Hurricane Season

Hello everyone.

Last night after my blog I met a lovely German lady that stayed in our room. She told me that the first time she came to Barcelona with a group of 30, 14 of their wallets got stolen. This has not happened to us. Unfortunately, she had to leave this morning to go back to work in Munich.

Today was a long day. We got up relatively early again, but the day was cold and dreary. The sun was no where to be seen and rain drops would pelt us occasionally. We walked to the tourist buss again, since we bought 2 days, and we rode it throughtout the city. The first stop we visited was the Plaza de Espana, where the fountain show was the night before.

Across the Plaza there was this large, circular building and we bought a 1 euro pass to go to the top and get panoramic views of Barcelona. It was gorgeous, but it didn't have as good of views as the Parque Güell. When we returned to the bottom, we discovered the rest of the building was a huge mall, and we spent some time shopping. Well, really the other 3 girls shopped and I looked around. It was a huge mall with about 4 stories and a lot of very popular stores.

Then, we got back on the bus and took it to the top of the hill, right nest to the art museum. We hiked farther up to this very large sculpture that towered over Barcelona from the top of the hill. It was humungous and I took lots of pictures. There was a baseball games going on down below it and we could here the announcer. There was a bus stop very close to the sculpture, so we jumped on the bus there and took it down to the port.

We got off and there was a little market. It had a lot of little antiques and some very pretty jewelry, but once again I did not buy anything. We then went and bought crepes. I got mine with nutella and whipped cream; it was delicious. We took some pictures by the water before getting back on the bus again.

We got off at the shopping mall on Port Vell. We then shopped for another several hours before settling in at McDonald's for some food. While we were eating, a massive storm hit. I am just reading an article about it. It said we got a maximum 58 liters of water per square meter in some places, some 50 trees fell down (not to mention parts of trees I'm sure), streets were severaly flooded, and the metro was shut down for the duration of the storm due to flooding. We were sitting on the second floor of McDonald's and water started coming in under the door and flooded half the room, then water started running down the posts. We sat it out and made our break for the bus as soon as the rain stopped.

We rode the bus until we got to downtown Barcelona. Our route was diverted several times due to flooding, however. There was another little market in the Plaza that we looked through before getting some fabulous tasting ice cream. I know, I know a crepe and ice cream on the same day, but I'm on vacation! We started practicing out awkward looks, in case a guy came up to us (which they do a lot in Spain) we would make a really freaky look so that they'd go away. We got some lady to take a picture of us all doing it, and it was really funny.

We started walking down toward La Rambla. It is the pick pocket capital of Spain as well as home to some truly excellant shopping. On the way, we stumbled across this store that had some incredibly cool products. I took some pictures. They had salad tongs that looked like legs sticking out of the salad, tons of brain teasers, fantastic games, etc. Upstairs they had paintings galore and it was all lovely. I really want to go back there some day. We then walked down La Rambla before finally taking the metro back to La Sagrada Famila and then walking back to the hostel.

Everyone else is going out tonight to get drunk, but I am going to stay here and sleep. The idea of night life in Barcelona doesn't really appeal to me. Good night all!