Rather than stay in Madrid for our entire week in Spain, Aisha and I travelled down to Barcelona. We'd heard great things about the city, and Miša, my Slovak host sister, was living there. We traversed the 600 or so kilometers between Madrid and Barcelona in 2 hours, 20 minutes on a high speed AVE train.

Barcelona is all about the food, drink, art, and entertainment. The perfect place for Aisha and I.

Most of our first day was spent exploring the immediate surroundings of Mambo Tango, our hostel. We walked down Avinguda del Paral·lel to the docks, then north along the boardwalks to Barceloneta Beach. Public installations of contemporary art and historic statues stood proudly in the centre of the roundabouts we passed. Rows of old, well-kept buildings were broken up by the funky, modern architecture of new offices, restaurants and retail shops. Carefully crafted sand sculptures stood just off the walkway along the beach. We found an Irish pub for lunch (which are the same the world over, by the way - always Guinness pie, T-bone steak, Irish stew, bangers and mash, ...) and spent the rest of the day relaxing on the sand.

Despite some issues receiving SMSs from Miša, we managed to meet up for a traditional dinner of tapas. She took us to a tiny corner shop that served us marinated octopus, chili potato, tomato and garlic bread and fried squid with glasses of sangria and kalimotxo to wash it down.

Antoni Gaudí is a name synonymous with Barcelona. His work as an architect is distinct, and many famous buildings in Barcelona are built in his characteristic organic style. Aisha and I took a bike ride up to Park Güell, home to a collection of works by Gaudí. The park lies on the side of a hill with views of Barcelona, so we took a picnic and ate overlooking the rigid grid of streets below. Exploring the park after lunch, we stumbled upon painstakingly mosaiced sculptures, curvy houses and functional, yet funky walkways and viewpoints. On our ride home, we stopped by the Sagrada Família, considered by some as Gaudí's masterpiece, despite being under construction since 1882.

Gaudí isn't the only famous artist associated with Barcelona. A huge collection of Picasso's works are showcased in the aptly named Museu Picasso de Barcelona. The museum shows a selection of works from the beginning of Picasso's career, right to the very end. It was interesting to see his style and scope develop and change, from rough sketches and paintings, through the Blue and Rose Periods to his African-influenced works and finally, cubism and surrealism. His later copperprint works and sculptures were also shown. The special exhibition at the time showed pieces of Picasso's erotic art and the Japanese prints that influenced it. Why are so many geniuses also so twisted? A drawing of a fish performing cunnilingus on a woman with her period, anyone?

Miša cooked us dinner at her apartment one night, and we went out on the town. First stop was a deli serving Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine. Next stop, a cocktail bar on Barceloneta. From there, we sang and danced our way along the streets to a student hangout, where we spent the rest of the night. On being kicked out at closing time, Aisha immediately knew our location, due to her uncanny memory of retail shops. It turns out, our hostel was only a few blocks away.

I'm going to digress a bit here, in the name of humour. That night, I got up to use the loo. After relieving myself, I blearily exited the toilet, and somehow found myself in a stairwell. Outside the hostel. Wearing only my underwear. The night warden was mightily confused when he found me pounding on the door, almost naked, at 3:30AM. Upon checking the other exits from the toilet in the morning, I found them all locked. Weird.

The last day we were in Barcelona, the LG Snowboard FIS World Cup was on, hosted at the Olympic Stadium. A massive 35m ramp was set up, and covered in snow. I assume that the snow was filled with chemicals and/or there were cooling coils underneath, because temperatures topped 20°C that day. Miša and a few of her friends met us at the stadium, and we spent the day watching the epic jumps, taking photos and perusing the snowboards, skis, mountainboards and various other adrenaline inducing sports goods for sale. I spotted the camera connected to the big screen, and Aisha suggested that I try and get Bluey in the shot. The cameraman didn't seem to appreciate our shenanigans, and let fly a few sentences of angry sounding Spanish. Despite the disgruntled cameraman, our mission succeeded!

Our trip back to the hostel that night provided us with more entertainment. We saw the Magic Fountain of Montjuic, in all its colourful and musical glory. It was definitely the best fountain we'd seen. Nearby, a family of peddlers had set up shop, and were selling various trinkets on the street. As we walked by, the police turned up, and a comical scene of the peddlers trying to stuff their goods into sacks and run from the police ensued. Well, it was funny for us.

Location