Whew... what a weekend.

This weekend was pretty friggen amazing.

Wednesday: Lisa & Anne arrived from travelling around Europe for their Barcelona stay. Took them around for the day. In the evening, we headed out to this club, Carpe Diem, close to our house by the beach. It was the Welcome Party for the international students in Barcelona. Basically, it was a gongshow. So many people crammed into this club, like 1000 people! And, free food and free wine & beer. Craziness. Most of the students there were Americans, not exactly what we had hoped for. We were hoping to meet more international students, but it's okay cuz we had fun anyways.

Thursday: Hung out with the girls. Went shopping along Las Ramblas and did more sightseeing. Had lunch at this restaurant in El Ravel called La Fonda. Good, cheap food with large portions. Mmmm. I decided to get my lip pierced, on a whim. Well, actually not exactly a whim. I wanted to get it done before I left Vancouver, but decided to hold off on it, cuz I didn't wanna take care of it. But basically, once I got here, I've noticed so many people with piercings, I thought, why not? (that's our saying for this entire exchange experience). So I got it done. Met up with Ji Eun & Eric for dinner in the area. Lisa had this place she found in Lonely Planet called Foodball, which is basically a restaurant where they serve all your food to you in balls. We search for it, only to find out its closed down and replaced by some other sketch looking bar. Sort of epic fail. So we picked some random restaurant in the area and ate. We were planning on going out clubbing again, but got home around midnight and were all too tired to go out again.

Friday: Lisa, Anne and I had been planning to go to Ibiza for the night, but it turned out to be way too expensive and too long of a trip to get there. Plan B: party hard in Barcelona. Hit the beach around noon. I love where we live =) After the beach, we went to visit La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's unfinished cathedral. Bought a ticket to check out the inside. It's so amazing. So unique. The columns are supposed to be like tree trunks and the roof part like the leaves of the trees, so you feel like your in a forest. It's so crazy. But there's like construction everywhere inside, and scaffolding, so its a pretty interesting picture. Apparently, they hold mass there every weekend, which I don't even know where they'd hold it, so I'm planning on checking it out one weekend. Paid 2.50 euros to take the lift up the towers of the cathedral. Up top, there's a great lookout of the city. You can see everything! We were up there just as the sun was setting so the whole city was glowing. It was so gorgeous. After, we met up with Eric, Ji Eun, Mark, Piyush & Raul for dinner at La Rita, which is supposed to be the same owner as La Fonda. It was close to Paseig de Gracia, this main street with all the high-end shopping. The place was super cute and the food, amazing. And fairly priced too! We had a good time, and ended the night off with a bang, literally. So, at the end of dinner, we're all getting up to leave, and suddenly we hear this scream and a bang and we look over. Basically, when Piyush got up, there was this huge fake plant/tree right behind his chair, and when he pushed his chair out, he knocked it over. And the tree, it fell onto the table behind him, right in this lady's food! HAHAHAHA. Omg it was hilarious, everyone turned to look, cuz she screamed so loud. And us, well we walked out of the restaurant pissing ourselves laughing. Good thing tho, the ladies at the table had good humor and were laughing about it as well.
