The king of shrimp

Today was a beautiful day for the beach so that's where we went.  The beach is about a 35 minute walk from our school which is completely amazing.  I have always wanted to leave near the beach and being here for the next three and a half months fulfills that.  I am only a 15 minute bus ride and then a 35 minute walk from not just any beach but from the Mediterranean Sea!!

Okay so maybe this beach looks like just about any other beach on a sunny day.  There is sand and water and like a lot of other beaches, there are palm trees.  But it is SO CLOSE!!!  And most beaches are gorgeous, as is this one.  So here are pictures of this beautiful place:

And here is another amazing thing about this beach.  I went to the beach in January.  January!!!!  And I wasn't freezing cold.  No.  It's not warm enough to go swimming but it was about 60 degrees and so warm in the sunshine.  And look how blue the water is!

So that wooden block thing is a sculpture on the sand.  There's another sculpture a little further down the beach which is a giant fish.

There were a lot of people walking around on the sand.  There were people making elaborate sand creations (one was a house that had an actual fire burning in it and another had a fountain).  I took a picture of one of these though it wasn't the most impressive one.  There are also a lot of restaurants, a boardwalk and many sailboats.

We were very hungry and decided to have a nice lunch.  The restaurants along the beach are supposed to be really good.  My professor had told us about this thing called the Menu del Dia.  It's a prix fixe thing where you get to have bread (you have to pay for bread at restaurants here), a drink, a first course, second course, and dessert.  It's a good deal even though it's obviously more expensive than going into a restaurant and just getting one thing.  We decided that our easy transition into Barcelona life (how could it not be easy?  Wonderful weather, beaches, gorgeous buildings, fun people, etc... but still!) was worth celebrating. 

So we restaurant shopped and found a place whose name translates to The King of Shrimp.  And oh did we eat!!!!

This was my first course... about twenty mussels!!  Mussels are one of my absolute favorite things to eat and these were delicious-- perfectly cooked and there were SO MANY!!!  Sarah got the most delicious vegetable lasagna ever and that was basically a main course in itself.  Oh!  Then we got a Catalan specialty for our main meal: hake.  We were not expecting as much food as we got since the hake came with a salad and french fries.  They gave us ketchup which wasn't Heinz but was disguised in a Heinz bottle.


This was really good and then we had such good desserts... ice cream and chocolate mousse.

We were quite content except that the temperature had dropped a lot so we were freezing and our feet hurt from walking so much.  When we arrived at the bus stop, I removed my shoe and found two burst, bloody blisters (disgusting!!!).  I will not be wearing those particular shoes for exploring anymore!

Regardless, we were very content!