Barthhhalona!

RL and I arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday evening - one ~20 hr plane ride, a 7 hour bus ride, and many time-zone-disorienting naps later. We celebrated by getting going to an Irish bar (cultural immersion, one step at a time) and watching the England vs. Ukraine Euro Cup match. I only seem to watch soccer outside of the US.

An Irish bar obviously calls for Irish car bombs. Except... the waitress had NO CLUE how to make them and instead asked me.
"Um... a cup of Guinness, one part Baileys, and one part Jameson" I responded, bartender in the making. The result:

That night RL and I wandered around, lost in the streets of the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter). Luckily we had played a detective game on the DS earlier and used our new-found observation skills to piece our way back.
"No, not down that street. There's an Adidas, I would have recognized such an iconic American brand" (we were wrong, we just didn't see the Adidas before)
"Oh, Caixia, that I recognize, let's go this way" (an extremely common bank, it turns out, but we were right this time)
"Hey, this weird chain structure... it looks familiar"
"That's because we just stumbled on the same one 2 minutes ago!"
and so on. Somehow, we found our way home.

-------

A surprise around every corner

Barcelona's many pedestrian only walkways make for an intricate maze. Businesses are forced to be smaller, confined to the buildings created back when Barcelona was its own country. Meandering, it seems, is a way of life. Somehow, throughout all of Wednesday, we managed to walk by all the places we noticed while lost on Tuesday.
The days have been relaxing. Not waking up past noon, siestas in the late afternoon and fiestas at night. We're like the even lazier versions of the typical Spaniards.


A couple more photos of what we've been up to:

Sneakily touching 2000 year old excavated wine jugs

Eating delicious Paella by the beach

Finding out that Barcelona beaches are very liberal
and rather topless (not pictured)