So, after dinner, Lisa, Anne and I head home, everyone else heads home, Eric decides he wants to go find a random pub. Us girls get ready to go out. Eric gets home. We leave, and catch a cab to find this bar called Club Nitsa, that we found in Lonely Planet. So we get to the club. Well, we walk to the address that was in Lonely Planet. And we find some place called Apolo. Shit, we're thinking, another dud thanks to Lonely Planet. But no! We ask some random people and bouncers, and they say that Nitsa is inside. But we wait around a bit before we go in to meet up with some people. We meet Brook, who's Thai studying in Singapore, and his friend Yasmin, who's on exchange in Valencia. We wait around a bit more for 2 more of his friends. We wait, and wait, and wait. Finally we get antsy so we decide to head in. Later, we find out that they were caught by the cops with hash and were taken to the the police station! The cops were threatening to cancel their visas, and the guys almost peed themselves from fear. Basically, they got off with just a 30 euro ticket each for drinking in public (which everyone does, so obviously a cover-up). ANYWAYS, back to us at the club, we get in, and it's pretty dingy. But all the bouncers were saying this was the place to be. The people, sketch. The bars, sketch. The dancefloor, sketch. The bathrooms, uber sketch. It looks like a crack house. But the venue itself was pretty dope, like a big, old school theatre. Sort of reminded me of the Commodore. Basically, around 2am, the club totally picks up, and it gets packed! People just going CRAZY! Jumping/falling all over the place. Some random girl came up to me and started speaking Japanese to me and was raving about how she loves Japan. Lots of gross, creepy guys, but a few decent ones. So much cigarette smoke, everywhere you turned, that we came out reeking of smoke, down to my bra. Broken glass all over the floor, my new shoes got totally cut up. I got jumped on, elbowed, spilled on, stepped on, broken glass shattered at my feet, burned by a cigarette butt. But, it was amazing. Danced all night, until 6 in the morning. And I didn't even drink (because I can't for a week cuz of my piercing. boo.) At the end of the night, Lisa meets this decent guy, Paulo, who offers to take us out around the city the next day. Oh ya, around like 5am or so, we totally lost Eric, Yasmin, Brook and his 2 friends. So we head outside of the club at 6am and yell for Eric, or Enrique as well are now calling him in Spain. But we can't find him. We were kind of worried about him, but we hoped he already left the club and headed home.
Anyways, after exchanging numbers with Paulo and agreeing to meet the next day, we metro home. And yes, the metro is open all night on the weekends. Unlike Vancouver. We get to our station, and take the 10 minute walk to our apartment, which felt like an hour since we felt like death (aka tired with hurting feet). We get home, and I'm thanking myself that I brought my set of keys. Because, when we left the house I wasn't going to bring them but Eric said I should, just in case we got split up. And I was thinking, doubtful that we won't come home together! So, I put my key in the lock. I push, the door doesn't move. I push again, it still doesn't move. Eric, the drunk ass, DEADBOLTED the door. So, at 7am on a Saturday, we ring the doorbell. Mutiple times. We bang on the door, we yell his name. We go downstairs and ring the buzzer. All of this, for half an hour, straight. NOTHING. We were pissed. We go up to the terrace to wait for a bit. The sun was rising, and it was pretty beautiful. We sit on the dirty, dusty lawn chairs, half passing out. After about 15 minutes around 8am, we go down to try again. Nothing. So we decide to go walk and find something to eat, even though our feet are KILLING. We find this little bakery that was open and buy breakfast. We sit on a random bench, feeling like homeless bums. We must have been quite a sight. 8:30am, three asian girls in clubbing clothes, sitting on a bench, eating pastries in silence. Head back to the apartment. We ring the bell, and hold our breath. Suddenly "helloooo". We all yell "ERIC!". He opens the door, with his jersey on inside-out & backwards, and waddles back to his bed. We all yell at him, beat him up, while laughing. 9am, and we finally had a home again =)

