We’ve Been Discovered! And We’ve Discovered It’s Hard To Cook At A Hostel…

This morning we met up with Jill and Micah again and decided to walk Las Ramblas, a popular pedestrian street in central Barcelona, not too far from our hostel and known for its vendors, street performers, restaurants and cafes.  Walking west from our hostel, we intersected the middle of  Las Ramblas and decided to walk down towards the beach and then back up towards the city center. 

Even though it was fairly early, the street was busy with pedestrians and numerous amusing street performers.  After checking out the street performers and various pets for sale (including guinea pigs, bunny rabbits, turtles, roosters, and chicks), we headed to the Mercat de la Boqueria, a large and colorful fresh market just off of Las Ramblas.  Yesterday, we had talked about buying groceries at a fresh market across the street from the flats where we were staying and cooking lunch together before Jill and Micah headed to the airport, so we figured we might as well check out this market while we were here.

We started by stopping at a fruit vendor and getting some pineapple and strawberries that were cut and ready to eat (they even wrap it up with a little fork for you!).  It wasn’t the greatest fresh fruit we’ve ever had, but it was pretty sweet and very good value (only 1 euro for a quarter pineapple and 2 euro for a big box of strawberries). When we finished our fruit, we systematically walked aisle to aisle and perused the entire market, although decided to buy our groceries for lunch at the other market so we wouldn’t have to carry everything around while walking.  We picked up some fresh fruit drinks when we found a stand that sold them for only 1 euro (as opposed to 2 at the other stands) and then headed in the direction of the hostel.

Before going to get groceries to make lunch, we decided to get waffles with ice cream at a place Jill and Micah had been to when they first got here.  Waffles with ice cream had been on the agenda for the past two evenings, but by the time we got back from our sightseeing we were always too tired to go out again!  So, even though it was still early afternoon, we decided that if we didn’t have ice cream now, Jill and Micah wouldn’t have a chance to get it before leaving.   Since the ice cream place is right by the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia – Barcelona’s most well-known cathedral (the Sagrada Familia sometimes inaccurately comes up when talking about Barcelona’s cathedral’s, but it is not in fact a cathedral) and only about a minute away from our hostel - and none of us had really stopped to check it out, we decided to eat our ice cream on the steps and admire the neo-Gothic facade.

As we were finishing, a young guy and girl came by asking for girls that spoke English.  We weren’t sure what they wanted so we hesitated to say yes, but I felt like being helpful so I decided to tell them I speak English.  They turned out to be film students from the UK, here to complete a project and they needed to find girls to read a few “breakup” lines for them. I have no acting skills whatsoever, but I agreed to give it a try and they handed Jill and I a list of lines (such as “I’m just not ready for a serious relationship”) to choose from. I couldn’t help but laugh a little when I read the list and I asked what kind of film they were making and the guy said “it’s sort of like a self-documentary” to which I replied “that’s kind of sad” and he laughed a little and agreed that it was kind of sad.  I decided to read “You’re great, but I think we’d be better off as friends” (or something like that, I can’t remember the exact wording) and it took about 5 attempts to get me to say the line seriously enough.  I think this will be the beginning and end of my acting career

After picking up some salmon and frozen tortellini at the market by our flat (which turned out to be smaller than the Mercat de la Boqueria and most of the vendors closed early!) we headed back to cook.  We didn’t see anywhere in the market to buy olive oil and spices so we had to rely on the stuff that was in the kitchen – which resulted in two flavor choices – pepper and salt – and no olive oil, just sunflower oil.  A more pressing problem was the fact that the stove (which you have to light with a match or lighter) wouldn’t allow us to lower the heat level without shutting off the gas supply, so we (actually Micah, since he was doing the cooking) were stuck cooking on high heat.  Add in the fact that the cookware and utensils provided are really crappy (the non-stick pan had pretty much lost its teflon coating and the knives were the worst I’ve ever used) and the more Micah cooked, the more we questioned whether this was a good idea. (editor’s note: You mean eating Teflon is bad?? Oh no….what have I been doing??)

It turned out to taste pretty good, especially when you consider what we had to work with, but that was totally thanks to Micah and Jill!  It will definately be the first and last time I use a kitchen at a hostel to make a full meal