Notes From Barcelona: Chapter 6 - A Little Bit of Home

Friday night, Oct. 2nd:

I'm back at La Ria tonight. It reminds me of a biker bar, but much more brightly lit. It's one of my favorite places so far. Everyone's tattooed and pierced to the nines - if piercings can be to the nines.. ? I tried the Pulperia in the other direction and it was packed. My body is tired of walking and tho the last 24 hours has been great, tonight I feel lost. The bartender, who reminds me of Chris Cornell, is wearing a shirt with the two hecklers from the Muppets on the front. He's just cool. I order a glass of rioja, pimientos de padron and patatas bravas after making myself comfortable at the bar.


Last night I decided to hang out at Sukūr and thought Giannis and I would make plans after. I got some amazing food - this goat cheese and apples concoction that was fantastic and some sort of steak medallion yumminess. Then finished with the risotto that was luxuriously delish. After writing and reading for a while, I start to feel like maybe I'm doing myself a disservice by hiding away in the bar and then a group of three Americans walk in. Giannis tells them they can get drinks, but the kitchen is closed, rather sharply. They decide to stay anyway and after talking to them, he announces they're from Seattle. I instantly light up and so do they with that familiarity of ohmygodwecanspeakenglishthankgod feeling. After some conversation with the brother about how he just found out the Sonics are no longer in Seattle and I tell him that's old news and it's all about the Sounders now, he invites me over to hang out at their table with them.

Sam and Sally, siblings - nicknamed for their big pretty eyes that remind me of Dr. Seuss characters - and Violet, Sally's college friend, also a character from Willy Wonka, were on Violet's first trip to Europe ever and were all heading to Paris the next night. We instantly chatted about everything we'd all encountered and were talking so fast I'm sure no one near of foreign ethnicity could keep up. We laugh a lot. Sam is a diplomat and is currently stationed in Madagascar and tho Sally had lived in Seattle and convinced Violet to move there, she left soon after and relocated to San Francisco where she's an immigration lawyer. Violet was the only one of the three who still lived in Seattle, working in environmental construction (? Something like that.).

We barely take breaths in our conversation and the bar is closing so we tell Giannis to meet us around the corner when he's done and I introduce them all to La Ria. We get a bottle of rioja while we wait and exchange contact info before we all get too drunk we forget. Sally and I both figure out we're both adopted, which seems unbelievable for the resemblance to her brother. Giannis arrives and we discuss our next plans of hitting this club called BLVD on La Rambla for dancing and general merriment where he can get us passes to get in.

Once there, it resembles a lot like a club right out of Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle with three rooms for techno, 80's and hip-hop respectively. The first two have scattered inhabitants, but the hip-hop is where the party is. We get drinks, take pictures, sweat our asses off and giggle a lot. I'm really drawn to Sam, but technically I'm with Giannis so I try to keep the flirt down because I don't want to be trashy. I've already been college-level promiscuous here and tho that's within my right, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings either.

Sally makes a face, Sam and Vi all smiles..

Sally's random funny face catches on with the group and Giannis joins in..

The girls and I need air and they seem ready to go. The guys follow us down tho I think they wanted to stay, but the bouncer won't let us hang in the lobby to make our decision of what to do next so we all leave and discuss outside. We filter out onto La Rambla to go over our plan and it's crowded - crazy crowded for almost 3am. Not everyone's from the bar crowd. There are still plenty of tourists wandering about and plenty of wacky types to keep said tourists entertained. I snap a couple of pictures of these kids lying on the ground for no apparent reason and giggling hysterically. We don't understand them when we ask what they're doing, but they're having a great time.

Then there was this fine gentleman sparkling with the most facial piercings I'd ever seen in my life. He wanted five Euros for me to take a picture with him. I said no and gave him the change I had but it wasn't close to five. Hi. Do you see the tattoo on the top of his head creeping out? Ew.

We all head to another more quiet bar that doesn't really seem to suit any of us and the girls decide they're done anyway. So does Giannis. We walk everyone to their respective places - the girls to their hotel first on the other even dodgier side of La Rambla and Giannis to his apartment between my hostel and the club and when I say goodbye he just seems friendly and unphased. Well.. ok. That was.. easy. Hm.

Sam is cute, by the way. I think I might've forgotten to mention this. He was talkative and funny at the restaurant, but seemed shy at the club. Maybe he wasn't sure about my interest and I guess neither was I. On our own, he was back to being friendly and funny, but not really flirty. It was just really easy to be around each other.

We try to go back to BLVD, but it's clearly closing as we get there so we walk across La Rambla and see a group of policia watching the chaos of late night drunks filter out to the street, but they just stand there. Sam thinks we should approach them and states that they wouldn't turn down a cute girl with a question and we head their direction. We're brave enough to ask them where we should go now that it's 4am. Something has to be open and one officer is actually nice enough, surprisingly, to tell us about a club called Papillon, and I say surprisingly because after hours clubs are illegal. But very quickly in Barcelona you realize the policia are nothing but a peace-keeping presence and by that I mean they do a lot of just standing around. They don't do anything else and don't seem intimidating.. more apathetic. But of course they know of the illegal places. They aren't blind. We tell our policia friend to join us when he's off work and he laughs. Then we head the direction he's pointed us in.

We think we're getting close and we have no idea where to go so we ask another small group of people, two guys and an extremely gorgeous girl, if they know of the club. She lights up and says they're going their too and to come with them so we do. After our quick introductions and small talk, I realize their leader, Lazarus, is Greek, from the same small town Giannis AND is one of his good friends. Could Barcelona get any smaller?

We get to the door, still in the Barri Gòtic, and are signalled to keep the noise down. Illegal clubs are allowed to exist by the policia because they cooperate with being hidden among residential areas. They don't want anything to jeopardize that.. understandably. Inside, it's crowded, a dark and dingy little place purely for the after hours crowd who simply doesn't want to go home yet. We talk to our new friends a bit, talk to each other and really don't stay longer than an hour probably - even after randomly being sung to by a strange guy just standing near us. Sam abruptly looks at me and asks if I want to get out of there, but there's a different look I hadn't seen in his eyes. I say yes and we say goodbye to our new friends, who made sure I had their contact info before we left and offered to make us dinner the next night and Sam and I try to find our way back to the more familiar side of the Gothic Quarter.

I take some pictures on our way thru the quarter and eventually we realize it's later than we both thought after we make it back to my hostel and then back out for um.. supplies.. like 8am actually. It's been quite the night.. and morning... and after a while, Sam has to leave to meet the girls for their last tour of the city before they're off to Paris that night. I go back to bed, hung over still, and doze in and out due to the constant street noise, which I love and loathe at the same time because the energy never stops here. At 3pm, I finally get up feeling much better. Back on my own again today, I get ready for my afternoon and head out to to my regular spot in the plaza for a café con leche and some food.