HELLO ALL. I’m surviving my last two days of traveling, here in Barcelona, with the worst bout of food poisoning/traveler’s diarrhea/something I picked up in Morocco. Okay, I lied, it’s certainly not the worst I’ve ever had. But it’s also putting a slight damper (no pun intended EWWWWWWW) on the end of this all (haha END like BUTT), and I’m sure you are also very pleased to find that I really don’t filter this stuff as I write it and you now know more about my digestive system than you ever thought possible.
After arriving in Barcelona, I had to spend about an hour and half on public transportation between the train and the bus before getting to my Airbnb on the east side of the city. I met Kiwi guy there, and we immediately went out to find food because I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was STARVING. Travel days are tough and it was pretty late at this point, so we grabbed some groceries at the store right downstairs, and passed out.
The next day, we went to the park right by our place. It is called Parc Guell and is beautiful and so lovely to walk around. There is a section that you have to pay like, nine euros to get into, so we just did the free part, which was huge and had plenty to see. It was warm and sunny, and there were street performers everywhere – the coolest was this girl that was playing a sort of upside-down steel drum thing with her hands. Clearly I don’t know the name of this instrument.
Afterwards, we walked down into the city a bit in search of food. We ended up at this tapas place where I had possibly the most yummy nachos ever (yeah, yeah, it’s not Spanish food, but I wanted nachos, deal with it). We also passed a bunch of people either celebrating or protesting something…? Anyone know what yellow ribbons in Spain represent?
Possibly the dumbest choice we made was going into this temporary tent/building thing that was advertising Samsung Pay, which is apparently a thing. We got free popcorn and cotton candy, and people tried to sell us shit. I really wanted to win a teddy bear but that was mostly impossible. Then it started raining, sooo we went home.
That night, we cooked dinner, and by we I mean Kiwi Guy; I chopped some vegetables. I wasn’t feeling the greatest, but it was really yummy pasta so whatever. I had to lie down pretty early and rest my horribly cramping stomach, but damn that was a good dinner.
The next morning it was still raining, but more importantly, it was Kiwi Guy’s birthday! Also we both felt kind of terrible between my stomach and a migraine on his end. We force fed ourselves, stuffed some medication down our throats, and dragged ourselves out of bed when it finally stopped raining. Our main goal was just to see La Sagrada Familia, which is this giant church that they’ve been building for like a zillion years.
Our first stop, however, was the pharmacy, where we learned to call “activated charcoal” just “carbon” while in Spain. And then the next stop was a dog park because I have a problem where I’m obsessed with other people’s dogs. We hung out there for a bit and watched all the perfect doggos running all over the place, and made friends with a gorgeous black dog who kept bringing his ball over to us to throw.
Eventually we got to the church, but it cost fifteen euros to go inside which is just ridiculous. So we looked at the outside and took pretty pictures! But now we were downtown and could explore everything else. We accidentally ended up in this park with a very dried up fountain. But the fountain had these big gold people on it which was cool! Highlights include a goose that was hanging out on a ledge and biting everyone, and another pond that was clearly less of a touristy spot, but with a depressing sculpture of a woman in the middle.
We split a paella for lunch (so delicious, even though I’m officially vegetarian now and only ate like, the rice and peas) and then found the Arc de Triomf, which I’ve heard of before so I figured it was important. It was not only very pretty, but also according to Wikipedia was the main access gate for the 1888 Barcelona World Fair, which I know now is a thing that happened. See, traveling is educational. It also led into a park lined with palm trees and lots of happy looking people.
We walked around the city some more, stopped in some super cool shops, and were generally having a really lovely evening…until I started feeling SUPER BAD. Like, needed to go home NOW bad. Ugh. Oh, so FUN FACT: buses in Barcelona apparently stop like every half a block. So it takes forever to get anywhere via bus. But EVENTUALLY we made it home so I could poop and lie down. I also made the executive decision to finally break into my emergency Cipro which I have on me while traveling to stop…this. I really hate to take antibiotics if I don’t need them, but I only have a few days left and I want to enjoy them, plus I have a ten hour plane ride, plus I have a wedding to go to. I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE, DAMMIT.
As terrible as all of this has been, it has really been a blessing, because it helped my creative juices flow (no pun intended…EW OH GOD) and led to to my greatest masterpiece to date:
The Poop Poem
You gurgle, you gasp, you want to come out
But I cannot let you, o me, o my.
You make me cramp, you’re a horrible bout
But you’ll stay in me, o me, o my.
I can feel you flowing, and I start to feel doubt
So I squeeze my cheeks, o me, o my.
Oh please, oh please, just don’t spout
I hold my breath, I want to die.
ANYWAY! This morning I woke up feeling no better but also no worse, so I guess at this point that’s good. We went to the beach, which was incredible. Just being on a beach in EARLY MARCH is like a miracle in my world. And it was like, hot. I got SUNBURNED, guys. Super exciting stuff.
Now we are in our favorite spot – you guessed it – McDonald’s. I’m drinking mint tea because anything else will probably kill me right now and secretly counting down the hours until I can lie down again at a reasonable hour.