I have returned to America! Here are some things.
1) I had a lot of TV to watch when I got back. I am mostly caught up, down to just this week's Wednesday and Thursday shows. It's been hard, I'm not going to lie. Some stuff had better start getting canceled, or I will never be able to leave the apartment again.
2) On my flight from Barcelona to France, I sat next to the cousin of the character Janice from Friends. She was such an Ugly American, and coupled with her annoying voice, that made for a very cringe-y flight for me. No ice for her water? The French! Sigh.
3) Barcelona was very clean. They had people out in tiny cars doing trash collection and street cleaning all the time. In contrast to the cleanliness, there was a lot of graffiti.
4) I have a terrible cold. HF suggested that it was the Spanish Flu.
5) The subway was incredibly easy to use. The city as a whole was very navigable. But the commuter rail type train was impossible to figure out, which is unfortunate, since that is how you get to the airport.
6) In Barcelona, I ordered fisherman's paella, since the city is proud
of its seafood. It came with two whole prawns, and two whole things
that looked like tiny lobsters (I think they were langostinos). I
didn't want to be rude, so I felt I had to eat one of each. I had no
idea how to disassemble them, but I managed. It was really gross. Don't click on that thumbnail unless you are ok with sea creatures.
7) Something I did not order in Barcelona, but wanted to: Plate of Ham. Really, it's a plate of jamon de pais, which is really more like prosciutto. Just a plate of it, laid out in one layer.
8) Barcelona may be clean, but sometimes, not so much with the people. I mean, anywhere in Europe really, you are likely to encounter some serious B.O. (Here, too, of course, especially on places like the train, so that you can't escape.) Universality does not make it less stinky though.
9) People dressed very casually in Barcelona, surprisingly so, given the excellent shopping and proximity to Paris. Lots of jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, etc. And all the women wore flats! I really saw maybe 10 pairs of heels, and usually that was boots. But the hair. My greatest regret is not getting a picture of the hair. Two major "styles:" Dying your head one of two shades of unnatural red (orangey or purplish), or giving yourself a streaky, overly-layered longish mullet. Even more confusing was that only half of the women had done either of these, which means that they looked at all the other ladies with their lovely, simply cut hair, often brunette, often wavy, and thought: "I mean, that looks ok, but I think I should cut off great hunks of mine and dye it with cranberry juice."
10) The big, semi-open-air markets were cool, and filled with all these beautiful and interesting fruits, candy, peppers, spices, and vegetables. And then I saw a cow's head.
