Screw the weather, I'm going exploring anyways...

Alright, so no video today. I'm kinda tired and would just rather type, so I hope you don't mind. Despite the awesome city I'm in, I kind of have to admit that the weather really sucks. It's raining constantly either somewhat soft or really hard. It made walking around less fun, but I did it anyways.

One of our TA's, Blacki, came on this trip last summer and basically never left the city, so he knows it incredibly well (and had a g/f here, if I remember correctly). He offered to give us a small tour of somewhere cool in the city around 11 this morning, so I decided to join him. First thing he did was take us to this relatively large comic book shop that apparently translates all the english comics that go to Latin America. It was pretty cool, but not my thing. Before moving on, we had a snack at the bar next door (croquettas and cafe con leche at a bar...I can get used to that). We then went through the Gothic neighborhood of the city next to Las Ramblas. It was a really cool area, and I expect I'll be back through there at some point.

We went down through there to the coast and then back up Las Ramblas to Plaza Catalunya, with him showing us different shops he had been to along the way. After that, most of us went our separate ways, but Blacki, Carolyn and I stopped by a sporting goods store and then this restaurant called Pasta Fiore, which was really good and fast Italian food. We hung out there while waiting for the rain to let up a little then came back home.

After that, Michael, Carolyn and I went back to look for the Bicing office. Bicing is a system of bike rentals where you can rent a bike from any of their many locations, ride it wherever, and drop the bike off at the nearest station, all of which is unmanned. After some wandering, we finally found it, and it was closed for the weekend...

Until this point, I didn't have an umbrella. Somehow, I never got around to simply buying a cheap one. After finding the closed Bicing office, I said to myself "I'm buying one at the first tourist shop I see". Sure enough, found a good one and bought it. From there, we went looking for the US Consulate up by the University.

It was quite a walk, with no subway, and we hadn't yet realized that our metro passes were also good for the bus, so we walked all the way up there to a closed US Embassy. We definitely took the bus back to the metro. The funny part was that the station we went to, Maria Cristina, had the biggest vending machine I've ever seen. It was, quite literally, a wall. End to end. I promise I'll swing through there again and get a picture.

Actually, I promise to start taking pictures period. I haven't had my camera with me the last couple of days, because I wanna get myself situated a little bit before acting like that much of a tourist. But they will go up by Monday, since I'm definitely taking pictures at the Barca game.

That's all I've got for now. More stories when I have time to tell them!

-Gaby