Barcelona: Day 2

Day two began with a run through Montjuic Park. Along the way we passed a castle, a grand museum, and a giant inflated bottle of Estrella Damm.

A much-needed rest doubled as a photo op after a grueling uphill stretch

Montjuic castle from the outside

When in Europe, wear short shorts

View of the shipyard/pier from the top of Montjuic hill

My true love and me

My other true love and me

After lunch and some freshening up, we headed towards Park Guell, another one of Gaudi's (and by association, the city's) most prized works. When we stepped out of the Airbnb the streets of Las Ramblas were insanely crowded, even more so than yesterday. Languid tourists, fast-paced locals, street entertainers showing off in every direction, all bustling to and fro. I blinked; Barcelona suddenly felt a lot like Manhattan.

On the stairs descending into the subway, the crowd separated me from the boy for a moment. Shoulder-to-shoulder, looking down, all rushing into the underground. I briefly made eye contact with a man to my side when my crossbody bag got jostled. In that moment I thought nothing of it.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped at the kiosks to buy tickets for the subway. By this time the crowds had thinned out. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the same man who'd been next to me was at the bottom of the stairs. Slowly, nonchalantly, he started to head back up. This was mildly puzzling; who heads down into the subway only to go back up?

Then the thought entered my head. Could it be true? I didn't want to believe it.

I fumbled and unzipped my bag. Phone, yes. Water bottle, yes. Wallet - no. No no no. Wait Rose, before you do anything dumb, think. Did you even bring your wallet out today? I concentrated hard for a second. Yes, I definitely did. 

It all unfolded in a minute. I think my brain pretty much shut off as the adrenaline flooded in.

"That man stole my wallet! Hey! You! GIVE ME BACK MY WALLET! HEY!" I was sprinting up the stairs, yelling at the top of my lungs, the boy running as fast as he could after the perpetrator. We reached the top of the stairs; by then a large audience had formed around the subway entrance, no doubt curious about the commotion. The man was a few paces ahead of us, still sprinting, but we were catching up and the scene was drawing more and more attention. He produced my wallet from his jacket and tossed it to the ground before running off and disappearing into the crowd.

Thankfully, nothing was taken. I had heard of so many friends and family being victims to petty theft but had naively thought it would never happen to me. I was very lucky in that I recovered my wallet, but the experience left me feeling thoroughly shaken up.

Luckily, Park Guell proved to be a wonderful distraction from reality. Established in the early 1900's, Gaudi's park made La Sagrada Familia look almost normal. Fantastic colors, intricate mosiacs, and with no straight lines in sight... it was as if Gaudi had been commissioned to design this park under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

The girl who (almost) got her wallet stolen

A Rose among rocks

El drac

Gaudi's gingerbread houses

Life imitating art

Entrance to the park

Fun fact: in Chinese, one is told to say 'eggplant' to achieve the same effect as saying 'cheese' in English

Inside one of Gaudi's houses

He just blue himself.

Dinner was an affair of €1 tapas. The tapas were all lined up buffet-style at the bar. A very hungry hippo simply purveys the variety of tapas, selects them, eats them to their hearts content, and at the end settles the bill via the number of toothpicks on their plate.

It was genius. It was delicious. I gobbled up eleven of them in total.

Mini breakfast, tiny fork included.

A creme brulee to end things on a sweet note.

We capped the evening off with a stroll back to our neighborhood and a couple of beers under the night sky while a trio of musicians serenaded the square with some traditional Spanish music - a perfect way to relax after what had been a very exciting second day in Barcelona.