Saturday: Obviously, after the night/morning before, we didn't get up until late. Eric does his thing, us girls head to Las Ramblas to do some last minute shopping. We find this place called El Mercadillo which feels like a little flea market. It's cute & cheap =) We meet Paulo & his friend Bernard there. They take us up to Montjuic, this mountain with a great view of the city. Gorgeous! There's a castle at the top of the mountain too. After, he drops us off at the metro, and we meet up with Eric, who had planned a dinner for all the UBC students who were studying in Barcelona. He organized it through Facebook. We meet at La Fonda, which has a huuuuuge lineup to get in. Since we were a big group, we had to split up. Lisa, Anne & I ate in the non-smoking section (wow! they actually had one!) since we were so sick from all the smoke at Nitsa. Dessert is amazing there. After dinner, all of us headed to this shady little bar, the Shanghai Bar. They had these bird cages hanging from the ceiling with random stuffed animals in them. Anyways, it was nice to meet new people =) Since Anne & Lisa were leaving at 5am to catch their flight at 7am on Sunday, we headed home early (early being 3:30am). Paulo came to say bye to the girls. Anne & I head home while Lisa went for a ride on his scooter =)
I stay up to see the girls off at 5am. I clean the house while I'm waiting, since Joe was coming in the next day.

Sunday: Get up and Eric & I head to MNAC, the Museu Nacional de Catalunya. It has the biggest art collection of Catalan art, for the past 1000 years. Eric's Spanish teacher toured us around. I tried to listen to this tourguide in Spanish, which went alright. The art gallery is MASSIVE. It's in Montjuic, in this huge old building on top of a hill. You could spend weeks going through the galleries and still not see everything! After the museum, we head to El Born to this place that serves pinchos, which are a Basque specialty, called Bilbao Barrie. The place was pretty cool. They have all these plates with little hor d'oeurve type things. They have sticks in them, so when you're done, they count how many sticks you have and then charge you. It was so good! After, Eric, Brook and Sabrina, who studies at UBC Okanagan, head to the beach. Such a perfect day for the beach. Except, we didn't get there until 5pm, and the sun was going down. Shit went down at the beach. All of a sudden, we see this lifeguard sprinting to this part of the beach. We hear sirens, and 2 ambulances book it onto the beach. Cops pull up on motorcycles. There's a huge crowd around. We didn't know what happened though, cuz we didn't want to go into the crowd. It was exciting though.
Anyways, we head home. Eric, Sabrina and I hang out and wait for Joe to come in. FINALLY. He gets in, but one of his luggages was left in London. Anyways, we head out for dinner in El Born to this tapas place called Tapas de Lonja. It was yummmmm.

WHEW. what a weekend. I'm so happy I got to hang out with girlfriends for a few days, since I'm stuck with Joe & Eric for the next 4 months. First time alone with both of them, on the way home from dinner, was already a gongshow. And alcohol wasn't even involved =P

TRIPOD IS IN FULL EFFECT. tis all.

The Beach Experience: Spanish Style

I would call today a success. Aside from waking up ridiculously late, which I don't exactly know why.

Did laundry for the first time. Clothes dry SO fast outside here! I took them off the line within an hour or so.

Eric and our new friend, Ji Eun, came home from their Spanish class around 4 ish. She's such a sweet girl! Our first mission, make some home-made sangria. Red wine, sprite, peaches, oranges, lime, mmmm. While we let the fruit juices soak in, we headed down for our FIRST trip to the beach! Stupid, considering we live 10 mins away and we've been living at our place for 5 days now!

Wow. Our first Spanish beach experience. It was OKAY i have to say. Probably due to the fact that we didn't get there until about 5pm, and the clouds had rolled in. We had about 2 minutes of actual sunshine every 10 minutes or so. Eric, Ji Eun and I discovered two ways to bring the sun out: either make it scared by yelling at it, or coax it out by singing to it. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine" worked wonders.

Along with the random sunny moments, our Spanish beach experience was accompanied by Indian men mumbling "cervezaaaa...agua....fria" every few minutes as they walked through the crowds, and many...many...topless women. The boys will be in heaven. My first european beach experience.

Eventually, the random sunny moments became more and more infrequent, and our tummies started to rumble, so we decided it was time to head back for dinner. A tad too early by Spanish standards (7pm) but when hunger calls, it means business.

Stopped by the supermarket to get pasta and pasta sauce. Our new plan is to make a big pot of pasta and just have it ready in the fridge.

Our sangria was ready to go once we got back. And it was goooooood. Mmmmm. Eric made dinner. Steak & fries AND pasta with homemade pasta sauce. Goooood shit. But after all that food, we needed a walk. An adventure, more like. Decided to go see the Arc de Triumf, Barcelona-style. It was gorgeous, at Parc de Ciutadella, but it wasn't lit! Oh well, at least the park was. We discovered it was the "asian hangout". Omg, so many asian families sitting in the park, we felt like we needed to sit down and join them. After taking many random pictures, and having a spinning contest between me and Ji Eun which left us walking in zig zags, we headed home. Said bye to Ji Eun. For some reason, we were exhausted when we got off the metro. The walk from the station to our house seemed never-ending. Eric kept complaining and wanting to give up and just sit down or sleep on the street. We practically crawled up the stairs to our apartment. Why were we so tired! Maybe it was all that sangria...

New People, New Places

In the past two days, I think we've officially become locals.

Yesterday. Got breakfast in our area at some restaurant in this little courtyard. Reminded me of some Shakespearean town. And what did I order? toast. I can't tell you how much bread I've eaten in the past few days.

