Magical fountains and feasts on mountains

This was quite eventful weekend filled with many firsts in Barcelona. For one, a group of us went to something called the magical fountains of Montjuic - it's a 20 minute fountain show in front of the National Palace of Catalonia. It was awesome and complete with an intense Opera score...the entire approach to the palace is filled with fountains, and it was very very cool. If there's one thing I've learned so far here, it's that the US needs more palaces and castles.

On Saturday, my friend Blaise and I (pronounced "Blaze" - gnarrrly) walked around the upper parts of the city and the famous Parc Guell designed by Gaudí. It was a intricate and hard to describe park - more curvy buildings, color tiles, and ceramic animals. The style of Gaudí  is free-flowing natural - it definitely fits in Barcelona. I'll post pictures when Blaise burns them on his computer. I'll need to fire up my own camera here soon.

While I was strolling around the upper-city, Megan was atop the mountains the boarder the city in a place called Calçotada. Once Sunday came, it was my turn to experience this unique place. In a nutshell, Calçotada is a place atop a mountain where one goes to engage in a savage, messy feast. Their claim to fame is the "Calçot" which is an onion that you eat as if it were hanging from the ceiling. Other highlights from the meal included unlimited lamb shanks, sausage, these foreign white beans, eggplant, chilis, salad, potato something, bread, lemon meringue, and wine drank creatively from a thing called a porrón. It was not a classy meal by any means - what meals with bibs are classy? - but an enjoyable feast nonetheless. I finally got to eat like an American again! Here are some pictures and videos from the weekend....

Above is a glimpse of how packed in we were at our tables, wearing bibs and drinking wine savagely from the porrón (see that guy in the back?). The challenge was to draw it away from your mouth as far as you could without spilling. Few succeeded. 

Here's my friend Diego eating a Calçot...you peeled away the skin which left a delicious onion thing to dip in some red tomato sauce. You can see by my vague descriptions that I wasn't exactly sure what we were eating, but I ate nonetheless. 

Lamb shanks and sausages - this is what I imagine those vikings from the Capital One commercials eating for dinner.

Through the window you can see how high above Barcelona we were. Also, you can see my friend Kyle who is undoubtedly eying the highly-demanded garlic and tomato bread. 

This is the view from atop our 7-floor residencia around sunset. Pretty cool!



A bit of the fountain show from last Friday.