Friday, November 1, 2013 @ 11:20 PM in 2013 Europe
Day 128
The Halloween party at the hostel was pretty good last night. They had some free snacks and gave everyone a free shot. I had bought a liter of beer at the grocery for 1.35 euros and drank that at the party. Some people were playing card games so I joined in for a few rounds. By the time it got to midnight I decided to head up and try to get some sleep. I had done quite a bit of walking during the day and then when you add in the booze I was pretty tired.
I didn't set an alarm this morning and was pretty shocked when I actually slept in until around 9:45. Unfortunately when I woke up the internet was down so I couldn't check email, weather or any of my normal morning routine. I had some toast and then hung around in the hostel until after lunch. Internet was still down so I figured I'd go to the beach and read for the afternoon to get some fresh air and check out that part of town.
As soon as I was leaving the internet started working again so I took a few minutes to very quickly answer a few emails before setting out. I walked down a really nice palm tree lined pedestrian area past the Arc de Triomf toward the Barcelona Zoo. Near there I cut around the train station and followed the big promenade near the marina to the beach.
Along the way there were a row of street vendors selling random food. I saw some 3 for €5 empanadas so I got one with chicken, one with beef and one with bacon and cheese. They were all really good but I think I liked the bacon and cheese one the best. I had finished them by the time I got to the beach.
Today was some sort of government holiday so a lot of the shops were closed down and people were out enjoying the amazing weather. It felt a lot like walking around the Manhattan Beach area of LA. People at beach side cafes enjoying drinks and food as well as tons of people out walking the big wide sidewalks along the beach.
I stopped a few times to read some of my Game of Thrones book. There were a few open wifi hotspots provided by the city of Barcelona so I stopped a few times to quickly use it. It was a bit too chilly to want to get out and walk through the sand barefoot but there were a lot of people chilling on the beach and even a few crazy people in the water swimming.
I walked up and down most of the big stretch of beach and all said and done ended up walking a little over 6 miles round trip from the hostel. It started to cool down a bit so I came back to the hostel and showered. I found an onion and a chili pepper in the free food section so I quietly stowed them away in my bag to use for dinner. I ended up using those plus some garlic and pasta for dinner. It turned out pretty good and filled me up nicely.
It's Friday night and the big groups of partiers are starting to show up unfortunately. That, plus the internet still being down since I returned from the beach made me decide to head up to the room to read a bit and watch some shows I had downloaded to my computer earlier in the week.
They seem to have fixed the internet problem so I'm trying to quickly upload all my photos and blog post as well as answer emails in case it goes down again.
Teaser photos:
Tags: daily journal, spain, barcelona
Posted from: Spain