Barcelona- Random thoughts because it´s affordable...

Hola everyone,

I am sitting in the best/worst Internet cafe in Barcelona I think...I don´t know the name of it, but I will find out and recommend it anyway...it´s 50 centimos for a half hour which is pretty cheap for this city as far as I can tell, but in a dungenous basement with no air circulation and smoking a la the 70´s in N.American Dairy Queen´s...so I decided that even though I wrote yesterday, it´s too good of an op. to not take up at 50 cents.

First of all, I am going to put out there to anyone reading this that might have some advice for me....I would like to get more random shots of people that I see all around me...I find that I am just not brave enough to either ask, or to photograph them outright without their permission... the other night in Sevilla, we made asses of ourselves, trying to photograph this woman sitting at a table two down from us...we would focus my Minolta SLR at the very non-exciting balcony above her head and then at the last minute bring the camera down and try to get her without her noticing...she was either very flattered or very unobservant as we had to take about 3 pictures using our "method"...how do any travellers out there get pictures of the people that make up the landscape without offending or ruining the spontanaiety that makes those pics so great to begin with??

I feel like I´ve been in Barcelona for a week instead of just under 2 days...yesterday we got in and with Alex´s cousin we headed down to Las Ramblas and went to a great restaurant that serves Galician food...we walked and walked and then gave into siesta to come back to the excellent apartment we have for a couple of days to sleep off the memories of the train ride...I can´t get over how we lucked out with this place to stay...we were told that it would be uncomfortable and I had visions of 5 pot-smoking guys walking over us sleeping on floors in a tiny room and 1 unusable washroom...this apartment is luxury though!..I have counted 5 bedrooms so far and a lot of unmarked, closed doors unexplored...huge kitchen and the best thing of all is the front enclosed sun terrace that we get as our room that spans about 24 ft across with a view of the Mediterranean, a partial view of Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia and a super deluxe 60´s couch to sleep on...today all of us ventured out in search of the ultimate "tourist" day in Barcelona...I realize our ambition when 7 hours later we had managed to see "only" the Sagrada Familia which is beyond amazing in person and the Museu Picasso...I will write a little more on these as it was very worth it to spend almost 3 hours in each...we had originally planned on doing a bus tour and seeing the Museum of Contemporary Arts, but these places deserve more attention than just visiting for the sake of visiting I think...

We will do our best to tackle more of it tommorrow before our friend leaves to head back to Canada but for now, it will be a relaxing night writing, reading and just enjoying being off our feet!

Must run, but would like to elaborate a little on the experience of being in the Sagrada Familia...here is a link for anyone who would like to see some of his amazing fantasy-like architecture...enjoy!

Adios,

Savannah