Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

I've been so busy, I haven't had time to blog! On Wednesday I went to work a little earlier so that I could leave early to pick up my boyfriend from the airport. We came back to the apartment to drop off his stuff and relax for a little while before going to a dinner with other people from my company.

The dinner was at the Fabra Observatory and it was a very nice event with a speaker (I can't remember his name) who does research in astrobiology. His entire presentation was in Spanish, which was fun because I actually understood the majority of it, which I take as a good sign for my Spanish. The food was quite good, too, but it took a couple of tries to get vegetarian meals. It's funny in a frustrating sort of way that when you tell them you're a vegetarian, they bring you the fish option instead of the beef. Eventually, though, they brought us a tasty risotto with vegetables. Dessert was mango ice cream with a pudding sort of thing and fruit. Here's the observatory:

And here's the astrobiologist speaker:

After the presentation, we got to go into the observatory and look through the telescope:

It was pointed towards a pair of binary stars. The stars were cool to see, and we could also go out on the observation deck, which gave us a great view of the city. Afterwards, we got a ride home with one of my coworkers. The road down the mountain is very twisty and it made me a little nervous, but of course it was fine.

On Thursday, after sleeping in pretty late, we went to Sitges to go to the beach and walk around and explore the town. Here's a picture of the beach at Sitges:

When we got tired of the beach, we walked through the town for a while, specifically to get some ice cream (raspberry and lemon). Accidentally, we ended up in a shoe store, and we found some brown dress shoes that my boyfriend liked for only 12 euros. Obviously they're not very high-quality, but for 12 euros (at worst, $18, but actually less), it was hard to go wrong. We didn't have socks with us, and after I explained that to the shopkeeper, she brought us a plastic bag for him to use to try on the shoes. I thought this was hilarious:

He ended up liking the shoes, so we got them. For dinner we went back into the city, to the same restaurant I went to with my dad on Monday night. We got a couple of the same things, but we also got a hummus, babaganoush, and guacamole with pita thing (notice the goat cheese salad making a guest appearance at the top of this picture):

For dessert, we tried to get the red berry thing again, but they were out of it. Instead, on the waiter's recommendation, we got something called marscapone maki, which was delicious. The little chocolate-covered things on top are something like pop rocks, which was weird but fun:

By the time we finished dinner, the metro had closed, so we decided to walk back to the apartment. It was a nice walk through Las Ramblas, Plaça Catalunya, and Passeig de Gràcia (including the Block of Discord and Casa Milà), but it took over an hour to get back.

And now I'm up to today! I think I forgot to mention that I took yesterday and today off of work, but now you know. I'm going back on Monday. We woke up late again today, and went to La Boqueria to get some food for a picnic. Here's a picture of the entrance to La Boqueria:

We got fruit, two kinds of cheese, and chocolate, as well as kiwi coconut juice and pineapple mango juice, which I bargained down from one euro each to 1.50 for two. A proud moment for me. Then we took our picnic food to Park Güell, where we sat and listened to music and ate our food, which was only slightly melted and squished by the time we got there. After we ate, we wandered around and explored the park for a while. Then we found a bench under some nice shady trees and read our books for what felt like a short time but turned out to be rather long.

Eventually, we came back to the apartment for a very quick dinner before going to see Bruno (version original, which means it's in its original language). I have to say, I was pretty disappointed with the movie. I had high hopes after Borat, but it just wasn't nearly as funny. Oh well. Then we came back to the apartment to wait for my dad to arrive back from Italy, which he did. Now, it's about time for bed, because we've got big plans for tomorrow (Sagrada Familia, among other things).