Gaudi, El Born, and Ringing in the New Year with Style!

We were staying in El Born, a slightly hipster, slightly chic neighborhood about a 20 minute walk from La Rambla, the avenue famous for shopping, La Boqueria, a "super mercado" like none we've seen in the states,  and the notorious pick pocket-teers of Spain. 

Despite it's distance from the tourist sites, this was definitely a place to get down and boogie and especially to eat well.  In fact, residents of some of the apartments had large banners saying the equivalent of "Let Us Sleep!"  "Stop the Noise!" "Respect!"  Needless to say, we loved this neighborhood and quickly found our favorite desayuno spot. 

With its winding streets, delicious tapas, razor clams, barnacles, jamon iberico, and queso de oveja we were pretty much in love with Barcelona!

Some of our favorite hotspots were, of course, anything with Gaudi stamped on it.  We were in awe of his creativity and ability to seamlessly incorporate aspects of nature into his master pieces, Sagrada Familia, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo, and Park Guell.  My favorite was Casa Mila; the winding maze of a roof was unlike any other I'd ever experienced.  And the audio guide provided a good blend of historical context and symbolism, really helping us get into the mind of Gaudi.

One of my favorite nights in Barcelona was of course... New Year’s Eve!  As it was Day 3 of wearing the same clothes, we finally gave in and bought some essentials.  New underwear never felt so good.  Sorry, I tend to lean towards to TMI in my blogs.... 

We started the night out with some sangria and brought a bottle of cava to the Plaza de Catalonia where there was a light display of snowflakes painted on the side of one of the grandiose buildings surrounding the Plaza.  People from all around the world were in one place to celebrate the coming of 2015.  It was spectacular hearing so many languages chattering around us at once; French, Spanish, German, Mandarin, and Swedish even, and of course English.  Funny as it may be, on New Year’s Eve, I ended up practicing my French more than my Spanish. 

As we raced down to the Plaza from El Borne, following a stream of people yelling and cheering as they made their way to the Plaza, it felt like we were amidst one giant party in the streets!

We made it to Plaza de Catalonia with grapes in one hand and a bottle of cava in the other.  See the Spanish tradition is to wear red underwear (which I successfully managed to do with my new ‘essentials’ purchase) and to eat 12 grapes, one for each chime of the new year. 

Eric was so sweet; he happened to something a bit different.  When the ball dropped and the hour hit midnight he fed me a grape and said "Here's to love.  And another for our first 3 months of marriage.  Here’s to marrying my best friend.”  And then I fed him a grape and said, “Here's to ambition.”  We went on like that for about 12 grapes.  I can so clearly remember Eric’s sweet smile and caring eyes holding me close and repeating each endearing word so sincerely.  It was one of the most precious moments that I'll ever remember.

I know, I know....  I’ll try not to be too mooshy gooshy, but this is our honeymoon for goodness sake!

 

While we were whispering 'sweet nothings' to each other (**That's for the Pitt crowd reading this.), a group of French guys were doing cartwheels in a circle right in front of us.  This is where my French really came in handy.  They were so curious about who we were and what we were doing the rest of the night so we just started chatting and eventually they had challenged Eric and I to a push up competition.  So there we were down on the ground, first Eric and then I battling it out with these random French guys in the middle of Plaza de Catalonia.  We’re quite the romantic couple, eh?

Not sure how that one happened…

Eventually we parted ways and made our way down to the harbor with a pit stop at a dance club to boogie down for a couple of hours.  (**This is where we took the picture with the red clown nose and vampire teeth, in case you were wondering.)

We walked all around the harbor and found another restaurant where Eric bought me a rose and insisted that I go up and tell the flower selling guy how nice he is. **Random, I know… that word pretty much sums up our New Year’s Eve festivities.  After doing so. we ventured off looking for some more food, and doner kebab was just the right fit!  We ran into another group of French guys looking for some partners in crime and we all grabbed a doner kebab together.  We made it home around 5 o’ clock in the morning, and slept for a long while the following day.   It was a fabulous way to ring in the new year!