Checked out of our hotel apartment and met with our landlord at our new apartment in Port Olimpic. Our landlord, Aurora, is a super nice woman. It felt so good to finally settle in somewhere, and not be thinking about having to move any time soon. After unpacking, testing things out, claiming rooms (not hard since there's only 2 bedrooms) we went to La Rambla to check out the famous Mercat de Boqueria. Wow. Any kind of produce you could every want, you can find here. Got ourselves some fresh fruit juice (mm papaya). Bought some dried kiwis, mangos and strawberries, since I'm in love with dried fruits. There are stands that sell like every kind of dried fruit you can imagine. AND, of course, can't be in Spain without eating some spanish almonds. so amazing.

After the market, we decided to go shopping, since we hadn't had a chance to yet. I felt bad for eric, making him come into all these stores with me, and wait while i tried things on, and wait while i bought something at every...store...we...entered. bad bad bad! Everything was so cheap though! Plus, eric got this hook-up with this promoter here in bcn who said he'd take us out to the clubs that night. So of course I had to find something to wear. Dude, finding shoes that fit a narrow size 5 foot in Bcn is impossible! Ugh... I loved shoe shopping until yesterday.

Came home. Went to the supermarket to buy groceries. Made dinner for eric this time. Got ready to go clubbing. We were meeting Kyke the promoter at the beach, close to our place.

Headed down. So many clubs along the beach! Met up with Kyke and this girl from U of San Diego, Beren, sweet girl. First he took us to this club, Carpe Diem, where he is throwing an International Student welcome party next week. The club was like, Buddha-themed. Pretty dope.

Oh ya, we met up at like 12:30am. But ppl don't go to clubs until like 2am.

so went to the next club, Opium. 3000 people every weekend. It was HUGE! a lot of the clubs here have a restaurant area as well. what a good idea! cuz we all know how hungry we get when we're clubbing. here, there's people of all different ages in the club. we noticed a lot of older ppl, like couples in their 40's. weird to see. most clubs out here play like all house music, which'll take some getting used to. Anyways, when eric talked to Kyke on the phone earlier, he asked him "how much money should i take?" and he said "money? you don't need any"! he took care of everything! took care of cover, bought us drinks, which were all doubles =)

Anyways, eric, beren and i partied but couldn't party as hard as the barcelonians YET. left at like 4:30am. people were still going strong, probably until about 6am when most clubs close. walked home.

So, on the walk home, I had my first Barcelonian night-time freak-out moment. So, eric decides to throw this random rock across the street. suddenly, these rocks start flying at us. not just one. like 5. it was like we were being attacked by pebbles. i'm walking fast as hell. can't take cover anywhere. luckily we don't get hit. we take a quick detour down a cross street to lose our attackers. i yell at eric, ERIC! don't DO that shit! so we pretty much speed walk home. we were fine after that tho. phew.

wake up today at noon. because our landlord had to go over some last things with us. brought the contract. we had some questions for her too. like... how do we keep cockroaches out of our shower? DUDE, yesterday, i opened up the shower curtains to find little cockroaches scurrying around. i freaked. dude, i don't wanna be showering with them! haven't seen them since then tho, so should be okay.

fell back asleep after aurora left. til 5pm. FIVE! omg i felt so bad, cuz i wanted to hit the beach. but luckily, it was cloudy. went to the supermarket, only to find out its closed on sundays. dang, when even the SUPERMARKET is closed on sundays, you know everything shuts down on sundays! but the mall where the market is was busy! ppl just chillin, sitting in the bars watching the football game. sundays are so chill here. ppl just walking around enjoying the day. we went down to the beach and walked all along the walkway along the water. there were all these restaurants on the beach, playing loud house music. we saw this one dude, hella tanned, in this little black speedo. he was super cut too. and he was DANCING to the music on the beach, like a friggen chippendales dancer, straight up! he was like a dad too, he had a little daughter. anyways, as soon as me and eric saw that, we sat down and just watched him. it was soo hilarious. then we got up to walk, but on our way back, we saw the guy again, still dancing, so we sat down again to watch him a bit longer. we certainly found him amusing =P

came back. went into town for dinner. had the best paella in plaza reial, which we learned is the place to meet and drink. tons of ppl just sitting around the fountain, drinking. we had our first pitcher of sangria =) walked down to the water after along La Rambla, saw some topless woman sitting along the Rambla, putting make up on. Random. Ppl were just acting like she was fully clothed too. Cabbed home. Tomorrow, reality sets in. Eric starts school. Now, onto REAL life. No more vacation =( well at least, for him =P

Done Deal

Phrase of the day: "Can you stick it in? wowwww... That's what she said!"

