barcelona part one::

Hello Folks,

i know there have been many complains and hate mails coming in to the office in recent weeks asking why the blog has not been updated, the editors have been really busy travelling and also coming back just in time to rush tons of reports that needed to be submitted to the Maastricht University. There also has been some contract disputes as the editors demanded more pay for their work which explains the hiatus but its all been settled, they have been well fed with an all-expenses paid trip to Barcelona, which included a La Liga Spanish football match and some crazy food hunting day which would be covered in our second edition of barcelona bloggings.

Also this blog is written in tribute to one of the best local guides one can have in Barcelona, he's a full time exchange student at esade though he hardly goes to school, also future big banker, and a really awesome friend to have; jh. Thanks man for the really wonderful time hosting all of us, i am sure greg and carolyn would testify to that. He even sacrificed getting his butt evicted by his landlady while trying his best to keep 5 asians in his room for a night in his 5m by 4.5m room with his even peskier german housemate sending him threatening sms from her room 3 metres away. OK enough of the talk, lets see some action.

We left little countryside town of maastricht for girona which is an hour away from big bad barcelona via Ryan Air, and then take a shuttle bus to Barca. The flight was pretty crappy considering we paid like 180 euros each?! yes we got lazy and booked late. When i first saw the logo of Ryan Air i was thinking shit, it looks like that Guiness Stout Beer Logo? See it for your self! Well, what to do, when you live like a million miles away from the bigger cities like Amsterdam and Eindhoven, you gotta make do with whatever crappy airline which serves your city and most of the time, the same crappy airlines of your departure city flies to other fellow crappy destination airports like girona esp for ryan air.

Well, once we got to Barca via bus from Girona, we were finally reunited with jianhong who was already there waiting for us, he looked funny. He had just went skiing and so he had these panda eyes made from their ski goggles but he was still the same jianhong we knew, irritating, noisy, nahh joking, he was cool, great fella.

Well, we met up with greg and carolyn and finally carolyn and lee were reunited as well! they started screaming and shouting in the train station and i was getting lots of weird stares as they hugged, took cameras out to take 20 plus shots of the same position etc. heres one of themJust look at the people behind them, totally getting blinded by the million flashes. Here's one of the main man, jianhong, totally decked out in his amazing 100 and 1 columbia ski jacket which he was explaining to us about, which really indeed was the ideal ski jacket, had like all sorts of random pouches for ipod or pen,googles holder, plasters/bandages esp for jh. haha according to jh, greg's ski jacket was like the prada was them all, costing a cool thousand or something but i can imagine the crazy stuff that thing has.

Here;s a shot of what happened when greg and i left rols and lee out to the streets of barcelona;
a few hundred euros down to shopping! weims ah, better keep this boons on the watch, she might run into financial difficulties pretty fast. I was glad i bought myself a casual sport jacket/suit from this store called Lefties, how apt. And interestingly, the jacket was ZARA. They had tons of random ZARA apparels there maybe leftovers; thats why Lefties/ Basically Barca is the shopping paradise of Europe in my opinion, haha though i only been to Brugges and here. They are so many stores, its like here the THIS FASHION kind of stores rule.
Well, we were in Barca during Easter and so for the rest of the days there; Sunday and Monday, the shops were all closed, which explained why Lee was rather moody but one thing good came out of it, we now had the euros to spend on awesome spanish tapas and paella! On the very first night, i recommended us to go to La Fonda which i heard from so many sources that this place was the lonelyplanet rated place to be. We had some difficulty finding the place but once we got there, there was a queue already forming, the place opened at 8.30pm and by 8pm there were like 50 people in line. The place was said to have offered the best local food and the most unbeatable prices. I had the honour was waiting at the line whilst greg and jh brought the girls over. Man, by like 8.30pm, there were like 100 people behind me, no joke.

But once in, the restaurant was like your expensive dinner at Holland Village but the food was like a thousand times better, trust me.

This is what you call a Paella; its like rice cooked in and over fire in this special pot which is abit like wet baked rice with some awesome sauce and we ordered it with mixed seafood and meat. I shared this with Lee and the price for such a lovely place is insane, it cost like 7 euros per person? ridiculous man.

Here's one with greg and rols.
Dig in. Its the best thing i have tasted over a month in Europe.
Here's one satisfied camper.

After dinner, we headed out to meet other Singaporeans in Barcelona in a near by bar called Glacier. It was already cold and raining then kenna one Glacier hurhur.

Jh is the main man once again. Nah, he did a really good job in taking care of us and really making sure that there were no creepy people following us on the streets. I could testify to that, he constantly kept covering my back and he would guide us forward while he walked behind always, thanks man.

Anyway that night, foreseeing a clash in the morning if the houselady sees too many asians running out of jh's room, i stayed at the other singaporean's place for one night before Lee and i moved to our hostel which will be covered in the next episode.

Thanks.

Poh.