Barcelona - day 1

So we had a pleasant few days in Lisbon. Really pretty town and we were in a great location too, Baxia-Chiado. We were pretty spoiled for choice with the restaurants and food everywhere, especially digging into the egg tarts around Belem (called pastel de Belem), it is also the place where explorer Vasco da Gama once set off for India. Our hostel was really nice, even the fact we were sharing with a weird dutch-mexican guy whose name was actually "Evil" (or at least to us sounded like that).

R and I got haircuts from a salon called Hairport... and unbelievably it was only 28 euro for the works. Have had to pay for a boring hair cut in Aix and it was over 30... bargain. My hair was cut shorter, with a fringe that basically, according to the girl that cut my hair, makes my face look like a love heart. Not sure if I have cutter´s remorse but I heard on the grapevine that hair styling is known to be pretty avant-garde in Lisbon so I thought I´d get on the bandwagon and try it out.

Fast-forward to yesterday, we had our flight delayed twice and we were stuck in the airport waiting for our plane to Barcelona. The captain who eventually flew the plane said he had been flown up from Madrid just to fly our plane... right. The turbulence in the plane basically summed up our entire evening. We eventually got to the place I booked, which is nice and more of a hotel though it´s actually a university residence. I was told it was convenient for transport. What lies. The metro closed at 11pm, we had managed to get out of the room and were told to wander down an area called Fontana, according to the receptionist, there would be "a lot of good places to go eat and drink". No cigar. I know it´s Christmas but surely it shouldn´t be as bleak as the sight we beheld:

• Main excitement was a hobo forcing flowers into our faces
• Everything was closed
• The restaurants that were open were fully booked and we had a minimum waiting time of 30min
• The other contenders were a small kebab restaurant and some random german diner with schnitzel

As we were quite keen to get stuck into the Catalan fare, we held out and looked around. Eventually we stumbled across a tiny convenience store and R tried asking, using the spanish he knows, to get out bearings. Unfortunately, as the shop was manned by a mainland chinese man, there was a lot of confusion and I eventually had to step in as Mandarin seemed to be the only common language. I asked where the spanish restaurants were and where to eat and he said to hold on as he called a friend/see if this "place" was open. If that doesn´t sound dodgy enough, just wait till you hear what happened next.

His friend sauntered along and took us to this place. I made small talk, starting off with: so your spanish/catalan must be fluent by now. The guy said no not at all, I´m from Hang Zhou and I´m unemployed. Hm.

We went to the dodgiest greasy spoon restaurant ever and tried to stomach the menu. It was really gross, we were ordering the spanish things on the menu, even though it was a mainlander gig and hoping it would turn out ok. I guess I didn´t help by saying there might be a sedative in the food, for when they cut out our kidneys and we wake up in an ice bath. Grease, and not at all Spanish. Our mood was really deflated and we all left, our Christmas eve dinner so revolting we all wanted to puke.

Thankfully I had been uncharacteristically resourceful and ripped the inflight guide on Barcelona on our easyjet flight and they recommended a club. It was very similar to the Ivy in Sydney and we spent some hours basking on the couches, sipping cocktails and ringing in the new year. Every cloud has a silver lining.

We had a bit of a sleep in today, it was a real task getting home and I was so cold that once in bed, I was really tempted not to leave. It´s afternoon of Christmas day now, I have booked us in for dinner at a nice place now... and we will probably be out soon for some sightseeing, since shops and the like are all closed today, as it is a day of ´fiesta´.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas! xxxooo