls finally wandered back outside to hail taxis to take them to the airport. Cheeseman and I saw them off and then staggered like zombies to bed at 7 am.
Around noon we rolled out of the hostel dorm room and recommitted to the world of the living. A couple of people we had met during the pub crawl last night, Nick and Anita, were drinking coffee in the lounge and waved us over. We laughed about how exhausted we all looked but eventually made plans to visit the popular Park Guell, a unique contemporary art attraction together. We navigated our way across town using the metro and emerged from the underground on the edge of the city. It looked like a much more neglected and rundown area compared to the tourist-laden downtown streets. But after walking a few blocks in what our friend Nick was calling “The Barcelona Hood,” we found a cascading street full of outdoor escalators leading up a steep hill to the entrance of the Gaudi park. It was such a bizarre sight to see, all those escalators outside, squeezed between an alley of derelict looking apartment buildings.
When we arrived at the top, we found it to be quite an unusual park. Instead of trees and green grass, we instead found a desert scene of cacti and stone-lined pathways winding uphill. There were funky and colorful sculptures every few dozen yards and a handful of buskers entertaining tourists along the path. The path lead up to a barren peak where a round stone structure bore three ancient looking crosses. Officially called the Turó des les Tres Creus, the crosses aligned perfectly to true North, East, and West. Tourists crowded around atop the stone structure to take pictures of downtown Barcelona from the stunning panoramic overlook.
We continued our hike around the park, taking plenty of pictures as we went. Gaudi’s bizarre architectural art soon surrounded us with vividly colored columns and spires. Statues of multicolored fairytale creatures were also peppered throughout Park Guell. It was a truly unique place and certainly a must-see attraction for anyone visiting Barcelona.
When the Spanish sun finally got to be too much, we ducked out of the park via a side street and wandered into a small café that felt more like a local eatery than a tourist trap. We ordered a round of ice cold Estrella beers and were encouraged by the waitress to order the massive Paella plate to share. I had never experienced paella before, and I must say it was an impressive dish to behold. Two waiters carried out a steaming pan of rice and seafood almost a yard across and placed it in the center of our table. It was as delicious as it was filling, with a fantastic mix of mussels, chorizo, clams, and jumbo prawns. We wolfed it down appreciatively and the chef himself even came out to ask us if we enjoyed it. We assured him that we did with big smiles and laughed that we wouldn’t need another meal all week.
We parted ways with Nick and Anita to meet up with Cheeseman’s friend Alix at an interesting bar near her university called “Electric”. We hung out there drinking vibrantly colored cocktails and socializing with other international students from the university.
My last day in Barcelona was, unfortunately, a rainy one. But after an exhausting week, it felt like a well needed day of rest. I picked a guitar off the Rock Hostel wall and enjoyed playing some familiar tunes for a while. But soon, Cheeseman found me said to me with the haggard voice of one too many nights out, “We’ve gotta get out of Barcelona,” and I wholeheartedly agreed. It was a fun city, but we only had a month to travel and so much left we wanted to see and do in Spain. We locked ourselves in the hostel’s computer lounge, scouring the internet for ride shares, buses, and trains out of town. I managed to get in touch with an Austrian guy on Blablacar.com who was passing through Barcelona the next day on his way to Granada. It was a crazy schedule, but if we could arrange to meet him at 4 am, we could ride with him all the way to the southern region of Spain for less than 30 euros each.
So we decided to pull another all-nighter to make the plan work. We met up with Marcel again in old town Barcelona where he introduced us to a quirky bar simply called Tequila. Dozens of headsets dangled from the ceiling and the bartender took everyone’s song requests and played retro music videos on TVs scattered around the bar. It gave the place a hilarious dynamic as some people swayed to Bob Marley and others head-banged to Rage Against the Machine. Marçal introduced me to my new favorite beer that night, a stronger version of the crisp Spanish Estrella called Voll Damm. We enjoyed a few rounds and played some terrible rounds of darts as we listened to different genres of music through our headsets. When 4 am started to creep up, we said goodbye to Marçal one last time before going to collect our packs from the hostel to meet our mystery Austrian chauffer taking us to Granada.
