backpacking – jacobblogs

Here’s the first of Barcelona! I’m currently sitting in the courtyard of my hostel (very quiet at the moment, I think most people are out exploring right now), eating some fruit I picked up a bit ago, and writing this post.

*I don’t know how old this building is, but it certainly isn’t new. The hostel feels like modernity built into ancient bones.*

4/6: Sunday

All I did this day was sleep. The previous day, I left Boston at 6PM on the 5th, flew for about 6 hours to Lisbon and arrived at midnight Boston time, or 7AM (on the 5th, still!) Lisbon time. There, I went through customs (A tired border officer said nothing to me and simply stamped my passport. Easier than getting into Canada!). After another two hours of waiting, I hopped (more like slogged) onto my connecting flight to Madrid.

Once in Madrid, I took a taxi to the train station I’d booked a train to Barcelona on. At this point I had already been awake almost 20 hours, and was really starting to feel it. Unfortunately, the train to Barcelona was another four hours or so – in total, when I arrived at the Hostel, I hadn’t slept (properly) for over 27 hours. Lesson learned: it may seem cheaper to split some travel into a couple of tickets, but I would have had a much better time had I paid $100 more for a direct ticket.

Once I got to the hostel, I took a much-needed shower, then fell asleep (at around 6PM Barcelona time) until the next morning.

4/7: Monday:

Being in Barcelona is really cool, but not knowing the language kind of terrifies me sometimes. Most casual interactions can be passed with a smile and nod, but interactions at restaraunts, for example, need some type of common language. My first stop was a cafe for breakfast – cafes are SUPER common here, I pass them every 3 minutes when walking in the city, it seems.

*The tuna was very oily – I suspect it was from a can submerged in oil. In this case, it actually helped a lot to make the sandwich less dry.*

“No ingles” was the server’s response to my poorly pronounced “hablas ingles?” – but he was, nontheless, a server, so he sat me down and handed me the menu (a QR code to their online menu). After some deliberation, I ordered a Cappuchino, a fresh-made juice containing Apple, Lemon, and some vegetable I don’t remember, and a Tuna Sandwich with Avocado. All were delicious and fresh. I think it cost about €13.75 (~$15 USD), which (considering the quality and atmosphere) seems on par or better than what I would expect to pay in the US.

Freshness, excellent taste and reasonable prices seem consisten in all of my food experience in spain so far. Coffees (while much simpler and less sweet than what we Americans are used to) are usually only a few euros, and I haven’t paid more than €15 for anything yet.

Even the pidgeons here are different! They have much pinker colors and iridescence on their wings. There’s a nest in the courtyard of my hostel, and they make the weirdest sounds! Sometimes they sound like owls. I have learned not to sit under that tree!

After this, I headed back to the hostel and finished yesterday’s blog posts about Boston.

Lunch was at a cafe that was a 3 minute walk from the hostel – a chicken feta salad with an excellent honey mustard dressing, sundried tomatos, and a tasty acaii smoothie. This was one of the more expensive meals I’ve had – coming in right around 15 euros.

Then, I headed to the beach, and spent a LONG time laying in the sun. It’s too cold here to swim, but the sun has been hot and shorts and a t-shirt is comfortable during the afternoon. On the warm beach under the sun, the light breeze made it perfectly comfortable. I did use sunscreen, which is the only reason I don’t look like a lobster today.

After this and some other things, my path back to the hostel took me through the parc (park) where the Arc de Triomf (not the one from Paris) is. Feeling especially like a tourist (something I am trying to avoid looking too much like here, lest I get squirted with water guns), I took my camera out and started snapping various angles.

The sun was setting behind the arc. In one of my last classes, I learned that the less-defined edges where the sun is backlighting the arc are due to how different wavelengths of light refract differently. Since light is a wave, the edge interacts with the light going around it, and different colors bend slightly differently. Especially in older cameras like this, this creates “chromatic abberations” – or purple-blue fringing around more distant edges.

I had to wait next to a crosswalk for a bus to pass before I could take this. Standing out in the open like that with my camera makes me feel like I’m sticking out like a sore thumb, but at least this is an area people expect tourists with cameras.

I also snapped some photos of nearby interesting architecture. The abundance of balconies here is cool!

I’ve also been enjoying trying street photography. The camera I brought has a screen that will flip up 90 degrees so I can hold it at waist level and see what it is seeing – handy for when you don’t want people to realize they are being photographed.

*This man running his dog on bike caught my eye. I wanted to get a shot more directly from the side, but was too late with the camera.*

This building looked nice. Sometimes that’s all it takes for me to snap a photo, and sometimes I think too hard about it and decide not to.

*I especially liked the pastel yellow between the beige and grey.*

This woman walking her dog also caught my eye, and I feel pretty good about this photo! There’s a slight bit of motion blur to show them walking, and the camera actually focused on them. This was one photo taken from waist height so it wasn’t obvious 🙂

*There are plenty of dogs in Barcelona*, *and people walking them!*

*This one turned out better than I expected – it was while I was walking by, also shot from waist height. The motion blur of the close tiles is pretty cool.*

This guy had a funky bike, but I caught him just after he went into the bush. Since I was moving the camera, there is a slight motion blur, but he is sharply in focus. Maybe I should try more motion blur photography.

I was starting to get hungry at this point (the walk back was about 30 minutes, and with all the photos I was taking, it took more like an hour). A kebab shop happened convenitently across my path, so I popped in and got one (which I forgot to photograph).

I didn’t want to be too touristy with my camera, so didn’t try for a great shot here. The kebab shop’s ingredients bar looked good through the window – probably pretty effective marketing, especially since it worked on me!

*I also snapped a selfie in the mirror while waiting.*

Again, I had planned for this post to cover three days – but I think I will split it again, since today (4/8) has a lot of photos 🙂

All for now!

Tag: backpacking

Barcelona, Spain: 4/6, 4/7