Spain - Barcelona - Take Three: The Margaux Meet-Up

After a chilled out last night in Madrid drinking 1.50€ boxes of sangria while playing Crazy Eights with some fellow Canadians, I hurriedly set out for my last round of BCN on a Saturday morning, on time thanks to a borrowed alarm from a roommate (still havent replaced my cheap watch alarm that was nicked on the bus). Turns out I had once again grossly misjudged the amount of time it would take me to transit from Madrid to Girona to Barcelona to meet up with Josh and Margaux, my friends who were wrapping up their romantic post engagement Spanish vacation before Margaux set out with me to Germany. Worse, I picked the worlds dumbest meeting point. Read on.



My flight landed at 230pm, and my shuttle from Girona airport which I boarded at 3pm took 1.5 hours to get me to the main bus station in the city. From there I still had to make my way to my hostel on Passeig de Gracia, check in, shower (which so did NOT happen) and plow over to Placa Catalunya to meet my friends. I had appointed the time of meeting as 5pm. At 530pm Im stumbling out the door of my hostel (where the worlds slowest elevator had cost me many precious minutes getting me to the ground floor!) still pulling on my sandals and trying to hustle the ten minute walk to the plaza.

Of course, a spontaneous book fair had sprung up on Gracia so hordes of ambling siestaing Spaniards were blocking my path. I elbowed my way through and emerged to find an even more gigantic horde of afternoon amblers in the plaza. Such a terrible meeting point. Thankfully I took an educated guess that they would be sitting somewhere at this point because I was almost an hour late, and scouted the statues until lo and behold, from behind a newspaper, I espied them at the top of Las Ramblas!

Unfortunately I had also designated this place as a meeting point for a girl Id met on the plane, but finding her and being so late, it was a lost cause. We headed out to Caelum in the Gothic Quarter, a very cool place with a sweets shop on the ground level and a cavernous desserts restaurant in the basement. Imagine going out for a candlelit dessert in Lord of the Rings, most likely in the neighbourhood of the dwarves or the hobbits and you will have some impression of what this place was like. Additionally, fantastic hot chocolate on offer. Look into it if you ever find yourself in these parts.







After a brief stop in the hostel for a drink and some tapas, we went to dinner at Ra, a well recommended restaurant behind La Boqueria off Las Ramblas. Dinner was delicious, the wine was good, but the service was lousy. Josh literally had to chase down the waiter to pay the bill. Worse, we later discovered that Margauxs wallet was lifted there at some point, though we were hard pressed to figure out when. There is a high likelihood that it was our waiter, since he was the only one near our table.

Sigh. Oh, Barcelona. You would be such a great city were it not for your relentless pickpockets! They really do spoil it.