We live inside of an antique

90 years old but so cool ..  our new place in Gracia is all windows and space, close to a small plaza, and one of the most famous intersections in Barcelona. What luck. Love it!

BACK in Barcelona!

We've returned and finished our first full day back in this cool city.
Both of our flights were shorter than planned and getting here seemed so easy. Of course, getting 7 time zones ahead and arriving at 7am makes for some terrible jet lag, but I think we're doing OK.
Today was just a really bizarre day. We wake up and try to get the empadronamiento from the government so we can live here legally, but after making the 20-minute walk we find out that the dates on the contract are wrong so we will have to wait til next week. Of course, that's hoping that they will stay open past 2 or 3 in the afternoon and that Carlos will have a chance to get out of school to take the papers in. Because of this, we can't get the new bank account, the DNI (which is like the social security number), updated health care, etc.
So in order to ignore some of that, we went to what we thought was a steakhouse very close to the apartment. They have a life-size plastic cow in front of the restaurant and a cool brick oven in the front with hot coals always going. Once inside the brick interior, you go down a flight of stairs to the underground restaurant. There, we find out it is really a restaurant from Uruguay, but that they serve plenty of Catalan meals. That is, if they feel like it... outside they advertise over 100 primero and segundo plates for their menu of the day (which is an awesome european feature, by the way) but once you get the menu, many are either crossed out or you're told they don't have it anyway. Very Spanish :)
Then, after gettting slightly ripped off at the electronics store, we head out into the city via Las Ramblas towards the Born. On the way we come across some large stages, one of them having a drum group from Paraguay. Glow in the dark drum sticks! They were having so much fun.
After that we went to our favorite restaurant to get patatas bravas, a culinary staple of Catalunya. La Luna is more of a bar with a few fancy tapas, but it's great. Mojitos there are worth the 7 euros (not too often..!) and we finally had our favorite double malt beer again, Voll Damm. mmm... so delicious. After that, a trip on a metro and an underground train, and back to our very humid (90%!!) apartment. Fall is coming next week... pictures to come later.

what´s cookin´

Close to where we live is a small market that somehow has almost EVERYTHING. Not only that, but it´s well-priced and very close. Most of what we eat comes from there. Maybe another day I´ll have photos of it, because it´s very different from American-style markets. For now, here´s a little taste (HA HA) (..) of how we´re cooking...

Butane-stove cooking!

Hm.. pancetta and garlic for a Carbonara sauce, I think

This night we had rotini with an eggplant-bell pepper sauce.

YES FREE INTERNET!!! ... and a day at the coast

After discovering that reliable, cheap, and good value internet services here are almost impossible unless we sign a year contract, we've resorted to using a sporadic signal from the city's mesh network. It's much slower that dial-up would be and incredibly unreliable, but at least we don't have to go to the internet cafe!! Plus, it's free.
That being said...

Carlos and I walked along the coast (Barceloneta) today. We planned to write postcards and work on his essays for ESADE school, but... not doing those things was much more interesting. Barcelona's beaches are manmade, meaning they are long, thin, straight lines with lots of shops and marinas jutting out into the sea, but they're very clean. There are at least 3 major marinas that were in the section we walked through.. so many amazing yachts, sailboats, catamarans. It was a windy day so there were plenty of sailboats and windsurfers out.

This part of Barcelona has plenty of photo-worthy subjects: architecture, people from around the world, boaters, restaurants, nice cars... we'll be dividing some of the better pictures into categories for later posts, but you will be able to see the ones from today in this post.

Since we had nothing of great importance to do today, we decided to walk all the way back to the apartment rather than taking the metro. The distance ended up being about 7 miles, and on around mile 5 we decided we should have had lunch after all. Unfortunately for our stomachs, Spanish lifestyle dictates that Sunday afternoons are closing time for decent restaurants. A tip to keep in mind for sure. However we walked back and cooked a good dinner with our butane stove. That's another story though...

There's so much more to say about the apartment, the people, the markets, stores, culture, banks, etc. but those will be subjects for later posts!

We made it!

We have arrived in Barcelona after our 18 hour trip! So happy to have our own place at the moment.
At the moment we are using a family member´s apartment, which is in a nice working-class neighborhood. This means that it is not touristy at all.. lots of locals, many fresh vegetable and meat markets, wide, tree-lined streets, and so much character. With very close access to the metro (subway), we should be able to explore this city with ease. So excited!
Unfortunatly we haven´t found an internet cafe close by the apartment, but until then we will be visiting the cousins´apartment and may be able to make quick updates with their internet.
I´ve got to cut this post short for now, but hopefully we´ll be back for more interesting updates (and pictures) soon.