Barcelona Day 1

So I've been in Barcelona for all of a day and already it has tired me out... but totally in a good way.

I arrived an hour early and went to the agency that provided my apartment. Things went smoothly as we signed all of the paperwork. So far my experience with the company (barcelona-home.com) has been good and I'd recommend them. I'm paying just under $40/day for an efficiency, which includes my own kitchen and bathroom. Oh yeah, did I say that it includes Internet?

After getting helped to the apartment by the cutest guy you've ever seen (from Arizona), I took to settling in. Over the next few hours I unpacked, bought a SIM card for my phone and some groceries, and walked around town a bit.

I decided this day I would visit two new sleazy bars that didn't exist last time I was here. So at 6PM I went to Berlin Dark. They have a weekday naked/underwear thing from 5 to 9. Finding it was nearly impossible. Although I wore a jockstrap, I decided not to wear it and went nude inside. There I met several people including an Italian, Canadian and a native of Catalan. The Italian (Enrique, go figure) is here on business and wants to meet up when he's back in town in a few weeks. We talked in Spanish. The Canadian was so glad to talk to me. He had been here for 2 weeks and was a little desperate for English-speaking company. This kind of made me realize that my experiences of BCN would probably be better if I wasn't conversant in Spanish. I also met several others in less "formal" ways.

Afterwards I was tired as hell and went back to the apartment to grab a nap. By this time it was already 9pm. I guess I hadn't gotten enough sleep on the red-eye flight after all. I awoke at 11:30 and seriously considered just going back to sleep. So I took the metro to Open Minds. This place was both bigger and more crowded than the prior and got busier as the night wore on. Again I brought a jockstrap which went unused. I did wear my new boots that I acquired at IML though. The place spanned two floors and included not-quite-so-private cabins, slings, lots of common spaces and a bar. I left at 4am totally and completely exhausted. I was actually spent at 3am, but decided to "look around" one more time. I'm sure you can guess how that went.

Since the metro was closed and was still an hour away from re-opening, I decided to walk home even though it is a good distance. Just past the Plaza Cataluña I passed two guys looking like they're getting on a scooter, which are so common there. One of them stares at me as I approached. My first thoughts were that they were stares of aggression. But after exchanging the 4th glance I figured there was something else happening. I passed them. The one that stared at me drove the bike a half block, parked and walked in my direction. We talked for a while. As the saying goes, I had already given at the office, but I couldn't resist when he asked if we could go either my place or his. In spite of his very slender but muscular frame, he definitely had a much larger than average member. We took turns and finished exhausted. By the time we were done, dawn had already broken. It was 6:30 by the time I arrived home.