Barcelona - week two
My former colleague and friend Helena once showed me an article about free train rides in Spain. Since I want to explore more than just Barcelona, I decided to do my investigation and look for these free tickets at the beginning of the week. But… Finding how to get these tickets isn’t easy at all. After some time, I finally managed to ‘buy’ my ticket, since there’s a deposit of ten euros. You have to make a total of sixteen train rides to get your deposit back at the end of April. I’m not sure if I’ll manage to travel that much, but still, ten euros for a few train rides seems like a pretty good deal to me.
On Wednesday, I started my little travel journey. I visited Garraf (a small coastal town) which is fifty minutes from Barcelona. I had some tapas for lunch and then went to the beach. Unfortunately, I forgot to take sunscreen with me, so when I returned home I noticed I had a pretty bad sunburn. The day after, I tried to avoid the sun for a bit. So in the evening, I took another train and went to Badalona to go for a walk at the beach and watch the sunset. On Friday, I went to Sitges, which is located just next to Garraf. I didn’t stay there for too long, because I had to get back on time for the language exchange café. During my walk to the café, I had a call with Barbara (again). I told her I was not really in the mood for the café, but she convinced me to just go. Turns out I had a great Friday evening again! I saw my ‘friends’ that I met at the previous café and also talked to a Spanish guy for quite a while.
I started my weekend with a visit to the Mercat del Encants, Barcelona’s biggest and most famous flea market. When I returned home, I noticed I had a voice message from the Spanish guy I met the day before, asking me about my plans for the evening. Since he’s a local, I wanted to know what his favourite places in Barcelona are and if he has some tips for me. A few voice memos later, we decided to have dinner together. At 8.30pm, he picked me up with his scooter and took me to the first place, Senyor Vermut. It’s a very cute and lively tapas bar, known for its -as the name already says it- vermouth. We shared some croquetas and I tried vermouth for the first time. Both the drinks and food were really good! After that, we headed to the Gràcia neighbourhood where we had some more tapas and eventually found a bar with great music to dance the night away.
Today I had plans with the other guys from the language exchange café. We gathered together at the Parc de la Ciutadella around noon. Two of them are musicians, so they brought a guitar, trumpet and violin to have a jam session. After a few hours in the park, we had lunch together at FrescCo, an all-you-can-eat restaurant for fifteen euros. For now, I’m just going to watch some Netflix and try to go to bed early. It’s been a busy weekend after all!
See you next week!
