Baby & St. Josep's Market

Holy cow. I am in Dirty Dancing. I am amazed that the movie wasn't filmed in Barcelona. This is unbelievable.

Erik has never seen Dirty Dancing and has no interest, so he unfortunately cannot share in my excitement. We are staying around 10 minutes out of the city by tram in a large hill covered in parks. Our hostel/hotel has 4 seperate buildings all spread throughout the compound. If there was a lake, I could re-enact the entire movie. There are huge social rooms, antiques everywhere, tons of green rooms, and outdoor hallways leading to separate buildings. It's actually really hard to leave because it seems they have everything here- a restaurant, sports facilities, game rooms, music rooms, cafes.. I AM BABY!



If we would've went any where other than Barcelona, I probably would've had some kind of attack. Thankfully, Barcelona is so over stimulating, with so many people, it is impossible not to be swept up in it. Barcelona absolutely reeks of Spanish culture. It takes only a moment to realize exactly where you are. The whole city is buzzing, all day every day-- the only exception being siesta, which Barcelona practices in full. Barcelona is glorious. It is its own world, orbiting under its determined rules, time, and speed. Everyone there is just so blatantly Catalan. It's wild.
For instance, Parisians do have a certain look to them- some dark hair, dark eyes- however, there is also a likely chance a light haired, light eyed person is a Parisian. On the whole, I really feel I have never been to a city that stands so uniform in culture that all of the people embody each other.


Yesterday we spent the day on Las Ramblas. The 'street of the trip' delivered 110%. There were performers in the most wild, exotic costumes I've seen. Bats, angels, fairies, goblins.. all ready to pose for a euro or five. We stumbled upon a market. Erik probably cringed but I wouldn't know. I was five steps ahead crossing the street.


WOW.WOW.WOW!! Fruit like I have never seen.




















Smoothies, juices, drinks, all different flavors and dirt cheap. Papaya Mango Coconut Passionfruit?! I was so excited I might have blacked out. In fact I know I did because I ordered one juice. LOVED IT. Ordered a basket of fruit, devoured it. Erik had ordered a juice, and I had luckily liked mine better. When he ordered a second, I instantly like that one best. Filling up on my fruit quota for the year, I went right back and got another juice. The instant I took a sip? I became so full I could not muster another slurp.


We waddled down to the beach for a while. We thought we'd stay until around 3 p.m.
Old habits are hard to break. If we would have had one ounce of capable thought in our fruit infested minds we would've remembered the true nature of Spain. Barcelona practically shuts down save for a few super touristy shops. Thus, we walked the streets around La Rambla looking at all the amazing graffitied doors and shutters. Even that was a treat.

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