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Barcelona...my second homea

Hola!
que pasa?
Come estas guapos?

well Jam and i spent a total of 13 days in the wonderful Barcelona. Our host was great and i felt really at home there. I cooked or us most nights, and saved alot of money, we had picnics and ate fresh fruit at the market when we felt packish.
Our host gave us our own set of keys so we came and went as we pleased. We had our own room and In the mornings we woke up and sun bathed on the balcony. We loved the closeness of living in barcelona, the balcony looked over people hosing down their patios, gardening smoking, eating.
When we decided to move we got ready and spent most of the days just wondering around the city wandering into shops and looking at the architecture. It is so easy to just wander in Barcelona, it is so pretty. We spent alot of time at the beach sun baking and meeting random people. We spent one evening with the wonderful Nacho from Argentina after meeting him on the beach and inviting him to play a makeshift game of aussie rules football with a volleyball, we wandered around and went dancing then we said goodbye to him, never to see him again, it's funny how you meet people when you are travelling and you will probably never see them again in your life.
Jamima and I have ben meeting alot of people around the plece...surprisingly most of them are either Argentinian or Brzillian. We made geat frinds with the skater crew in Barcelona, we hung out with the quite a bit at MACBA, a large paved area (perfect for skating) outside the modern and contemporary arts museum. The skaters would hang out in the evenings are dink beer that was sold to them individually by forigners for one euro a can. `ceravessa, beer?´
One night while we were walking through the city with out host he was shocked to see how many people we knew, saying hola every 10 meters. Great bunch of guys!
Overall Barcelona was a great place to relax and take it easy, the people there are easy going and pleasant, even though the catalunians have a reputation of being too proud and up tight i thought the vibe of the city was amazing!
at the end of the last week we met up with some of Jamimas friends from Melbourne Gez and Logan, we had a bit of fun with them hanging out and being obnoxious tourists. It was hard to say goodbye to that city and the home of Josep, i may just have to come back again!
now we are in Madrid! and it is totally different....
We are currently staying with our secomd host jose after spending the first 3 nights with the ever so cool Roy. Roy Lives a little out of the centre of the city but he is a really nice relaxing guy, taught us the art of jumping the barriers at the metro!
Well the first feeling i got from Madrid was that it lacked the personailty and relaxed vibe of barcelona. Where we were staying is in the business district so all the buildings are big new and ugly. We spent the first day wandering around the streets of madrid, not really knowing what to do with ourselves. Being the capital of spain everythig is bigger, there are more chain stores and it seems a little cold and kinda like london really. Jamima and I were feeling really exhausted after the first walk around and a bit lost because we had no idea what to do with ourseles, so we decided to take a nap on the grass. It was there where we met our 2 Argentinian friends Marto and Brume. The were eating chinese and Jamima approached them to ask what they were eating and where we could get it. We ended up hanging out with them for the whole night, they played us some music and showed us some short films they had made, they are really interesting guys. They alsolived in the more underground part of town so we got to see the the real madrid, alot more diverse than barcelona.

The next day Roy took us out on the town, we walked around the city and saw the sights, i must say my legs are getting super strong, after Barcelona and walking up 6 flights of stairs like 3 times a day it now takes me alot to get tired! We annoyed roy with out thriftyness, turning down every nice tapas place he took us too until we settled on the cheapest crappest place around, it wsa actually not that bad though it had nothing on barcelona tapas. Points to us for saving money though!
The price of things is pretty high here, you would pay the average of 6 euro for a plate which is around $10 aus, times that by 4 plates and you ar paying alot for a meal for 2, Jamima and i just buy rolls and tins of tuna and eat in the street like hobos, saves us money and tastes great.

well that is it for me for now, we have been partying here recently and i still have to write about those adventured but i will save it for next time, this is a little too long already

bye from madrid

Claire

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good post. Stay in touch. Gnfdr

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