Parc del Laberint d'Horta, Sardinillas Vinegreta y Mejilliones a la marinera tomate

After being lazy on Sunday morning, we decided to do something with our day so we talked with our friends and made an awesome decision to visit the Parc del Laberint d'Horta or The Labyrinth Park of Horta. We did a little bit of research about it before we went and it was described as a hidden gem of Barcelona since it is not located in the immediate Barcelona area. It took about 30 minutes on the metro and it was definitely worth the trip. It is normally 2 euros, but is free on Wednesdays and Sundays!

The park was built in the 1700s and was an area for  the elite social class to gather and have festivals. It is one of the oldest parks in Barcelona. The park is laid out in a very cool design. It is built in three sections with each section leading you up higher and higher up the mountain. The Labyrinth garden is probably the coolest part of the gardens. It is a hedge maze! When we first saw it, we laughed at it thinking that it would be a breeze. It looked smaller than we pictured and not much of a challenge. Our friend from Iowa said that she had seen much more difficult corn mazes in her home town. However, it proved to be a worthy challenge. It took us about 20 minutes just to get to the center and at one point we thought we were going to have to go back out of the entrance and walk around. We eventually made it to the center, which had a marble statue of Eros, the Greek god of love. You then have to find yourself out of the center part which took another five minutes (for our group, the other group got lost and had to come out the entrance haha). We explored the rest of the park which has several fountains, a canal, and some neat side gardens. The park is made up of two gardens- the Neoclassical Garden (the one with the labyrinth) and the Romantic Garden.

Group shot with Krista (from Iowa), Rob, Erin, and Beate (from Germany).

 Entrance to the Labyrinth

View of the Labyrinth from above

Fountain that comes from the natural flow of water down the mountain.

Inside the "easy" hedge maze.

 View of the Labyrinth from the staircase leading further up the mountain to more gardens.

Canal that runs through the second level of the park. 

Top tier garden with this sculpture dedicated to art and nature. 

View from the entrance of the park.

We plan on making a return trip during the summer when there will be more flowers and color in the park. We had lots of fun from this unexpected visit to the gardens, but our day did not end there. We decided to go grab some tapas and a couple drinks with our friends. After walking around for about 30 minutes and not finding  the bar and cafe that our new friend Peter wanted to take us, we found another one with an outside sitting area. Beers were only 1 euro and the tapas weren't more than 5 euros. We decided that it would be easiest to order a bunch of different types and pass them around to share. We are glad we did it this way, but I think if we knew what our friends were going to order, we may have thought differently. We ended up getting  4 plates of patates braves (which are the most common and delicious tapas), Russian potato salad, croquetas (which are usually deep fried bread balls filled with cheese and a type of meet or fish and you don't really know what it will be until they bring it out...ours had tuna) blood sausage on bread, mussels, and sardines (both pickled and fried). They brought all of it out in waves, which made it a lot of fun to see each one and gave us all a chance to try all of it. 

We both liked almost everything. The seafood is so fresh and delicious that once we of got over the look of it, we enjoyed both the sardines and mussels. Rob loved the mussels and Erin really liked the deep fried sardines (skin, tail, head, bones and all). They eat these like french fries. We even liked the pickled sardines. It was so nice to have some friends around to try these new dishes because I am not sure we would have been brave enough to order them on our own. Sorry we do not have any pictures of any of the food, but I am sure we will be ordering more of everything we got! 

Barcelonians are crazy!

So we haven't posted in a little while. This is due to two things: 1.) We have been pretty busy. It's a lot of work going to buy groceries every other day, working 6-8 hours a week, and hanging out with friends almost every night. (please note the sarcasm) and 2.) Barcelona never sleeps.. well except the siesta during the day which is still very common and popular for those of you who have been asking us about the siesta. Most people here close up their shops/businesses around 1/2 PM to go grocery shopping, eat a large lunch with the family, and take a little siesta (nap), then go back to work around 4/5 PM and close around 7/8 PM. Since working people don't get home until around 9 PM, families eat a light dinner around 9:30/10 PM. When they finish around 11/11:30 PM, most people just then start to go out to meet up with friends for a beer or a night time café (very popular to do this). And, apparently Friday and Saturday are not the only days to go out here. It is very common to go out every night here. Most restaurants are open until about 2 in the morning and you see people sitting with friends on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... night. So as we've been trying to adjust to a "normal" sleeping schedule from the jet lag and time difference, we've been trying to live the "Barcelona" lifestyle, which, like we said, basically means you don't sleep. So on a Sunday or weekday, it is common to go out until about 2 AM. Weekends are another story. You don't meet up with your friends until about 12/1 in the morning and then you go to the bars/clubs around 2/3 in the morning and stay out until about 6/7 in the morning. CRAZY. 

