Barcelona, Spain

Before I knew it- Andrej was flying into San Francisco International Airport and we were boarding our 7:45pm red-eye to London, Great Britain. We left San Francisco at 7:45pm on Tuesday August 7th, and arrived in London Wednesday at 2:00pm. We had a small layover in London until 4:20pm arriving in Barcelona, Spain at 7:30 that night. We checked into our room we were renting from a Spaniard named Alex in the "El Raval" area of Barcelona. It was conveniently placed in the middle of the city, near many of the major attractions and definitely close to the coastline!!

After checking in, we set out to explore around the apartment and Raval area and have some dinner. We didn't get far from our apartment before we found a lovely outdoor restaurant. It was late in the evening by this point, but people were just now getting out for their dinner and it was very busy.

There was a very expansive drink menu, so I ordered a "Caprisima" which was absolutely the best drink of my entire vacation! I'm not sure what was in it, but it tasted like fresh grapes. Not that fake grape taste you get from a grape cola, but real grapes. Delish!

The first day was one of our busiest! We took the city sightseeing tour through the "red line" bus that allowed you to get off at any stop you liked and tour around and then get back on when you were ready to continue. The buses came equipped with English audio translation so you knew where you were and what you were looking at along the route. To see pictures of the various places in Barcelona we visited you can checkout my photobucket album. (All Europe pictures are in here)

That night we had pre-purchased tickets to the Rapido party for the worldwide gay circuit party event in Barcelona. It was completely off the hook. Unbelievable. Lots and lots of great looking guys having drinks and dancing to some great music. We had a lot of fun dancing the night away and even met some fun people from Austria.

The main dance floor, before it got too busy. The club had three levels, and I was up in the balcony area taking this picture:

On our way home from the party I was shocked at how well lit the streets were and how many people were out and about well into the early morning! I felt just fine and safe walking back to the apartment.

Friday was BEACH DAY! We slept in way past what we should've... I think 3pm! So we had to get a move on down to the beach before we lost all the great sun. While Andrej was splashing in the ocean I picked us up some refreshments; Mojito and Sangria drinks. Yum.

After our sun bathing and splashing a bit, we had dinner on the boardwalk. Here's a picture up the boardwalk from our seats on the patio.

Saturday I got up bright and early (well, not too early, 7am) for a jog along the Barcelona boardwalk and beach. You can see my jog and the pictures en route at my runkeeper post. I took some nice pictures along the way too. My favorite was of the Columbus statue, pointing west.

Once Andrej was up, we did some shopping for swimsuits for the quickly approaching pool party. Andrej had forgotten his trunks, so he wanted to buy something nice for the party. Fortunately he found some that he liked and we headed out for the afternoon circuit pool party. This pictures is before the event got going.

This picture is from when the event was in full swing.

We left a little early and went to grab some dinner on the way home. We found a nice Italian style restaurant along the way. Andrej had a pizza/calzone thing and I had grilled asparagus and some pasta. We changed at home and then headed back for the main event that night. It was a center the size of the Idaho center with a main DJ stage up front filled to the brim with guys dancing and having a blast!

We didn't stay too late since we had a 9:00am flight to Split, Croatia the next morning. I think we got a couple of hours of sleep before we had to be up for the flight- but Spain was a complete blast and we enjoyed every minute!