Today was a EPIC SUCCESS, filled with both goal-achieving & aimless wandering.

Woke up earlier than normal. Thought we had to move rooms within our current apartment, so we packed up all our stuff. Turns out, we didn't even have to move. We're staying in the same place one more night.

Since we thought we had to move rooms, we tried to eat up all our left-over food. Pork chops and bread with cheese & ham for breakfast. Headed downstairs to the inside-bcn office to find out we can stay in the same room for our last night.

First stop. Vodafone. FINALLY got me a cellphone! They only had one pre-paid phone left, this nokia which is pretty nice by my standards (which aren't high for cellphones =P). It's a Highschool Musical themed cellphone so like all the backgrounds & stuff are of highschool musical stuff and there's a "parents guide" in the box for the phone too. haha.

Second stop. BBVA to exchange traveller's cheques so that we could pay our deposit for whatever apartment we went with. Surprisingly, no english at the bank. Somehow, got our traveller's cheques & eric's american cash exchanged. Tried to set up a bank account, but they needed a permanent address, which we don't have yet. Moved on from there.

Third stop. To meet with Lynn, a woman who was showing us another apartment in the Collblanc area. We were supposed to meet her at the McDonald's there, so since e got there early, we had our first Spanish McDonald's meal. Pretty much the same as McDonald's back home. Met with Lynn, who showed us this apartment. Extremely spacious, with high ceilings, and large rooms (hard to find in Barcelona) but the area was sort of sketch. Well, not exactly sketch, but more old-town-ish with older people.

After seeing the place, stopped in at a cafe for coffee and to discuss our two apartment options. Oh my, i love european coffee. SO good. So, there was this old man behind us, he was so dope. First, he comes in with a friggen full-size COOLER and puts it down on a chair at his table. He sits down and right away the waiters brought him his drinks. Seems like a regular. Dude, they brought the guy this tall glass of Absynthe and a cup of coffee. How dope is that. Next thing you know, the guy lights up a cigarette. Wow. And I told eric "i want to be THAT guy when i'm old" haha. Not really much discussing to do. We both already knew which place we wanted. Called up Mark and told him we wanted the Port Olimpic apartment. Made arrangements to go to his office in a few hours and sign the contract.

Got to his office. Signed the contract. Put a deposit down. Done Deal. It felt so good.

We felt pretty good after leaving his office. Felt so good we thought we could find this market that we had no clue where it was and no real map. Just walked, in whatever direction we felt it might be in. Walked, and walked, and walked. Nothing. Walked all the way back to the area our apartment is in. Passed by some dope-ass buildings. Found ourselves in El Ravel, in the Gothic area. Tried to find another market in the area, which we found, but it was closed. Wandered some more. Feet were hurting so bad, we had walked for like 2 hours straight.

Got home. Not before buying a bottle of red, a baguette and some vinegar. Now, we're chilling outside on our balcony, ate our baguette, drank our wine, and soaked our feet in hot-ass water. So hot my feet turned red. But it felt sooooo nice. We probably look pretty stupid to the locals walking by, but we don't care. We're happy we finally found a place! Eric is now passed out. Tomorrow we move into our new place =)

Just Take the Map Out

Today went much better than yesterday. Last night, after our epic fail, we decided that we needed to get our act together. We made a list of things we needed to get done, and wrote down all the addresses that we needed. Called Altiro first thing in the morning, only to find out that the one apartment we had been banking on was taken already.

Plan B. Liden Properties had a place we had been looking at. Set up a meeting to meet with the Mark, the owner of the company. Our mission to find his office on Rambla de Catalunya was MUCH more successful than yesterday. We decided, no matter what we're gonna look like tourists, so we may as well pull out the damn map. Found his apartment/office. Knocked on the door. This man greeted us in his towel. Awkwardddd. He said he had just gotten out of the shower and told us to come in. Me & Eric weren't quite sure what to do, so we sort of lingered at his doorway. His place was soooo nice. Mark disappeared into a room and came out soon after dressed in this Rico Suave-like outfit. Creme jeans, a cream button up with the buttons undone so you can see his chest, with cream dress shoes. Wow. And this greasy, long-ish, blonde hair slicked back. Basically, sat in his office for a bit, met this guy who we call "Lorenzo" who works for him, and saw some available apartments. Decided to go visit this apartment on Pamplona in Port Olimpic.