So we went out Friday and Saturday with our friends and we were out until about 5:30 in the morning both nights. Had a lot of fun.

Sunday night, we went to a really cool Irish bar to watch the 49ers/Ravens game. The bar was huge and full of Americans. It was kind of cool and kind of annoying. Felt like being back at home for a night. Here's a pic of the bar from up top where we were. Yes, there was karoke going on downstairs- if you can see the lyrics someone was singing a lovely version of Diana Ross' I Will Survive. :) Craziness. All on a Sunday night around midnight.

Monday night is trivia night. So we went to trivia with our friends at yet another Irish pub. Trivia starts at 11:15 PM. Needless to say, we stay out until about 2-3 AM easily. We won last week, but lost our strongest team member this week and we got second place by 2 points :/ Still fun.

Tuesday night we went out for a friend's birthday and had a few drinks at a local  bar called Kulas. Out until about 3:30 AM. Took it easy Wednesday and Thursday and getting to start the cycle again tonight! As much as this sounds like going out and partying, it's more than that here. It's a culture that respects family and friendships and caring more about sitting and talking with people than watching TV, playing video games, going on facebook, playing on the latest electronic, etc. It's a much simpler life. You don't see anyone glued to their iPads or a lot of consumerism. People are content with just living life- eating delicious, fresh healthy food, being with family, and going out with friends. It's refreshing to see and one of the reasons we wanted to move here.
 
Another thing we have learned since moving here is that Barcelona is like a melting pot of people. There are people from all over the world who live in Barcelona and call it home. We have met friends from Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, the United States, Vietnam, Brazil, Holland, Nigeria and we've only been here three weeks. It makes us feel a little less like outsiders. Still practicing our Spanish so we can order at the local market though...

We took some pictures of our apartment. Erin has an album on her facebook too if you want to check those out. It's small, but we really like it. It feels very "homey." It came fully furnished and painted which was a huge plus for us!

View from the door

The Kitchen

 Main Room with Balcony

 Main Room

Bedroom with another Balcony!

 

View of the Mediterranean Sea from our rooftop terrace! 

Vacation is over...time to work?

 If we want to stay in Spain for a full year, I guess we need to work. It has been nice not working every day and just exploring and taking in the city. But, we have been looking for jobs since we first got here and our luck is starting to turn good. Erin interviewed for a teaching position last week and was hired. She is teaching two classes, two hours a night, four nights a week. She had her first class last week and was actually hired two hours before the class started. So far she likes it. She is teaching adults English. Rob was able to find a tutoring job. He is tutoring a first grader in math and science two hours a day, three times a week. We are both enjoying it, but hoping that we find some more work.

We have made some English speaking friends. Erin teaches with a girl who lived in San Francisco for 16 years, but is originally from Germany. We went out with her and some other English speakers on Monday. Went to a local Irish pub where they had trivia! We played with Erin's friend, a girl from Iowa, a guy from Ireland, and another guy from Australia. It was so much fun! Mostly because we got to speak English all night, but also because we won!! The prize was a case (24 bottles) of San Miguel. Definitely a solid trivia prize! We plan on this being our Monday night go to spot. It's only a couple minutes walk away.

