Last day in Spain!

Sleeepy day! Got up and walked over to the gondola that goes over the harbor to the beach and got there right on time. The ride was as wild as the Sagrada Familia because we were so high up with absolutely nothing between the bottom of the vehicle and either sharp buildings or oil-slick ridden water. Mmm, delicious, exactly what I wanted to see before I went to the beach. We had heard from someone at the hostel that Barcelona dumps its sewage into the ocean so we were already leaning towards not going in, though. Also it wasn’t a fantastic day; overcast like the rest of our time here. So we wandered around and looked at the groups of old guys letting it hang out as they drank beer at noon, played dominoes, or played volleyball. I guess they just didn’t care, and that was kind of amusing. The beaches were really nothing special either. I imagine there are some car-accessible-only beaches that would be nice, but I thought the ones closest to the city were just kind of like Rehoboth, but with Europeans. At least we saw them!

From there we walked up to the Ciutadella park to see the Castell dels Tres Dragones (Castle of the Three Dragons) because it sounded badass and we saw http://www.flickr.com/photos/32744903@N00/3694356321 beforehand on random. In the reality of an overcast day and a single exposure it wasn’t nearly as cool, but it did put us near the Museum of Chocolate again, so we had more hot chocolate with lunch. =) They actually forgot to charge us for one of the cups, which was great as it made up being ripped off for a thing of OJ earlier in the morning. Hoorah. We meandered across the old section for a bit longer before returning to switch rooms (downgrade from 10 to 6 people oh boy!) and stick in some laundry (virtually all of our clothes at this point). And nap, of course.

After the clothes were done (in the dryer even! Woo!) it was dinnertime, and we set out armed with some recommendations from The Internet. Got sidetracked at a bakery and got a huge, delicious, fluffy meringue for cheap. Yay! Gave us energy to walk around, and after a good while we settled on a place that looked like it had a good amount of seniority while still being in a nice location, and had our last Spanish meal – potatoes bravas (French fries with aioli sauce basically), lomo (more ham), artichokes (trying to get some veggies in), croquetas (best we’ve had here), and cava. Very pleasant! We later found out that we had been right around the corner from our original recommendation…oops. But it was really damn busy in there so we didn’t feel too bad. Took pictures with the restaurant The Glop on the way back because we could, and it was hilarious. Our noses also directed us into a Japanese tapas place … we expected heavy use of ham, maybe even in sushi, but alas this was nowhere to be found. Instead we got some udon and chilled for a while. A successful night of food, all in all!

Now we are spending our last night in Spain booking hostels in Italy. Rome is proving much more difficult than the other cities…ah well we will figure it out in time. Tomorrow we will see Sue, and France! Whee!