Third Time IS the Charm

I say third time for two reasons: it’s my third time in Barcelona, and it’s my third time traveling somewhere for/with a guy. First time in Barcelona was in ‘02 with my Rome Center friends and it was awesome! The second time...well, keep reading. First time I traveled with a guy was to northern Europe. It was fun but didn’t end so well. Second time, I met up with someone in Barcelona (!) and that didn’t end so well either. You'd think that last trip in Barcelona should've been enough to stop from ever visiting that city or wasting my time and money on a boy. I have no idea why I do this. I just do. My philosophy is: I never want to ask later on in my life “what if?”. As scary as it is, it’s better for me to know now than to wonder later what would have happened.

So to Barcelona I go to see Francisco, the guy I went on a date with right before I went home. We've kept in contact since then and have become friends. He invited me to Barcelona so I said, por que no? And it actually turned out well this time this time around…whew! He picked me up from the airport and the first thing I say is, I have a hangover. Cute, really cute. He took me to his newly opened bar and met his brother and sister and some friends. The bar was muy chulo (cool) and had amazing tapas! After, we go to a little beach town outside of Barcelona and stayed at this nice hotel full of retired Germans and Brits.

The next day, after a nice relaxing morning in the pool, we met up with his brother and his wife and newborn baby, and the bar’s chef to check out wine and cava at a bodega called, Gramona. It was awesome. The bodega guy, who was giving us a tour/promoting the wine, was speaking Catalan. Francisco had to nicely ask him to speak Castellano so I could understand. Well that didn’t even matter because the guy was speaking so fast. I didn’t care anyway because in the end, we got to taste the wine. I did feel like a dumbass though because these guys were obviously very knowledgeable in all things wine and cava. I just sat there swirling and smelling like I could tell the difference. They, on the other hand, were all describing the color and bubbles and freshness (which I enjoyed watching/listening to). All I could say was, "Si, me gusta mucho!". In the end, I just got all red and had no real concrete opinion on any of them. This was also the first time I've ever sat on a Spanish "business meeting". I’m not sure if this is the case in all Spanish businesses, but they were all informally formal with each other. I don’t’ how to explain it but I just heard them say “de puta madre” a lot! The expression means awesome, cool, great, but literally, it means of your whore mother! Gotta love the Spaniards!

After the bodega, we went and had a nice lunch and they made me try goat and lamb, which actually wasn't so bad. The goat was surprisingly pretty tasty. Then we drove back to Barcelona and Francisco took me to a bar located on top of a little mountain. It was so cool. I’ve definitely never seen all of Barcelona from above. Francisco kept joking that he didn’t have to take me anywhere else since I can see everything from there. Later that night, we met up with his friend from Bilbao who was hilarious! The three of us walked around an area called Burni and had tapas and cidra. Again, I've never been to that area before. Definitely very different from the tourist filled Las Ramblas.

This was definitely a different Barcelona trip. Even though we didn’t spend much time in the city, I still got to see it in a different way than before. I don’t know why but it’s always different from a car (ha!). It was either that or the fact that I was with a local who knew the city very well. I’m gonna go with the latter.