Buildings, buildings, buildings

Today we went sightseeing in Barcelona. First stop was the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, an enormous church that has been in construction since 1882 and is expected to last until at least 2026. We never went inside due to the extreme long line youn had to wait in. After that we walked around, ate bad expensive paella and watched buldings for a few hours or so. Getting close to our apartment, we jumped on an overpriced sightseeing bus and took a tour around parts of Barcelona. After almost two hours we were back were we started and decided to walk some  ofe the back streets and alleys near our apartment in old town. We started to get hungry again and had some good and fairly cheap local pan pizza.

By this time we were getting cold (it had rained twice earlier that in the day) so we went back to the hotel for a while to relax and warm up.

After some time we went back out again in a new direction. Walked for a few hours, found a giant cat, had a drink and bought some snacks on the way back. Now we are going to watch a movie: Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.

My mom has a nice tradition. Whenever we kids turn 30, she takes us to a destination of our choice in Europe, just the two of us. Since I turned 30 just over a month ago,  it was my turn. I picked Barcelona.

My brother gave us a ride to the airport at 7 in the morning, and checking in went fine. We changed plane in Frankfurt and spent time watching two movies on my Eee: The Heroes of Telemark and The Good Thief. Both were surprisingly good!

After arriving in Barcelona we took the aerobus in to town. instead of taking a taxi to our hotel we decided to walk. Strolling through La Rambla, we  arrived at our apartment around 4 in the afternoon.

Shortly after, we went for a walk, did some minor shopping and had tapas.

Today we will have a general sightseeing day.

Monday morning we got up at around four in the morning, really tired. The first thing we noticed that there were a lot of noise outside.
What the Icelanders do when they party is that they have warm-up parties at home before going out, meaning that the night life doesn’t start in Reykjavik until around midnight (or 02:00 Swedish time) and continues until late the morning after.
We noticed this very much, as our hotel was located at the main street of the city, our room faced that street an there were plenty of clubs and bars around. This meant a lot of thumping bass and shouting people every time you tried to get to sleep, and sometimes still there when you woke up. Good thing we brought earplugs.

We got to the airport allright and the security check was a breeze. Did some taxfree shopping and had some breakfast before boarding the plane. Flight was nothing special but we had to wait for 10 minutes or so before we could get off the plane due to missing ground crew.

When we finally got out in the open it was warm. 15C and no wind compared to 2C and lots of wind makes for a big diffence.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to Spain.

On sunday we went to the famous Blue Lagoon, a big spa resort with a great outdoor pool/constructed lake. The water was hot (almost too hot in some places) and milky. Under the water was black sand and all along the “shore” there was white mud that had a really strange consistency to it. There was also a waterfall with hot water and a couple of steam baths and saunas.

From being frozen a great deal of the time we’ve spent in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon was a great contrast. Even though it was a but crouded at the entrance, it was so big that you could simply swim out for a few minutes, and suddenly you were all alone. And due to the thick fog (hot water/cold air) there was not a human in sight for some moments.

Exiting the Blue Lagoon, we saw Dave Growl, singer in Foo Fighters. I didn’t talk to him or even take a photo, trying to respect his privacy. But a part of me regrets it today.

After going back to Reykjavik, we spent some time in the hotel room and then went out to Balthazar Bar & Grill for dinner. Having to get up around 4:00 the next day, we made it a short evening and got back to the hotel fairly early.

Yesterday we spent the entire day in Reykjavik to do some shopping. It is a nice little town with interesting architecture, many restaurants and nice people – but it is not a town where you go shopping. During our stay here, all I have bought is two t-shirts and two comic books (Wolverine:  Weapon X and Zombie Stories: Good Eatin’).

Anyway, yesterday we  walked around for a few hours trying to find something interesting to buy. Failing that, we then took a bus out to Kringlan, the big shopping mall outside the city. A lot of stores but not much of interest to us. After that we met up with my brother and we had some dinner at the Mexican restaurant Santa Maria next to our hotel. A Mexican restaurant where you had to make a special request to get a Mojito, since the waiter didn’t even seemed to know what that was. Anyway, the food was quite good and the prices low (or odyr, as they say here in Iceland). We went on to Kaffi Zimsen, a pub that seemed to have a nice atmosphere, but turned out to have very expensive drinks and a busted-up bathroom. After a while four women that Fredde had been diving with turned up. After chatting with them for a while we went back to the hotel after a quick stop at our favorite pyslur (Icelandic hot dog) place.