Now Travelling Really Begins

Just when I was getting used to things ...

It´s my last night in Barcelona. Man, when I got here almost six nights ago, I didin´t know how I was going to cope, and I wasn´t sure how comfy I´d be with how different everything is ...

Like, how an hour feels much longer in Spain than in Canada. As the Madonna song says, "Time goes by so slowly." (Well, I guess not, since I´m leaving here.)

... Or how much noisier things have been around here ... and how I´m finally sleeping through a lot of it. (And I´m a light sleeper.)

... Or how chaotic it is to cross the street. You think pedestrians and drivers don´t pay attention to traffic lights in Toronto? Try narrow streets here. It´s guesswork - or a game of chicken.

... Or how rich the food is here. It´s so good ... but I don´t think I´ve seen anything vegetable-like in anything I´ve eaten in almost a week. The closest I got was maybe a couple bite-fuls of lettuce from tapas yesterday afternoon, and the spinach in my rolled chicken sandwich today. (Somehow, I suspect I will be gaining weight on this trip instead of losing it :) .)

... Or seeing old Spanish couples hold hands as they cross the crosswalks or walk down the street.

... Or listening to people to speak to other people in Catalan. Or Spanish. Or Italian. Or German. Or any other language we can think of.

... Or just weird it can be, in a city with just under 2 million people - and, it seems, millions more tourists - that you can sometimes run into the same people. It happened two days ago at the Picasso gallery, when I ran into the Canadian girl I met at the airport in Paris on the way here. I ended up walking down near the water with her that afternoon, eating dinner, and then going clubbing with a handful of her hostel-mates. (There was a drinking game and some piggyback rides involved, but that´s another post.)

And it happened again outside La Sagrada Familia, when I ran into a couple of guys from San Francisco, who were on the same Picasso walk as me the day before. We decided to hang out and tackle Parc Guell together. And it made such a phenomenal landmark that much enjoyable.

I don´t think I saw as much as I thought I was going to. But that´s okay. What I did see was good.

A few weeks back I read that, somewhere, there´s a fountain in Barcelona, and if you drink from it, that means you´ll return. But I didn´t get near it to know that I want to come back ... hopefully with more Spanish, at least one other person around, and way more gusto to see other sights and maybe meet more people.

But I should go for now. There´s this tapas bar somewhere on Passeig de Gracia that I want to attempt to find and eat at before I have to head back to my room to pack for tomorrow.