Oh no... I think these are the little fish?!

Once we got in to Barcelona, we walked to our hostel and got checked in. The location was amazing! The hostel itself... eh, not so much. The hostels that we stayed in before this were quite nice. We always book private rooms, so don't get the impression we are staying with creepy guys. Here we had just enough room in our room to walk in and to the bathroom. We had bunk beds with camp-like mattresses. We had to rent our towels and sheets and pillow cases. Our bathroom was big enough for one person to walk in and touch each wall. The shower knob had to be continually pushed back in because it would go off automatically after a minute or two. At least we had our own bathroom...

Once we set down our stuff we set out to find a late dinner. We knew we wanted to try paella, so we found a restaurant down the road, looked at the menu and decided to stay. It was nice, but we were oh so tired. I got seafood paella and it was yummy. Except the crawfish was whole and staring at me, so I let Katie eat it. We finished and then waited about 30 minutes for the check as usual, then we went to our humble abode and crashed.

The next morning Ash and I woke up with bites, which at the time I refused to believe were bed bugs, but now accept the fact that they probably were :( We ate breakfast in the common room which played rap at an annoyingly loud volume, then we set out for our favorite: Fat Tire Bike Tour!! YAY! I love these bike tours, even though I am too short for the bikes... even with the seat all the way down. We toured the city, saw La Sagrada Familia, and some other cool things that I don't remember off of the top of my head. Then we headed to the beach for lunch. While practicing my pro bike riding skills, a lady stepped in front of me (i have witnesses) and I swerved only to hit her a little with the handle. She yelled at me in catalan (the language they speak), and I said I was so sorry. Language barrier... oops! That was my first mishap of the day. Later when we were sitting down on the beach about to eat our spanish ham sandwiches and drink our amazing sangria, I asked Emily to take a picture of me while I 'pretend' to drink out of the pitcher of sangria. Well, my pretending didn't work out so well and the wine ended up all over my khaki shorts. Whoop! Needless to say, those were thrown away later.

After our town we made the hike up to Park Guell. One of Gaudi's creations. It was beautiful up there. The mosaics were so ornate, and the atmosphere was really fun! There was a reggae band that was really good and lots of people just hanging out. Once we were done walking around there, we rewarded ourselves with some mint chocolate chip ice cream- yummy! Then we went back to the hostel to get ready to go see the fountain of magic and get dinner.

We watched 30 minutes of the fountain changing colors and patterns a little, thought it was over and almost left when the actual show started and they added music! After we watched what we later assumed was the warm up, we were a little disappointed, but the real thing was so beautiful! When that was over, we took the metro to an area of town that our bike tour guide, JJ, suggested, to get some food. After pacing back and forth in front of this tapas restaurant he suggested, we finally decided to go in, even though we were clearly the only tourists. We ordered 6 tapas to share, things like shrimp, potato omlet, fried little fish, spinach, chicken wings, and some other meat dish. When they brought them to us, they said they didnt have shrimp or spinach, so we just decided we would deal with the 4. While Katie, Em and I listened to the waiter, Ash had already popped some food into her mouth. As the waiter walked away, she said, "Oh no, I think these are the little fish!" Right as she said this, I looked down at what initially looked like fried green beans or something, and all I saw were beady eyes. Ha! We assumed we were ordering fish sticks, not a whole fish fried. The poor girls beside us must have been so annoyed with us, because we didn't stop laughing for a long time. Then they also kept having to translate stuff for us. They were nice, though. Once she informed us that we had to go to the front to pay, we did and then made our way back home to bed... laughing more, or course!