We have settled in to our apartment and will post pictures soon. While we both know that it has been extremely cold back at home, we have not been as warm as we thought we were going to be here. It's like mid 50's, low 60's during the day which is fine, but it drops down to 40 at night and its a chilly 40. We are fairly certain that they have no idea of what insulation is. Our apartment is so cold! Many days we will step outside and it will feel about 10 degrees warmer than what it was in our apartment. From what everyone says, the cold only lasts the month of January so not too much longer hopefully. It is especially annoying since we hang dry our clothes. Everyone has clothes lines either out on their balcony or on their rooftop terrace. No one really uses a dryer here. (You can see everyone's clothes hanging outside on their balconies everywhere you go.) We do have a dryer, but it only took one try to realize that it does not work well.

Other than that, we've just been enjoying having a kitchen to cook fresh food and a TV to watch the FC Barcelona games :) 

Let's Get Real

Okay, so our past couple posts have just talked about how awesome the city is and how much fun we're having. While all of that is true, it has been a rough first week. The hostel room we were staying in for the first three nights was smaller than a fourth of the size of an average house room. It had a mini double bed, a built in the wall desk no wider than a book, and a sink. So picture that room with four giant suitcases, a roll up size carry on bag, and two giant stuffed backpacks. To get out of our "room" you literally had to climb over the bed to the door. And no bathroom, that was down the hall with the shower. The shower is another story. There was nothing to hold the shower head so I guess we were supposed to take military showers? (military shower is when you turn the water on, get wet, turn the water off, wash, turn water on, rinse, off, repeat.) Takes forever and SO cold! No complaints because we were just so happy to be here, but we didn't sleep at night at all. We would get tired around 9-10 PM and pass out for about 3 hours (2 PM in the states) so basically took a long power nap. Then we would be up from 1-7 AM. Then of course when we needed to get up at 7 AM, we were ready for bed considering it would be midnight at home. We are still getting used to the time change. So we've really had like no sleep since we've been here and surprisingly no coffee. Their coffee (café) is straight caffeine. It is really thick and tastes like Starbucks on crack cocaine. (Rob likes it. Although the one time he did have it, he could not stop talking or moving.) On top of all of the amazing walks and culture absorption, we've been really stressed out about finding an apartment and getting those things called jobs.

Finding an apartment here has been difficult. Every ad is in Spanish or Catalan and many postings are scams. We have contacted over 25 people and agencies, and heard back from a few scams and agents. We almost fell for a few scams of renter's renting their place "out of the country for work." There really isn't such a thing as renting straight from an owner. Here, they have agents that show the apartment and go through the details of renting the apartment. They charge an agency fee of one month's rent! (Around $1,000-$1,200 USD) We don't mind being confused ordering and asking questions to get around and what not, but we thought signing an apartment lease is something a little more important to speak with someone fluent in English. I guess we got kind of lucky and found an agent from Britain who spoke perfect English :) She showed us a flat in Barceloneta (a neighborhood within Barcelona). She showed us two different flats, one slightly bigger than the second and up two more floors. We had a really good feeling about the second place, and after thinking and talking about it for a day, we both decided it was an awesome location and good place for the cost. For those of you who don't know where Barceloneta is, google search it... we're beach side :) Right on the Mediterranean Sea :P It's awesome! There is a really nice bike/running path for us, obviously the beach, fresh seafood, and Barcelona is such a compact city that we still can get up to the top of Barcelona in 20 minutes by bus or train. Their metro and bus system is super advanced and goes all through out Barca. There are literally like a million different stops and buses; it's crazy to even try and figure out.

There is a fresh market two blocks away where you buy your groceries daily (fresh meat, fish, ham (really popular here), eggs, bread, fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices, ect.) Everything is in its own section so that the smells don't mix. The fresh markets are so cool- it is only fresh products and whatever is not sold daily gets thrown out at night or given to the homeless (haven't seen too many of them). La Boqueria is the most famous market on La Rambla.  Here are some pictures offline of La Boqueria to give you an idea. We'll take pictures when we go there tomorrow. The first shows the fresh seafood/fish side. The second shows the fresh meat side (a bit scary for us still) and the last shows the fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, spices. The eggs and bread are in its own section as well.

