Thoughts on Spain

Thoughts on Spain

First off, Barcelona was an awesome time. It was an extremely awesome experience, lots of stuff to do, lots of partying and lots of sights to see.

The architecture in Barcelona is amazing. There's so much to see and so many different styles. Most of the buildings are your run of the mill concrete industrial mini skyscrapers. I think most buildings in Barcelona weren't taller than 10 stories. But there were some really unique and funky designs, look at my pictures (that will come up when I'm in South Africa). I was really impressed by how these funky buildings blended nature with asymmetry to produce a fusion of elegance. The stuff design by Gaudi was eye popping. His cathedral, the Sagrada Familia is unfinished but still a masterpiece in every sense. The details in it are so intricate, EVERY aspect of it is meant to resemble or mimic nature, nothing I've seen comes close to how much drugs this guy must have tripped to design the thing.

The Spaniards themselves, however, are mainly dicks. It seemed like they didn't like Americans at all from the onset; or anyone else from another country for that matter. I mean sure America's international reputation has been damaged by the Bush years, but that's no excuse for being impolite to random strangers. On the whole I feel the Spanish just weren't warm people.

Spanish food - meh. I'm not a fan of tapas really, and really don't miss it. It was kind of funny to me that the busiest places at night were McDonald's and Burger King. There were really long lines there.

Partying in Barcelona was awesome. We stayed in the hostel on La Rambla street, which is Barcelona's main touristy/ happening street. So many people walking up and down there, maybe even more than the magic mile in Chi town. As I said in a previous post, we went to a bar called Espit Choupitos (or something like that), choupitos is shot in spanish, and they were purported to have 1000 types of shots in the bar. Check out my pictures (coming later!), we did a baller flaming shot called the Harry Potter, vodka, sugar, orange, carmelized by flame. We did another shot with flaming marshmallows but I don't remember the name. The ice bar by the beach was a novel experience, it was a try-it-once thing. The ENTIRE bar was inside a big cooler, and everything (bar counter, stools, table, drink glasses) was all ice. Kind of small and expensive but awesome pictures from it. The beach 40 feet away probably made the night. Sweet sweet warm Mediterranean sea is so relaxing.

I'm just rambling now, we're off of SW Africa and in a storm of some sort, the water is so rocky and there's nothing to do on the ship. It gets real boring here real quickly. I saw three college guys doing a crossword puzzle with an old man, it was really odd for me but I guess that's what no alcohol and nothing else to do does to people.

Conclusion: Spain is cool to party in, but I wouldn't live there.

- Minh 'bobbingoffthecoastofafricalikeanangryhippo' Vo