It Started With the Shawarma...and It Was Uphill from There

It's me. Nicole. AND I LOVE BARCELONA! Mostly, I love Spain. Period. I keep going all these places thinking that I am so devastated to leave and "how can I ever love the next place as much as this".....but I tell you what. It just keeps getting better. Yesterday, we went to the street market in Galway in the morning and got the BEST donuts I have ever had. Kendall and Riley bought some rings, and we just soaked in the Irish hippy vibes. I love the street performers in Galway and the markets smell like fresh pesto and sundried tomatoes. My favorite things. Then we took a super long bus ride (as usual) to get to the middle of nowhere airport decades early (as usual). We honestly haven't ever gotten so sassy and upset on the whole trip as we did at the Knock Ireland West airport. As we've said before...you don't want to see any of us hungry (especially Avery)...it's not a pretty sight. When we got to the airport, they wouldn't let us check in. Then they made us pay a 10 Euro fee to be in the airport....whaat??? The poor sweet old Irish woman who had to be the messenger in that situation. None of us held back our feelings on that matter. She was probably scared out of her wits. We were livid. And hungry. Which is probably why we were livid, really. Then we got to the "food court" (if you could call it such a thing) and found nothing but candy (which we had made ourselves sick from already), old fish n' chips that cost 13 Euro and had been sitting out all day, short bread cookies, and Pringles. Well...we decided we really need to be healthy and cut back on the sugar...so naturally, the 2 for 5 Euro Pringles were the only option. So healthy. I honestly made myself sick. The donuts for breakfast, box of Irish mint truffles and 2 cans of Pringles made us all feel even more miserable and disgusting. Live and learn. Avery and I had a wonderful plane ride, filled with girl talk and naps. For Kendall and Riley, it was the "most miserable experience of their lives." Here's Kendall's interjection:

"Alright...Kendall here now. The plane ride was pleasant enough when we first sat down...but after about 30 minutes or so...the true colors of the plane began to show.. Literally. The entire plane is bright blue and yellow so bright that it hurt my eyes. The plane kept dropping and raising really fast so my stomach kept dropping and i'd fly out of my seat, or i would be plastered into the seat with no choice but to feel the plane rising and me sink deep into the seat with my neck drooping! Why oh why were babies surrounding my exact seat?! Kicking, crying, laughing (more of a creepy cackle like he had just put a worm down his sisters pants!) I was relieved to find Riley's face portraying an equal level of being disturbed as me! Then, here I am searching for any extra morsel of space to extend my legs! These suckers have got to stretch and being cramped into a tiny ball like i realized i was was not going to work! I was inches away from either stretching my legs by exteding them over riley and having my feet resting on the stranger next to us, or putting my feet straight up on Nicole's chair in front of me! "GET ME OFF OF THIS FLIGHT" was all i could think! Luckily, we got off and regained our sanity, but it was questionable there for a while... here's Nicole again"

Alright she's right. It's me. Nicole again. After the flight, which landed in Girona, Spain (ryanair lies and tells us it's barcelona. There is an hour difference. Never listen to Ryanair), we were lucky enough to hop right on the bus to Barcelona! The bus ride was beautiful! Just woods and the sunset and the old Spanish architecture...lovely lovely lovely. That night, we took the Metro from the bus station and then found our way to good old Chris Hardy's apartment! We were wearing all of our sweaters and whatnot for the Irish breeze, and then landed right in the middle of what felt like the Sahara Desert! By the time we got to the apartment, we were DRIPPING (not an exaggeration. Actually dripping) in sweat. Our dogs were barking, and our backpacks were being dragged on the ground. But after talking to Chris, we learned that Barcelona hadn't even reached dinner time yet. Dinner typically starts at 10:00 pm or so and then the clubs and stuff open around 1:00 am or 2:00am and people stay out until around 5:00am and then sleep all through the morning. Hm. He also said that Barcelona is not a place to sleep. We can catch up on sleep later, but we've gotta live it up while we are here. OKAY! We were ready to conquer the world. We got "dolled up" (aka switched out of our hiking shoes and sweats into tivas and shorts...you think I'm kidding)...for a Lebanese dinner. We were laughing hysterically at ourselves the whole time we walked over there, because 1) we got all dressed up and ready for a night on the town, just to go to a hole in the wall, empty Lebanese food place that is about as classy as "Chipotle." and 2) That these outfits were our idea of getting dressed up! We were pathetic. The food was SO good though. We couldn't read anything on the menu (it was all in Catalan...not to mention we probably couldn't read it if we were in America either...we aren't all too familiar with Lebanese foods). We got Shawarma and Felafel and some other thing we couldn't pronounce, and it was all DIVINE. We knew that this food was the first good omen for the rest of our trip. And we were right. After dinner, we started our horrible habit/ beautiful tradition of stopping by the 24 hr market down the street to buy ice cream bars. We went onto the paseo to eat them, relish in the warm breeze, lie on the sidewalk and dance in the street. We waited until midnight to sing Happy Birthday to our dear Avery, and then, after realizing that we were dead tired, we decided that "dressing up" for dinner was enough craziness for one night. What a shame we are to the Barcelona nightlife.