They also have sections of fresh candies, chocolates, ect. We will start grocery shopping tomorrow! Since we are on the top floor, we get the rooftop terrace, which will be awesome in the summer time! All buildings are around the same size height wise here which is really cool because the view from our apartment and especially rooftop terrace, you can see the whole city in both directions! The only down side to our apartment is the tiny stairway going up, up, and upppp. We are on the fourth floor. The Spanish think they are clever or funny and really it means the fifth floor. (There are a flight of stairs on the first floor just to get to the first floor apartments.) So, we get to walk up 98 stairs everyday. Erin counted as we (Rob) were lugging up four giant suitcases, a roll carry on, and two giant stuffed backpacks (Erin). But, we don't mind... it will keep us in shape...says Erin for Rob ;).


So we officially have a place to live!! We will post pictures as soon as we're done packing!

La Sagrada Familia

**We added a link on the left hand side where you can give your email address and it will let you know when we have made a post**

Yesterday we went on another walking adventure. We followed directions to an address of an apartment that we found on Craigslist. It was an extremely nice neighborhood, but we now believe that it was to good to be true and was a scam posting. They are pretty easy to tell since we now know what the average prices are around Barcelona for an apartment. From there we walked and walked and walked, until we found the La Sagrada Familia. This is Barcelona's most famous cathedral, which is still not complete. We will post more info about it when we are actually able to take the tour, but what we do know is that it was originally designed to be a much smaller building. Guadi, the famous Barcelonian architect, took over the design a year after its construction began and greatly changed its design. His ideas were so massive that he knew that its construction would take several generations. In order for each generation to know exactly how he envisioned it, he made sure that one side was completely finished. This is very easy to tell when you look coloration of the old brick on the completed sided versus the rest of it that is still being built.

We got upgraded at our hostel. We now have a balcony and shower in the room for no extra cost. It is very nice and more spacious for all of our stuff. We think it is because we are one of the very few occupants of the hostel right now. It has been very, very quiet. We were exhausted after our walk so we took a quick nap and set our alarms so that we would not oversleep...Barcelona FC played at seven!!! Our new favorite futbol team :) The whole city lives and breathes this team, so we are excited to root for them too! We watched the first half at an Irish Pub and the second half at an authentic Spanish cafe. We had Estrella Damm (their local beer) which is delicious!! Barca won in a blowout, 4-0. We are having a great time and loving all of these new experiences.

Hola Arc de Triomf

So yesterday was another eventful day in Barca. After waking up at 2 PM, which was very difficult considering the time change our bodies have been through the past four days, we decided to walk around the city. We were caught up with the old architecture of the buildings and all the store fronts that have fresh bakery goods and sandwiches that we didn't even realize we were a couple miles away from our hostal and right in front of the Arc de Triomf!! It was awesome! So big and old, full of detail. It was very cool. The most famous Arc de Triomf is located in Paris, but there are several other famous Arc de Triomf's in Barcelona, London, and one in Romania. This beautiful arch was built for the 1888 Universal Exposition, which took place at the Parc de la Ciutadella.The Arc de Triomf was situated at the end of a wide promenade and served as the exposition's main entrance. It stands out from Paris' Arc de Triomphe with its colorful architecture and designs. We stopped to take a picture and then went back.

We met up with my friend Patricia who goes to DePaul and is from Barcelona. She helped us out a ton. She got us a cell phone in about 10 minutes, which probably would've taken us an hour. She showed us around a little bit, too. It was busy around Barcelona because tomorrow is El Tres Reyes (Three Kings Day) which is a bigger celebration than Christmas for them. They open up their presents today and in honor of the holiday, there was a huge parade at night! It lasted over an hour, full of floats, balloons, people, and music. The parade passed right by our hostal (our hostal is very centrally located in the city). We took a ton of pictures from the parade that we'll post to facebook, but here are a couple of cool ones.

 

Patricia also showed us the Supermercado where everyone goes to buy groceries (like a Dominick's back home) and she also showed us the local fresh market on La Rambla. La Rambla is the most popular, touristy street in Barca. La Rambla is a cool street in itself, but the market is incredible. There are just stands and stands of fresh fruit and vegetables in one area, fresh fish and seafood in another, eggs breads and spices. Almost everything you need is there and it is all fresh. Can't wait to have a place to live and shop to get groceries like this :)  

Day 1 - Culture Shock

We made it to Barcelona!! It only took 2 days and a sleep over at Heathrow Airport in London, but we made it. It has been a long few days and as soon as we touched down in our hostel, we slept for a solid 8 hours. We certainly had our interesting experiences with getting here though.

