Barcelona Highlights!

May 24 – June 21, 2017

*It was very much a city!  As in many people ignored us, didn’t make eye contact, didn’t say hello.  Where we’re from, pretty much everyone makes eye contact, and we nod, wave, bark, or say “hello.”  So Jo never knew when to be friendly or keep to herself, raising her social awkwardness to an all-time high. 😀  That being said, Jo met and spoke with quite a few friendly people.  And everyone just loved lil ol’ me.

*The juxtaposition of the Frogger-esque traffic immediately next to the slow, laid-back atmosphere of an outdoor café, where you’ll find humans dining and conversing for hours.

* Gma losing her passport…then her license…then her passport again.  Never gets old!

*Gma realizing she got drunk at a Burger King and having to sit there until she sobered up.

*Couldn’t sleep one night.  We went out on the balcony and witnessed a failed attempt at an HJ take place on the sidewalk below.  They were drunk and clunky.  The guy handled the gal’s breast like he was trying to screw an oil filter back on, then patted it like he would a dog on its head.  “Good boob…now stay.  Staaaay.”  The gal batted his hand away but then zeroed in on his Crown Jewels.

At this point, Jo wished she had saved some of that popcorn from earlier.  We chuckled to ourselves and settled in to see where this was going.  Now, we couldn’t actually see his Jewels, but there was no mistaking the dirty deed.  Except the position of her hand made it appear as though she was turning him into a puppet or stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey.  It was hilarious!  We held up score cards, a 7 from Jo, a 6 from me.  Valiant effort on their part and highly entertaining!

*Returning from Montserrat, looking out the train window and seeing an old guy in a Speedo puttering around in his vegetable garden.

*Dirty movies and candy bars being sold at the outside newspaper-magazine stand.  ‘Cause we always get a hankering for periodicals and sweets whilst we observe dirty flicks.

*Pig carcasses hanging everywhere!  I was in Heaven.  “Hi, I’m Penny.  And it’s been 3 hours, 22 minutes, and 15 seconds since I coveted a pig carcass.”

*Homeless person offering me a chicken bone, and me snatching it out of their hands like I hadn’t eaten in weeks.  Jo had to wrench it from my greedy jaws.

*Jo almost literally shitting her pants when she couldn’t find a public restroom anywhere.

*Condom machines outside.  Can’t find a public restroom when ya’ need one, but in case you wanna partake in ye olde favorite pastime, condoms overfloweth.  Restrooms be damned!

*How different of a vibe each neighborhood had from one to the other, some reminiscent of New York, some of France or Italy, Gothic and Gaudi, some who spoke no English and some who said “hello” in response to your “hola.”

*Spanish-Irish concert in the park and kids playing soccer on a Sunday.

*DelaCrem ice-cream, made fresh daily and from all natural ingredients.  That cherry ice-cream is really crushed up cherries and milk.  Imagine that!  And I give the vanilla two paws up!  Jo lugged my fat ass in my backpack all the way to this place, thinking they wouldn’t allow dogs inside…but they did.

Afterwards, we wandered around and saw an amazing band jamming out some Irishy-Renaissance-type of music, and the courtyard was full of humans doing this awesome dance! Love, love, love the Star Wars guy with suspenders. 🙂  Anyone have any ideas what kind of dance this is?  If so, let me know in the comments, please!

*Guys in business suits riding motorcycles.

*Humans playing tennis/badminton at 1:00 a.m. in the lot next to the market.

*GETTING LOST!!  Jo gets lost in her own thoughts, so of course she would get lost in Barcelona.  It was one moment of “Where the hell are we??” to the next.

*A Spanish tourist stopping Jo to ask her for directions.  HA!  You’re better off just wandering aimlessly, buddy.

*Taking an hour to figure out how to order a pizza online.  Wanting to order the “goat pizza” but finding out they don’t deliver until much later at night.  We still wonder what goat pizza would taste like.  Maybe it was a typo, and it was really goat “cheese” pizza.  Guess we’ll never know.

*The last week and a half being so hot (no AC, broken fan, just the balcony doors open), Jo had to strip down to her skivvies, and we both sprawled out on the couch, two pitiful Jabba the Hutts melting in the heat.  Then we had a skivvy dance party!  I wasn’t quite sure what Jo wanted me to do when she grabbed my paws and tried to dance with me.  She soon gave up and danced by herself while I wagged my tail in time to the music.

