We woke up in our beautifully spacious red and black tent on our cozy plot, C10, of Camping Barcelona. I was actually quite surprised at how nice the facilities were. There’s a clean bathroom with a lot of showers and toilets, rows of sinks dispensing clean drinking water, a grocery store, a restaurant, and so on. Camping Barcelona has a free day bus that runs to and from Barcelona and one that does a route traveling to the Beach Club, Mataró Centro, and so on. It was a very different vacation feel than in the center of Barcelona. So much more chill!
We started the day in town, because it wasn’t quite warm enough to sunbathe. For lunch, we tried some Spanish hamburgers at a German Frankfurt place, which were prepared quite differently. The meat was a mixture of beef, pork, and spices, needing little additional seasoning or sauces, served on a long hotdog-like bun. We amused the server/cook with our curiosity of the new food and drinks.
After walking around the small town for a bit, looking at all the shops that were closed (it was siesta time), we decided to head to the beach once the sun came out. The Mediterranean was surprisingly cold. Not bone-numbingly cold like Oregonian waters, but not bath-water warm like Costa Rican waters. We spent most of our time sunbathing and just relaxing on the beach, swimming briefly once or twice. [Hacer clic to make bigger!]
Yes, European beaches are more liberal (surprising, since they dress more conservatively than Americans in the city). Some women wore thong bikinis and many wore nothing on top, especially in the older crowd or for the groups of girlfriends. There was even a girl playing an active game of topless paddleball with her novio. How different! Jo, Nat, and I tried it ourselves when lying out. No naked paddleball for us, no. We snacked on biscuits on the beach, so I began to crave milk. We bought some at a Mercado. Cartons of milk sat on the shelf in the store. Jo and I were wondering for a while whether or not the milk was real or good to drink. Later, I found out that Europeans only refrigerate their milk after opening the packaging. I enjoyed my fresh milk at the open-air café while Jo drank an espresso, and Nat tasted her first Irish coffee. Look at the amount of whiskey! Phew.
That night, we decided to head back to Barcelona again (maybe or maybe not for a certain French-speaking Swiss boy…) to go out, this time, more dressed up with dresses and heels (we wore clubby shirts and jeans last time). I wore a grey cotton drop-waist dress that hits right above the knee (I didn’t swing the Q-pac way) with Joanne’s 4-inch gladiator heels. Fitting snuggly being supposedly size 5.5, they were comfortable at first… but let’s just say they made me want to cut my feet off by the middle of the night. Natalie left her makeup/jewelry bag in the bathroom as we were getting dressed in the tent. And someone stole it. ¡Que lastima! She had over $400 worth of makeup and jewelry in that bag. :( Let’s just say she wanted to get drunk that night, starting with the hour-long bus ride there, where we pregamed with our last bottle of wine, which didn’t actually taste that bad for 3 €.
We met Swiss Boy at an Irish bar for the beginning of our bar crawl. He gave us a discount for the crawl, which included three bars and a club at the end. We started at an Irish bar, made and furnished with dark wood and decorated with Irish things like green t-shirts and Irish paintings. Drinking our complementary Heineken and rum and coke, we met three German 19-year-old girls, Anna, Domi(que), and Cata(rine), who were taking their end of high school trip in Barcelona and in other parts of Europe. Anna was the most talkative, and light blonde Domi looked very much like Bethany Jackson from Clackamas, maybe just a bit more petite (which I didn’t think was possible).
As we were heading out, Jo found a brown leather wallet on the ground where we were sitting. I found a credit card in the wallet that said Benjamin. We turned it into the bartender, who asked where we were sitting. Apparently the wallet also contained the guy’s passport, so the bartender was keen on seeking this Ben character out before he left the bar. When we joined bar-crawling group of twenty or so people, I asked if there was a Benjamin the group, because his wallet was inside. One brown-haired guy in a brown striped shirt checked his grey jacket pockets and immediately went to reclaim his wallet. When he returned, Ben gratefully told me that he owed me a drink for finding his wallet. I told him Jo found the wallet, so she should get a free drink too. Haha. We also met a group of rising sophomores from Atlanta in our group. One shaggy-haired Atlantean wasn’t drinking much that night and talked with us for quite a bit. Nat realized that two of the guys in the group crept on us at Catwalk the other night. How did she remember? Because the guys loudly yelled “Oooooh!!!” when Jo and I rejected them. Wow.
