Barcelona

A while ago, I decided that I would be taking another extended trip to my favorite city. I've cleared it with the BF and the job. I'll be going to BCN for 5 weeks in June and July. The BF is still trying to decide if he'll join me for the final week. I'll be continuing my language immersion classes for 4 hours a day and working my job remotely. I'm thinking to rent an apartment short-term that has Internet.

After lots of research into apartments, one of my final location picks is Barcelonetta. It is a very strange place very near to the nude, gay beach. Of course, there are no real nude beaches in Spain since nudity is technically legal everywhere as long as you don't create a scene. Hmm, I might have to think of ways to exploit this...

Barcelonetta is a little scary though. The streets are incredibly narrow and lined with 10 story buildings with the days laundry strung between them. It probably only seems scary because the building seem so close in. It's not like El Barri Gotic or El Rival, whose streets are left over from midevil times. These streets are actually in very straight grid format. Since I was in BCN in 2007 for a good while, I definitely know of some neighborhoods that I don't want to live, but am not quite sure about Barcelonetta. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE IF ANYONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT SAFETY IN BARCELONETTA, LET ME KNOW. The only other place with holiday apartments in my price range was close to Placa Espanyol. Although PE is only a couple of metro stops away from the city center, it's not walking distance to anything I'm interested in... well except the clay tennis courts at Monjuic.

A friend that I haven't seen in about 7 years contact me last week and invited me to join him in Nicaragua in June where he owns beach-front property near a small town. I'm kinda tempted to go there for a week, before going to BCN, but I really haven't seen him in forever and he is a little... er... unorthodox. I'd probably feel better about it if we met up and re-established our friendship first, but he lives in Philly and I'm in the process of buying plane tickets. It would probably be fun though.