Supermarkets, the Sea, Sunburn, and Sass

Before I touch upon the 4 S´s above that summarize our Tuesday, here are a few more bits from yesterday -- our first few hours in the city:

1) An American studying abroad was standing in line with 2 friends who flew over to visit her...they were exchanging money and were right in front of me. The study abroad student realized it was a complete rip off and tipped us off not to even bother. I haven´t exchanged any of my American dollars since...just used my credit card and the ATM.
2) We ate dinner on Las Ramblas (the famous street which was constructed over a river bed!) at Nuria, where I had the best vegetable pizza I´ve ever had abroad. We chose it because the lady who works the day shift at our hostel is Nuria :-)
3) Nicole spotted an Australian pub on Las Ramblas, which gave me great hope that I might actually be able to watch the first State of Origin match next Wednesday!

And now, on to today and the 4 S´s!

I slept beautifully last night -- whenever our roomies came home in the middle of the night, I managed to sleep right through it. We left the hostel around 10am and found a supermarket Nuria told us about yesterday. Katie and I loved looking around supermarkets in London and Sydney, and Nicole doesn´t seem to mind it either. Three cheers for store-bought, low-priced healthy food!

The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS today, so we decided to spend our time along the coast. I´ll link up later, but we walked to Port Vell, all along the beaches of Barceloneta, and down to Port Olympic. At Port Vell we were met by 6 students who were taking a survey for class. We must have screamed ¨tourist¨ with our backpacks and white sneakers :-) We had to answer all these random questions, but as we can´t read Catalon and the students´ English was sparse, it was a guessing game and we were happy to play along.

Walking along the beaches, we soaked up the beauty of the Mediterranean. Later we decided to take an hour and a half ride on the Golondrinas (boat tour). Thankfully we had applied sunscreen on our faces...sadly we skipped our arms...we´re both paying the price now.

In addition to the sunburn, I´ve been suffering from another ailment and I decided to concoct my own ¨triple threat¨ remedy...coffee, prunes, and ¨Laxante Vegetal-regulador intestinal¨. I´ll let you guess what my problem is O:-) Thankfully I had Nicole to help me communicate in the pharmacy because I was at a loss for words.

Even though I´ve really been counting on Nicole to be our Spanish speaker when needed, turns out I haven´t completely forgotten my 7 years of study, even though it´s been 8 years since I´ve really used the language. When Nicole was at a loss for the right words, I was able to construct two wonderful *complete* thoughts that helped us get results. Yay team!

And although I´m running short on time, I have to share about the ¨sassy¨ part of my day. Remember the Australian pub I mentioned earlier? We walked in and I mentioned that since the door said Australian pub, I was wondering if they´d be showing State of Origin. The new girl had no idea what I was talking about so she asked two colleagues for help. I overheard the whole conversation, and they looked at her in shock. ¨Australian sports, here?!¨ And they laughed like crazy and gave me a mocking look. Come on now, I thought it was a reasonable question! After all, I watched the match last year from an Aussie pub in London!

No time to share the rest of the day, although it definitely included a trip to a different and better supermarket! By the time we left the store I asked Nicole if she wanted to return to the hostel, rest, and then head back out. She checked her watch and it was 9pm!!! Both of us were completely shocked -- some kind of time warp perhaps?? It was still light outside and neither of us were the slightest bit tired.

Time to get off the computer before I get charged another half hour!! Cheers loves!