Barcelona: Where mullets are more common than street signs

So Tiina (my sister) and I are now in Spain! Woo! We both have travel blogs, so most of the posts will be the same. But we flew separately so here´s my bit before Tiina met me in Barcelona.

I flew via Tallinn (and Helsinki and Riga) to Barcelona. There was a man on my flight to Estonia who hadn´t been back in 63 years! He was pretty excited. Walking around in Tallinn was strange, since I haven´t been in 5 years, so a fair bit has changed, but it´s still the same.

Arriving in Barcelona, I wandered around the Gothic quarter (old town) by our hostel for a while. I spent an hour looking for a supermarket, before I found one in the basement of the department store in front of which the airport bus had dropped me off originally.

0.65 Euros = about $1 (from a fruit market, not the department store)

[Now our joint bit]

Lost? Or maybe something else is under renovations...

Why was Maarika lost? Because streets are really poorly marked in Barcelona (and so far the rest of Spain too, but we´re getting used to it). Also, in the Gothic Quarter, there is no grid system, at all.. so you think you´re going one direction but you´re going in totally the opposite. Anyway, we eventually made our way to the bus station where we spent an hour trying to get bus passes. This was very hard because the forms were in Spanish, which we do not speak, and no one spoke English. Of course, we had forgotten our dictionary (and map). Anyway, it eventually worked out (although we had to return the next morning to fix our passes).

Standard Gaudi, Casa Batllo window

On Friday, we saw the Arc Triomph and Eixample, the area with lots of modernista architecture, such as the famous Gaudi buildings. There were so many tourists! Also, a lot of things were under construction, for example, the Sagrada Familia cathedral. But it was still neat! We also wandered around the Gothic Quarter and Las Ramblas, then down to the port where we walked along the boardwalk. Tiina told Maarika she saw a man riding a bike naked, which Maarika did not believe until she turned around and saw him herself. Tiina often sees unusual things that Maarika has a hard time believing. (We also saw tons of mullets. Apparently, they´re really cool...?) Tiina was in charge of navigating on Friday, and we didn´t get nearly as lost. Ironically, Maarika is usually the navigator while, for the most part, Tiina lacks all sense of direction (in her own words).

Arc de Triomph