*Bananas here taste like pineapple!

*Hamburger meat from the store that smells like Spam and tastes like meatloaf.  Not necessarily bad…not necessarily good.

*Conversing with Carlos in Spanish in the wee morning hours.  He saw me and immediately stopped to pet me and talk with Jo.  He didn’t speak any English, yet he was the only person Jo could actually understand and converse relatively well with.  Maybe it was his accent, or maybe he spoke slow enough for her.

Either way, he was an interesting fella, a boat captain who had a dog like me when he was younger.  They talked about where they were both from, traveling, his ex who smoked and drank too much, how he doesn’t smoke or drink but he loves food.  Yo también, Carlos…yo también.  Or at least that’s what Jo thought he said.  Her Spanish is crap, after all.  He gave Jo his number.  She didn’t call.  But she’ll never forget his jovial face and how kind he was to us.

*Roque, our Peruvian pizza delivery guy.  He spoke English and Spanish and got a good laugh out of Jo calling herself an American(o) instead of (a).  Hey, some days Jo is manlier than others.  I can attest to that.  He also gave Jo her first double-cheeked European kiss.  The cheeks on her face, of course. 😉

*Caught in a downpour in El Gotic on our way to our nude sketching class.

*No stray animals (cats or otherwise) to be seen anywhere.  We were told, “There are no cats because there are no rats.”  Fair enough.

*No wind chimes hanging from anybody’s balcony.  Where we come from, wind chimes are everywhere!

*Waking up to the smell of baking pizza and roasting chicken wafting through our balcony doors.

*Watching CSI; The Simpsons; and Murder, She Wrote in Spanish.  After awhile, we were thinking in Spanish.  I even bark in Spanish now.

*Speaking of Murder, She Wrote, people need to wise up and stay the hell away from Jessica Fletcher.  Dead bodies just plop into her lap whenever she rolls into town!

*The shopkeeper who came out to specifically see me because he loves dogs so much and remarked on how clean I was.  He was very friendly!

*Group of elderly ladies playing cards in a restaurant.

*The sound of what could only be described as a Spanish Glenn Miller echoing through the apartment stairwell while waiting for the elevator.

*Peanuts with rock salt on them!  Not like that powdery salt crap in the US.

*Jo being forced to grocery shop with me in my backpack because I couldn’t stand to be left alone in the apartment.

*The cacophony of car horns that transforms into a melody

*A drinking game, where every time an ambulance or police siren is heard, take a swig!

*Birds that sound like rats.  If it was a seagull, we’ve never heard one sound like that before.

*On our last night in Barcelona, while out n’ about doing laundry, had a wonderful conversation with Joanne, a Korean lady who lives and works in Barcelona and was kind enough to offer us a place to stay if we find our way back to this awesome city.  Thanks so much, Joanne!

*Oddball commercials, like a group of people around a table bonding over Mahou beer, showing off the tats they got of the beer.  Another with a guy shaving his chest in the shower, then camera cuts to a sheep with no chest hair.  Then the guy takes the razor “downtown,” and suddenly the sheep has no hair at all.  Another commercial where I could have sworn they said “joder” (f*ck).

*Getting my very own pet passport!  The vet was so charming (Dr. Laia Cambronero at Clinica Veterinaria Gran Via), and I really appreciated her helping us out.  We had some good laughs, and Jo learned that braids/pigtails are called trenzas (s/l “trenthas”).  Plus she scored a hug and another double-cheeked kiss!

*I made an actual dog friend!  Her name was Sosa (I think that’s what the human said).  She looked similar to a Pyrenees.

*Then I met my….doggleganger!  A seemingly benign dog who looked like me!  But brown in color and with a longer tail.  I had such a good experience with Sosa and other dogs that I felt confident I could make friends with this one too.  We said our hellos, and as I was leaving…she attacked!

Latched on to me freakin’ face, she did!  We rolled around on the ground, a squirming mass of light vs dark.  Jo and the other owner managed to separate us.  We were lucky and came away virtually unscathed, myself with just a couple of puncture/scratch marks near my eye.  It would have been a sad day indeed if I had lost an eye…or worse! Now Jo is going to have to retrain and work with me so I don’t associate dogs with negative experiences.  She’s got her work cut out for her!

*Battle Wounds!

Up Next:  Adiós, Spain; Hello, UK!