The next morning- AVERY'S BIRTHDAY and Mother's Day- we woke up and walked to church with the Hardys. At church, right when Kendall and Riley sat down, an Elder turned around and blatantly WINKED right at them. Maybe the rules of the mission are different with different cultures? Maybe that's normal here? They looked so confused and were talking about how weird it was for the next hour, until right after sacrament meeting he came up and apologized for the misunderstanding. He was trying to wink at the man sitting behind them who was getting confirmed that day. It was pretty classic at the time. But church was amazing! Most of the members are immigrants from South America and have really hard lives trying to earn money here for their families back at home. I loved hearing their stories and their testimonies. I learned so much from them, and from just talking to Emily Hardy that day...it was just epiphany after epiphany and I had the chills the whole time.

After church, we went to Parc de la Ciutadella. It is Barcelona's most central park, but it is absolutely beautiful. We walked around and rowed in little boats in the pond and explored the pathways, buildings, greenhouses, and statues all over the park. Then we walked over through the Gothic Quarter and loved their narrow cobblestone streets and the vibes in that part of town. We found a little pizza shop that had really delicious calzones with mushrooms and meat in them and ate outside in the sunshine. It was glorious! Then we walked down to the shore and listened to street performers playing Andean music and got ice cream and walked around the street markets. Then we found a grassy knoll by the ocean and lied on eachother's stomachs to take a nap. Again, glorious. After our rest, we walked down Las Ramblas (extremely touristy, not much to see) and over to the main square where there were floods of protestors and hippies rallying together. We finally walked home where we played with Jane and Alyse and got ready for the dinner that Emily made. It was incredible! Pasta with sundried tomatoes, parsley, fresh parmesan, cherry tomatoes and then pineapple and bread...we inhaled that dinner so fast, it was not anything short of disturbing. That poor family had probably never seen such a sight. But we loved getting to know them better and just talking with them. They are amazing, amazing people with the coolest lives! Then, Emily brought out the chocolate that changed Kendall's life. For good. She honestly hasn't been the same since. It was just the dark chocolate Valor bar with almonds that they sell at a lot of convenience stores here (which I know because Kendall honestly has us go into EVERY one in search of these things), but it is so good! We stuffed ourselves silly. After dinner, we had a lot of down time before we slipped on dresses and went out on the town! (Around 1:00? Which is early for these people). We walked to the Mojito salsa club to celebrate Avery's birthday (an hour late, I know). It was the funnest night ever. At one point in the night, I look over to see: Avery: flowing dress, whipping hair, having the time of her life while a crazy weirdo in a sweater vest and too much hair gel shimmies and makes the most animated faces I have ever seen, Kendall: dancing with a short, stalky, spiky haired, stone-faced, 45 year old Salsa sensation from Ecuador who doesn't even seem to be paying attention, but manages to whip, dip, spin, and twirl Kendall until her feet can't even touch the ground, and Riley: laughing herself to tears, literally and uncontrollably, while a ridiculously sweaty and spastic 5'3" man dances around her at the speed of light and keeps accidentally touching his dripping, bald head to her underarm, somehow. I was dying. This whole scene was too funny. Though we were having the time of our lives, we looked like the biggest noobs compared to the sexy Spanish women who all were professional dancers and wore high heels and red lipstick. We stuck out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, we decided to end on a strange note when the weirdo who had been dancing with Avery, kept sticking out his tongue (not in a trying to be gross or sexy way, but in a "nee-ner-nee-ner-nee-ner" pesty little brother way) at us while he'd dance with Riley...and then he just paused with the music, looked at her, and bit her arm. What??? It was just too awkward. Hilarious. But too much to handle! Regardless, I think it is safe to say, we will never forget that night and honestly had the time of our lives. Sorry for the ridiculously long post. Whoops! That's all for now! I love Barcelona. I love it here, and never want to leave! I think I've gotta live here some day.