Hola Spain!!

So I made it to Barcelona!! The trip over was relatively uneventful...except that I rode on Alitalia which reconfirmed my love of Italian guys. Other then that though, the airline is sub-par and I don't recommend it...unless you eat ham...and then feel free to jump on board.
I do love being back in Europe. Even just being in the airport I loved walking around and seeing what people were wearing. However, I was slightly annoyed by how slow people move here. I mean, it's the airport. We all have a plane to catch. It's not like we just came to all hang out and see where everyone else was going.

Damla and I arranged our flights to arrive 10 minutes within each other. It actually worked out again and we met up at the baggage claim and went to go find Selen. Just in case she was worried she wouldn't be able to find us, we made sure to put on our sweet Barcelona hats.

After taking a short bus ride and a short train ride, we made it back to Selen's cute European apartment. She fed us a delicious brunch and let us crash for the next 5 hours. Then we mustered up the energy to head out on to the streets. We went to a delicious tapas bar which had a very complicated name. If you go to Barcelona and want to know what it is, I'll ask Selen to e-mail you. We ate several delicious tapas and put down a pitcher of delicious sangria. I have to say that's one of my favorite things about this place!

You know what's not a good idea? Drinking an entire bottle of something called Sangria the night before you get on the plane to come to Spain. Contrary to what you might think, it's not the way to get in the mood for your vacation. I happened to do that Saturday night and was definitely riding the struggle bus for the first half of my plane ride.

Today was our first full day in Barcelona. We started off our one week adventure with a Fat Tire Bike Tour through the city. If you're ever in a city that does these tours, I would recommend it. The jokes aren't good but they seem to know what they're talking about. When I agreed to go on this tour, I didn't realize that the ride would actually take us through the busy streets of Barcelona. Considering I only get on a bike one every six months, I'm not super stable on two wheels. The tour was a bit out of my comfort zone but...I DID IT!!
I do have to say that the I didn't come of the adventure without any scratches. I did happen to run into a giant potted plant...that was free standing...with about 5 feet on each side of it...I swear it popped out of nowhere.
And I have to say, it was really fun. Occasionally we would be riding through a plaza and someone would be playing Spanish-style music on a guitar and I felt like I was in a movie! My favorite part of the tour was seeing the Sagrada Familia which is hugely amazing. We didn't even have to go in it to be amazed. We were actually recommended by our tour guide not to go in it because apparently it just looks like a constuction site on the inside. Note taken and obeyed.
After working up an appetite on the bike (the tour was 4 hours!) we stopped at a place for falafel stuffed pitas that you got to pick your own toppings on. Delish!! Thank goodness Selen got here in September and scoped out all the good food places for us. Then we headed to Las Ramblas to do some shopping until we could barely take another step.

The cool thing about Las Ramblas is that there is a median in the middle that is wide enough for several people to walk on. For some reason, they were selling all these random animals on this median...like mice, parakeets, turtles, bunnies...and even pigeons. I found this pretty strange because there are pidgeons all of there place. Why would I buy one when I could go throw a box over one in the plaza? One of the turtles was flipped over on his back and Damla was getting a upset that none of the others were helping to come flip them over. She yelled at the other turtles to help him but realized that they probably didn't understand English and asked Selen to help her translate.
We also stopped in the Boccaria (I have no idea how to spell it) which is the HUGE market off Las Ramblas. Everything in there is bright and colorful and they have every kind of chocolate you could ever want. One very imporant thing to remember in there is that you can look but DON'T TOUCH!!Tomorrow we're off to Valencia until Thursday. We've been told they have amazing paella which is one of my favorite foods. I'm pretty exicted for it. Well..that and the lovely beaches and warm weather!!