Our next bar was Espit Cupito, which is famous for its 2 € shots that are lit on fire and 4 € specialty drinks, such as the Monica Lewinksi, (served from a dildo… apparently…). We had buy one get one free shot pass here. But it was mad crowded. I ended up giving up to sit outside with Shaggy Hair Boy as Jo and Nat fought for drinks. When they finally got the bartender’s attention with the help of Swiss Boy after thirty to forty-five minutes, they took orange liquor shots that the bartender lit on fire. Next, we took free orange and vodka shots at Guru (the bar where I drank a bit too much). Ben, who’s French, was around, so I asked, “Where’re our drinks?” When I told him I wanted a mojito (hey, his passport was in that lost wallet…), he laughed and said I was expensive. He said yes only on the condition that I dance with him. I said I would allow him one dance, which is a generous offer, seeing that I could have stolen all his cash and bought my friends and myself drinks with that instead. So we went to the main bar. Ben bought Nat and me mojitos and Jo a sex on the beach.
As we walked to the last club, Ben told me that he was in Barcelona with some friends from Genova, where he works (he’s originally from France). He got his MBA in Maine, where he practiced most of his English, Yikes, I don’t even want to know how old he was… Apparently, one (or maybe it was three?) of his friends works as a buyer for Always for Europe, Africa, and Asia. I was confused at first, until Ben said that his friend tests and decides what material to buy for “the part that touches the woman’s body.” And then I realized he was talking about the feminine hygiene product. Hahahaha. Wtf, right? Ben said that he was working in human resources for Renault, a European car company. When I said I wasn’t familiar with it, he said that the company produces Nissan in the states. He was very determined that I had at least seen Renault cars around and that I would recognize its logo. I kept saying no, so he took my hand and led me around Plaza Catalunya, in the hopes of finding me a Renault car. He didn’t. But what a sly charmer, right? He would do that so I would walk around Barcelona while holding a French guy’s hand.
The club, City Hall, had an older crowd, mostly 20-30 year olds. The top floor had a bar and a dance floor in a dark, red wallpapered room blasting American rock music. On the lower floor, there was a much bigger bar, lounge, and dance floor with more lights with loud European dance club music with a constant, fast beat. Embarrassing moment: when I was washing my hands after peeing, a couple of ladies came over to me to speak to me in Spanish and to point at my butt. That’s then I realized that my dress was tucked into my lime green underwear. Sexy, eh? A whole bathroom of tipsy women saw my undies. No biggie. I’m here all week, Ladies.
Back on the main dance floor, Shaggy Hair Boy and friend came over to stand awkwardly by Jo and me, even though we weren’t dancing. Did they think we were going to randomly start dancing with them or something? How awk! Haha. I think they got the hint after a while (too long), because they left. Then Ben found us, and I gave him his dance. Other than being hard to dance to, European club songs apparently don’t actually end. One song blends to another. So Ben must have benefited from that dealio. I think the Atlantean boys walked by at one point. Pobrecitos. I left to find Jo, who had escaped from Ben’s friend who was too gropey on the dance floor (Nat was with Swiss Boy at this point). We were both pretty tired and decided to catch the night bus back to Camping Barcelona. When I went to say bye to Ben, he said it was too early for us to leave at 4:00. Too bad.
Before getting on the bus, which took us forever to find, since it wasn’t directly on Plaza Catalunya, we went to La Rambla to look for some drunk food for Jo. I was still trotting around in great pain in those 4-inch heels, but Jo had already given over to wandering down La Rambla barefoot in search of 1 € simosas (ones that Stevie had said were quite questionable in their ingredients and in their freshness).
When we were on the N82, we kept a lookout for Camping Barcelona to come up as the propa parada on the screen in the front of the bus, but it never did. We talked on and on about dreams, scary movies, and childhood memories. Before we knew it, Jo and I were the only two left on the bus when it came to the last stop. We explained to the driver that we needed to go to Camping Barcelona and didn’t know that we had already passed by the stop. The bus driver told us we should have asked him or told him to say something, Jo and I were both worried that we were stranded here in this other town east of Mataró. But the bus driver was nice enough to drive us back to our stop, three towns away, provided that we pay another bus fare. On the way to the campground, Jo and I found out that we both slept in the same exact bed when we were little: a red, metal bunk bed with a queen-sized mattress on the bottom and a twin on top. How cool is that? Staying up and talking until 7 in the morning, we found it difficult to fall asleep to the noise of the morning birds.
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