Christmas Day

On Christmas we had a helluva time trying to find breakfast. We woke up and I think had some fruit and chocolate croissants from the corner store while we watched American Christmas movies--The Grinch, Charlie Brown, and Rudolf, but that wasn't a lot of food. By late morning, we were out searching for an open restaurant. Some of them were tricky; they would have tables and signs outside, or other signs of life, but when we tried to go in, either the automatic doors wouldn't be on, or we'd get shooed out and told to come back later. Evidently no one was opening until afternoon. So we had to have Christmas breakfast at Starbucks, and it was like 20 euros for coffee and pastries and such. After that mishap we realized we should've tried to leave the room earlier and just gone the the ultra-expensive, but convenient and plentiful hotel restaurant breakfast. But it was too late.

Not many touristy things were open on Christmas, as expected, but the Sagrada Familia, a big church designed by architect Antoni Gaudi was, so we went there. I'm saving the pictures of that for next entry, though, as I'm putting all the Gaudi stuff together. The aquarium was also open relatively late, so after the SF, we went there. On the way, we saw these big ol' lion statues around a statue of some person who I forget who it was. No matter.

After the initial pictures of me with a lion, we found that some of the lions were anatomically detailed, so we took advantage.

Really, there's nothing like a good lion ball cup.

Having done with lion statues and their various parts, we continued out onto the marina, where the aquarium was situated.

We had to go through a mall to get to the aquarium, where we saw this guy, the caganer, "defecator." This is a popular aspect of nativity scenes in Catalonia, the region Barcelona is in. Apparently the folk belief is that if you include this dude, he'll shit you some good luck (traditionally in terms of the harvest, I believe), and if you don't, you get shit on, heh. 

The aquarium was really, really overpriced. It was like 17 euros per person, and I think it only took about an hour for us to get through it. There were no jellyfish, no sea mammals, and probably none of some other important types that I'm not thinking of right now. Some aquaria even have non-marine sections, like with bats and monkeys and stuff. This one was just kind of lame, although it did have a shark tank with person conveyor and some octopi.

Sharks are multipenised.

After the aquarium we wandered around the area and found a pizzeria to have lunch in. There is some fuzziness in both Ed's and my memories in terms of what happened over the next few hours. We definitely went back to the hotel, where I called my family for a bit, and then we went out to meet a friend of Ed's who used to work with him in England, but who moved back to Barcelona with his family. Now I remember. We were supposed to meet them at like ten, and went out a bit early to get some supper near the bar we were meeting them. But it was quite difficult to find anything open in that area, so we ended up at a "Mexican" restaurant that had pretty bad food, and unreasonably small portions, to boot. I think I ordered enchiladas, and the sauce was pink, and it took me like five minutes to eat them. It was bad. I had to fill up on mojitos that Ed's friend and his friend's friend bought me later. At  the second bar we went to, we played foosball, me and Ed against the natives. We sucked. I used to play it in Korea, but not often. When we mixed novices and veterans, it became more even of course, but my team won and then we were obligated to play three games against this other dude who was a stranger and his girlfriend. The chick wasn't very good, but the dude was frigging awesome, and to our shock, we won two out of three, by sheer luck, I guess.

It was an unusual Christmas, but not not fun.

Chocolate Museum, etc.

I think pretty much the first thing we did in Barcelona was go to the Museu de la Xocolata. It was decent, although a little difficult to figure out how to get into. It's in a little stone building, not very well marked, and you first walk into the chocolate store upon entering, which is confusing, because usually they sell you stuff last. You can see the museum through a glass wall while in the chocolate store, but it's not so clear how to get in right away. We eventually noticed a turnstile and a little sign, and got noticed by an employee, who sold us our tickets, which were the wrapping of a chocolate bar (with the chocolate bar included). It wasn't any stupid Hershey's bar, either; it was actually, good, dark chocolate, so I was pleased. Inside, they had all these displays, which seemed like they were supposed to be made of chocolate, but which didn't really appear that way. It all seemed more like plastic that was made to look like chocolate.

I think after a few minutes we saw some sign or something that indicated it really was all (or mostly) chocolate. Otherwise, what would be the point of the dioramas? Some of the stuff was made with white chocolate, which technically isn't chocolate, but I guess it allows for a bit of color. There were also several videos about chocolate going, as well as interactive video screens, most of which didn't work. Disappointing. I learned a lot about chocolate that day, but have forgotten most of it by now.

This is a famous mosaic lizard in Gaudi's Parc Guell. This one is chocolate. The other one is not. It's also bigger, and it has a happier expression. I think the drool in the model represents that it's a fountain?

Silhouette of chocolate nudity:

Totally Bob Esponja (and Patrick, though they don't give his Spanish name, BOOOO-urns):

A completely innocent-looking scene from Bambi:

NOT SO INNOCENT:

Nothing like some good ol' Spanglish to get you going in the morning: 

Boring, although I do like models, containers, and books:

Chocolate Jebus = chocasphemy?

I feel bad for his horse.

After going through the museum, we ended back up in the chocolate store, where I felt it would be a good idea to buy a confection. They had a lot of stuff, and it took like 15 minutes at least to decide on a chocolate cookie, and then to kind of wish I'd gotten a chocolate brownie thing, although the cookie was pretty good. Everything was expensive, though, naturally.

After lunch or something we went to the Picasso museum, but we didn't take any pictures, because that's even sillier than taking pictures of chocolate displays. Anyway, I also learned a lot about Picasso which I immediately forgot, except for the fact that he had this one hilarious title, which was "Two Figures and a Cat," which is a total understatement of the painting, haha. This museum was also laid out somewhat confusingly, but was stone and had a lot of cavelike aspects, like a cavey bathroom, so that was good. I wanted to buy a souvenir, but I'm poor and nothing in the gift shop was good enough to spend all my money on.

This is an ad we kept seeing everywhere in town of a chick spitefully licking her knee at a bottle of something or other. We made up stories about like the jealousy she was trying to evoke in her cheating bottle by fraternizing with her knee. What a suite ad. I wonder if it sells anything.