Thursday, July 10, 2008

Montjuic and Sunset

On Saturday morning, I got up at 7am to go to classes, which was a bit tough after the (long-lasting) patriot celebration of the night before. Classes were over at lunchtime, so I headed over to Jeff's house to hang out with him. He was studying, so I grabbed my book to do some reading on the couch. I laid down, picked up my book, set it down, and fell asleep. The nap was much-needed, and when I finally woke up (a number of hours later...), I was ready for dinner.

Around 9pm, we met up with Eric, Stephanie, and Emma in the Fontana neighborhood , which Jeff's roommate, Victor, had suggested we visit. It was a really cute neighborhood - a good mix of residential areas, restaurants and stores (and almost no tourists).We had dinner at a restaurant called "SMS" which had great food. I ordered tapas - Patatas Bravas (Fried potatoes with mayonnaise and bravas sauce - kind of like ketchup), a bread with spicy guacomole and salmon, and a bread with goat cheese and ham.

After dinner, the people who hadn't taken a long nap that afternoon headed home for bed, while Jeff and I walked to Placa Catalonya to meet up with Jaisha, pausing for some cafe' on the way. Jaisha, Jeff, and I went to Placa Espanya and met up with about 40 people from our program who were headed to a "pool party" at Montjuic (we decided there was some kind of translation error there, but never bothered to fix it). We decided to head to the restroom across the street and told the people we'd catch up with them. When we got back, we headed up the mountain, enjoying the colored fountain and the various stages of free music, but couldn't find our friends.We started to head out and ran in to them coming back from another area - they had walked to a completely different area of the park, found out it had an 18 Euro cover charge, and walked all the way back - so I think we lucked out getting separated when we did.

After the park, we decided to head to a club for some dancing. The clubs don't open until midnight, and don't "really get going" until 3am, so at about 2am, we were right on time. We ended up going to "Sunset" right by the water at the end of La Rambla. It was a fun club, and I loved the Spanish music. To avoid traveling home in the dark, Jaisha and I decided to just keep dancing until it was light out, and staying at Sunset until sunrise was a pretty fun strategy.

No comments: