I have been busy and not blogging much lately... (feel like I keep saying this all the time now). This time my big excuse is that I am about to move into my new beautiful apartment. We have been waiting for it to be built for over a year now so you can imagine the excitement. Finally more space! Finally the computers get their own room. It has truly felt like Christmas every night in the bedroom for a long time now. All those beautiful infrared, bluetooth, whatever computer lights in all imaginable colors blinking all the time like a hyperactive Christmas tree. It is still couple of weeks until the actual move will happen but there is a lot that needs to be prepared (or simply just stressed about).



I did manage a one week vacation last month. Went to Barcelona for few days and played a tourist. Barcelona almost instantly made it to the top of my most loved cities' list. What a spectacular city! Gaudi has put his finishing touches on the town by many of his spectacular architectural designs. The city is a bit like Gaudi's style which borders on being vulgar due to its excessiveness but always stays within the boundaries. There was almost too much of everything there but just within reasonable limits.



It felt quite nice walking around the narrow streets of Barcelona. You almost felt like you were within people's homes due to laundry hanging off almost every balcony. There were bars and coffee shops everywhere and the place smelled of ham, cheese and the occasional extreme pee smell that seems to characterize every corner in Spain. *Curling my nose in disgust*.



The people seemed friendly but extremely distant at restaurants. It seemed like they expected you to be grateful that they served you and not that you were paying their salary by being there. Another thing I noticed was an extreme obsession with designer clothes. Few girls wore huge glasses with Dior written in huge bold letters on the side that seemed to have the only purpose of making it obvious that they were wearing Dior glasses. Me, being eager to fit in desperately tried to find glasses which would have a designer name on the glass itself so it would be even more obvious. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to come across any:-).



We also took the train to Vilafranca a small village an hour away from Barcelona. Wonderful little village with character. From there we took a taxi to the Torres vineyard. Unfortunately, that put some of my romantic images of people tramping on grapes to make wine to rest. At the same it put an end to my eternal fear of drinking wine made with stinking toes. The vineyard was more of a factory than anything but it was still really interesting to see.



There was simply too much to see in Barcelona so after a while I just decided I would take it easy and plan on coming back one day!


But now, back to stressing about the move!