Cabbed to the apartment, while Lorenzo rode his bike, and met him at Pamplona 41. The apartment is SUPER nice. It's so cute! it's beside an elementary school and across from a highschool and kitty corner to a penitentiary/rehab center. HAHA. But it feels pretty safe. 10 minute walk to the beautiful beach. It's very new and modern, was built up for the 1992 Olympics. But we don't wanna be too hasty. Gonna check out one more place tomorrow, which is closer to our school, ESADE. This place is pretty far, but since we're only at school 3 days a week, we figure we'd spend more time at the beach than at school.

But we'll see. Tomorrow's another house-hunting day. Either way, we'll move in SOMEWHERE by Saturday. I can't wait. When I've FINALLY figured out how to get to our temp. apartment. haha.

Epic Fail

wow. what a day. SO much walking my legs are throbbing. Day 1 started off with a round-about walk to the Metro station. It seems like that was the theme for the day. Barcelona streets are hard to get used to, especially for someone with a terrible sense of direction.

Our first mission of the day was to visit our new school, ESADE, and meet with our international advisor, Jura. Bought a 10-trip pass at the Metro, got on, and soon enough got off at Maria Cristina. Then, a looooong uphill walk in the heat to the school. We first found the Undergraduate office and asked where the office for Jura was. Her office was located in the MBA building, which was about a block or two away. So we walked there. The entrance to the reception desk is AMAZING. It feels surreal when you're walking through it. We met with Jura, who helped us with all of our pressing questions. Apartments, bank accounts, cellphones, neighborhoods, where to eat. You name it, she helped us. After meeting with her, we were so hungry, and SUPER thirsty since we forgot to bring water with us (never forget your bottled water when walking in Barcelona heat!) There's not a lot around the school, it's basically a residential neighborhood, so we had to walk for quite some time before we got to a bustling area. Found a random restaurant, which was not too bad. 24 euros for lunch. I had gazpacho, which i was so happy to eat =), and we ordered grilled vegetables and eric had croquettes which we weren't quite sure what we would get but they were good. I'm making eric eat vegetables, since I have to eat them with every meal!

After lunch, we walked back down to the Metro station, Palau Real. Our second mission (epic fail) was so visit the Altiro office, to see if we could take a look at some of their aparments. Since their office closed for siesta from about 2-4pm, we decided to bum around. Went to check out the Sagrada Familia, so amazing from the outside, didn't go inside YET. We're waiting for Joe before we do that stuff. Then wandered around. Sat down at a Gelateria on Avinguda de Gaudi and at lemon gelato outside on their patio. The entire day was so relaxed, as it was hot, PLUS we didn't have watches on us. While wandering around, we found a Vodafone store. Went in and tried to ask in broken Spanish about their pre-paid plans. It was difficult to understand, since I don't exactly know how they work in Canada either.

Finally we decided to find the office. Except, we forgot the address. Eric knew the general area of the office and that the street name started with an "M". So we set out, hoping we would stumble across it. We kept saying that if we actually found it, we would be absolutely AMAZING. We wandered, checked the map, found a street nearby called Carrer de Monistrol, and went with that. It turned out to be this really narrow street. We walked around, nothing. Thought about asking someone in this little bakery, but then decided they probably wouldn't know. So, we headed back home. Epic Fail. But not so epic fail. Why? Because, we got accustomed to the city, the streets, the people, the culture, the language. We are beginning to feel not-so-touristy, except for the fact that we still like to point out everytime we see an Asian person walk by.

Arrived back at our apartment. Visited Daniela at the inside-bcn office and asked her many questions. An iron and ironing board, directions to the closest market, and also, about this apartment that they have for rent. Its pretty expensive, 2000 euros, but it fits 4 people. We've got a couple other options in mind too.

Anyways, went from the office to the corner store to buy groceries, since we decided to try cooking dinner at the apartment tonight. It was so pimp. Bought a bottle of champagne (so cheap!) which we thought was white wine, spaghetti sauce, and oscar meyer sausages with cheese. Fried those babies up, cooked the spaghetti that the apartment provided in our "goodie basket" and toasted to an EPIC FAIL/SUCCESS of a day! Ended the night by sipping our champagne out on our small patio where we had moved on of our couches, and watched our fellow Barcelonians stroll by, at 11 o'clock at night. I think I can get used to this.