The first 'fun' experience was getting through Heathrow Airport. We did not realize that it closed down at night and our flight was the last one to land. We got in at 11pm and were stuck sleeping in a lounge area. It was extremely uncomfortable and neither of us were really able to sleep at all. We were able to charge our phones which allowed the time to go by a little faster since we played a lot of Bejeweled. This was just half of the fun though. So as we went through customs, which was extremely easy and we were not questioned at all...did not even have to show our proof of our return trip within 3 months, the custom agent told us something about the airport reopening at 5am. We were so tired and did not really think anything of it, so when we went to find the train between terminals (since Heathrow is HUGE) we found out that they stopped running. Our flight left at 6:20am and we did not want to risk missing it. So we checked around and found out that we would be able to take a taxi to Terminal 5. When we went to find a taxi, none of them were 'on'. They were all lined up as to be waiting for the morning rush, and all the taxi drivers were sleeping in their cars. So we hesitantly walked up to the very first car and tapped on the window. He woke up and said he could take us to the correct terminal. 15 minutes later, we arrive at Terminal 5. I proceed to hand him the cab fare of 20.....Euros. Oh, that's right, the English use pounds and we do not have any since we did think we were going to buy anything there. So once the cab driver lets us know that: 1. He doesn't take Euros and 2. The English don't want anything to do with that mess... we settle on giving him 40 euros. We overpaid by a little bit but got to Terminal 5 three hours before it opened, and again waited in those extremely uncomfortable seats until the airport opened.

Six hours later, we arrived in Barcelona, Spain. It was 9:30am and we were exhausted! We make our way to customs, again nervous for no reason. We went straight through to claim our luggage. Overwhelmed by all of the new signs and excitement of actually being in Spain, we realize that we only have 2 out of our 4 pieces of luggage. We wait for the carousal to stop before panicking. Then it stops and we still only have 2 out of our 4 and of course the two that we do not have our Erin's. So Rob goes around to every single luggage carousal to see if somehow they just did not make it to ours and find nothing. We go to the "Lost Luggage" area and are able to talk with the desk. They speak English, which we were extremely thankful for! But we are here to learn and be fluent in Spanish. They notify us that the bags are being sent on the next flight and that we will get them later in the evening. Needless to say we thought it was a sign that maybe this trip was not a good idea. They luggage did come, but did not come until we got back from dinner around 11:30pm.

Now dinner was when the culture shock really hit us the hardest. It was a nice little bar and cafe close to our hostel and no one really understood English. We did our best messing up Spanish while ordering and finally settled on vino and paella con chicken (with chicken). We did not pick our the wine, but our server came back with a full bottle which we were not ready for. We sat awhile talking about how excited we are and all the work that we have to do in order to get completely settled here, i.e. jobs, apartment, food. After about 30 minutes our food comes out. It was definitely paella with chicken, but it also had oysters, clams, and full shrimp..heads, eyes, tails, legs and all. I looked at Erin and thought she was going to cry, but surprisingly, she dug right in and we ate as much as we could. Turns out that you have to specify if you do not want seafood in the paella in Barcelona, otherwise all their paella comes with it. We finished as much as we could of our paella and wine and our server asks if we want something that neither of use understand. We already paid our bill so all I figured to say was "No comprende" (I don't understand) and the server walks away. About 5 minutes later, since the Spanish really, really take their time..he comes back with a bottle and pours us two shots of a liquor de cafe which Erin says is kind of like their 'night cap drink' we sip, hoping we don't get charged and it was delicious. As we leave the server says thank you about 5 times, we say thank you back just as many and we leave feeling like our first night went very well. We spent more than expected considering the cost of the paella was double what was listed, but feel like we learned so much. I think that the Spaniards will be friendly, but we will have to adjust to their way of life and customs. We will do our best to communicate in their language and live as they do. We are so excited, but know that we will have to put a lot of work in if we want to find jobs and an apartment so that we will stay the full year that we hope for.