Barcelona - Day 2

After a restless night because of the sore throat, I woke up groggy- headed and like an utter fool gulped a big spoonful of cough syrup before breakfast. And by the time I sat at the breakfast table, the cough syrup had kicked in I felt exactly like I had had two joints, in succession. And like that I began my first real day of sigh-seeing in Barcelona.

(You shall learn later that how harmful a condition like this can be besides feeling drugged and uncomfortable)

We wanted this to be more organized than Brussels and Paris so we thought, ‘hmm…we’ll make our own sight-seeing plan and stick to it’.

If you look at the tourist map of Barcelona, you will see hajaar monuments all over the map with not-very-self-explanatory names like: Esglesia de Sant Pau del Camp, Pl. del Rei, Pl. Fossar de les Moreses, and so you think, ‘fuck the plan, lets go with the flow’. So we did exactly that.

Catalunya (kaata-loon-ya) is the central area, which is surrounded by maximum landmarks/tourist spots so we decided to first go there and then think what all we can see. Catalunya was on the way to Barceloneta, where we had been previous night, so we had no problem reaching there.

The dilemma began once we reached Catalunya. It was a square with a two statues and a fountain place. Where the heck were all firkin monuments mentioned in the map? So, we haw-hummed and clicked idle pics like these:

Then, we sat down with the map again and looked left and right and reached no conclusion. Then, suddenly a familiar name: Pl. Picasso. Oh yes, of course…Picasso’s Museum! And then close to it …ahem…Museum of Erotica (???!!!) This seemed suddenly more attractive than the Picasso now and I thought, ‘lets see how can sex be museum’ized! and while we will be there, we will also peek in to look at what is the great deal about Picasso!'

But have I ever stuck to a plan? No.

To reach Picasso Museum, we would have to take another train and go backwards to Jaume. So just to commemorate the fact that we had been to Placa Catalunya at Barcelona, we thought of clicking a few pics and almost accidentally reached the La Ramblas .

Now, if a Spanish or anyone familiar with Barcelona is reading this will definitely be so disgusted with our lack of intelligence, as La Ramblas is not really so hidden…I don’t know may be it was my dopey cough syrup or we were just spatially disturbed because of seeing so many cities in a short time that it never occurred to us that La Ramblas could be one of the places we should first ask about if we were at Catalunya already.

Anyhow, throughout walking along La Ramblas, there is never a dull moment. Both the sides of the place are people such as these

Tricks- like this guy was juggling the ball with his feet and showing some good footwork.


This lady here, dressed as a statue, but if you drop a coin, she’ll move or something.

Another of the statue types but he was really good. Dint move an inch…coin or no coin.

And there were a whole lot of more interesting things like a Tango performance. There are more videos than pictures.

But basically, we strolled through this wonderland sorta and reached another riot – the local food market. As we had hogged on a lot of ‘complimentary’ breakfast, we were in no mood to eat, but still the place looked inviting and we walked in.

And, boy, what a riot of colours:

Exotic fruits such as these – never seen the red ones before – on the left..have u?


Candy land – one

Candy land – 2

Didn’t eat any of this but such a feast for the eyes.

Before we knew, we were at the other end of La Ramblas, at the Mirador de Colom– which is basically a huge pillar besides which we rested. I was almost half asleep and CK was again on a picture clicking spree, I turned and looked wherever she asked me to.

We then reached the port of Barcelona and sat there too for sometime, looking at the fish and doing nothing.

And then it dawned that we actually had planned to visit the Museum of art and eroticas so we picked ourselves up and started to walk quickly back to Catalunya Metro station.

And this is when the after effects of dopey cough syrup really showed its ugly face. As we walked hurriedly towards the station, there was a bunch of people standing around a guy playing the gamble where you guess under which the ball is (showed in movies a lot… a very common way of conning people)…I didn’t mean to stand there but there was a lot of noise and people were jeering and cheering and just for a second I stood there and jokingly gestured like ‘there, the ball is under that one’.

Almost in a split of second, a man who was performing the trick thrusted a 50 Euros note in my hand and pulled me in the middle of the scene and asked me to put my foot on the box and said something in spanish. I did as he said and wanted to say ‘but I am not playing’..but before I could say anything in defense suddenly a tourist looking girl from the audience appeared from no where and shook my arm and said

‘you have won…now give some money…and I said ‘for what?’ she said, ‘he give you 50 euros, give money, give money, u have won’….

the whole crowd was looking at me and shouting
‘u have won, you can will get double, give him some money’

it was so overwhelming and I really was in a stupor and trying to figure out what’s going on. I wanted to wrench my hand free and run and CK was suddenly no where in sight. The girl kept tugging and asking for money and just to get rid of all the people, I shoved my hand in my purse and dug out whatever I laid my hands on (unforch – 20 bucks) and handed over.

The lady next to me shouted again

‘you have won, give more money, more money’

While the man was collecting more money from ppl around, the girl next to me pushed my foot and showed me that under the box was the ball, and said

‘See, I know, we have won, give more money, it will daabul’

and I told her

‘you give more money, I don’t want to’

and she also took out some from her purse. All this time I am bizzarely looking here and there and wondering ‘how the hell I got into this and and where is the 50 bucks this guy just gave me’

before I knew, the guy had pushed my foot to another box and was showing me that my foot was on the wrong box and I had in fact lost the bet (which I had never placed!)

Suddenly, I heard CK is calling me in panic and literally dragged me out of there.
I felt more humiliated than feeling sorry about the money lost. It had not sunk in. But later it did and it just made me feel worse. Fuckers!! But as an after thought, what a plan! well executed!

Later CK also told me, when I was getting pulled into all this mess, she was cornered by four men who asked her ‘ Pakistani? Bangladeshi? Indian?, we have a room around the corner, you want to go there?’

So, all bad things that happen to tourists, simultaneously, in one shot, just like that out of no where.

We just wanted to rush out of La Ramblas and boarded the train to Jaume to see a more civilized world.

Picasso Museum is a bit of a disappointment after Van Gogh… mainly because most of the information about each painting is in Spanish, French and Italian.

Although, there was information about various phases in Picasso’s life described in English, it was difficult to relate the information to the paintings. But it was nice to have seen in real life the masterpieces of the two most brilliant painters in the world.

But going to Jaume turned out to be nice as we got to see the real streets of Barcelona, the typical Spanish homes.

Don’t know if you can make out from this picture here but it was nice to walk here.

We were pretty exhausted and were in no mood to look up the Museum of Erotica in the map and a little hesitant to ask people around. I guess the incident at La Ramblas had shaken us up a little and we were not really willing to trust anyone around. So, we turned around and left to have dinner and some Sangria to calm our nerves.