Barcelona

Okay so the title sounds kind of ho-hum but that's what I'm writing about. Barcelona is great. I get unhappy when people we know say barcelona is dirty and there's too much dog poo on the streets, saying that madrid is way better, etc. There's a simple solution to that which I discovered this weekend: get out of El Raval and the Ciutat Vella during the day! My aunt and uncle are in Barcelona this week and they are staying at a hotel right off of Passieg de Colom, near the Barceloneta metro stop. With all of the studio work due this week, I have been working from 9AM to around 1 every morning, then going to meet them and have lunch/explore the city, then get back to work from 6 until like 3AM when my 6 hours of sleep commences. It's been like that for 5 days. I t may sound bad but walking around the nice parts of Barcelona during the day at a relaxed pace for the first time since august and september really helps my sanity. It gets my mind thinking of other things and lets me reflect on the city....like, did you know that along the port lots of people from around europe are gearing up to have a boat racing competition here on the 11th? We were walking along and looking at all of the sail boats they are racing....they are huge. I even mentioned how dirty many people think barcelona is and they said they thought it was really clean (they havent been through much of ciutat vella..)

So I guess my point is to walk around the city more, and you won't go insane!