For the past six years, Ben and I have been
celebrating our birthdays together. Yes, it is adorable yet incredibly abnormal. At least I never have to worry about Ben forgetting my birthday. We always celebrate with a trip in lieu of exchanging gifts.
Our approach is that it's far better to obtain different experiences
than material things. This year
marks Ben's 30th (finally!) so he chose Barcelona for our birthday trip
destination.
It was our
first time celebrating in Europe, which was extra special given May Day is an
EU holiday. Being the super
planner, I booked the popular attractions online so we could bypass waiting
hours in line and maximize our time touring the city. We picked the Picasso Museum along with
Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and Park Guell as our main tourist sites. Sagrada Familia was by far our favorite structure. We could have spent
hours scouring every nook and cranny of the jaw dropping masterpiece. 
We were fortunate to
have above average temperatures (78 degrees), which gave us the excuse to eat
lots of delicious fruit filled popsicles and bask in the sunshine on the local
beaches. Ben's speedo was packed for the occasion. Unfortunately, we found
very few people walking around in such European attire. So much for fitting in!
For our first
evening activity, we decided to embrace the club culture by heading to the W
Hotel for the spectacular view at the Eclipse nightclub. Trust me, if there
wasn't a view, there would be no way Ben would step foot in a nightclub. We had a great time people watching as there were
multiple Hen (Bachelorette) and Stag (Bachelor) parties taking place. The Big Bang Theory doppelgangers happened to
sit right next to us. We were quite entertained by them especially since a few
appeared to be having successful interactions with the opposite sex. 
For our last night out,
we decided on a romantic birthday dinner followed by a Four Guitars concert at
the beautiful Palau Música Catalana. I made reservations at a nice
little establishment known to be a highly rated dining spot in Barcelona. The reservation
was made on Ben's iPad which automatically sent the request via his email. I
couldn’t help but add that it was MY birthday so he wanted to make sure the
dinner was EXTRA special. While I'd normally include that it was also Ben's
birthday, we've found people think we are trying to pull a fast one.
I don't know how many times we've had to show our passports to prove it.
Upon arriving, we
were greeted with glasses of champagne to kick off our "special"
dinner. Ben was a bit perplexed until I explained my sneaky request. We ordered a large pitcher of sangria along with an
assortment of traditional Spanish dishes: fish, chicken empanadas and gazpacho.
The pitcher arrived filled to the brim with ice and a colorful array of fresh fruit.
We poured our drinks and I judiciously spooned out some of the fruit
into our glasses as I like to pick out all the
strawberries. This happens with just about every food we share from trail mix to
cereal. In refilling our glasses, I was spooning out the fruit again only to notice a different colored piece. At
first glance, it looked like an odd shaped piece of plum against the candle light. I pulled the spoon closer to Ben and asked if he knew what type
of fruit that was in our drink. Ben was a bit skeptical and asked for me to put
it down on the table so he could get a better look . After a few seconds, he ordered for me to immediately
look away confirming my suspicions that it wasn't a piece of plum. Oy Vey! As I peered
across the table, the "plum" was indeed a member
of the cockroach family. Ben angrily
requested the owner/manager come to our table to discuss the drink issue. He
was appalled and disturbed, removing the unwelcome dinner guest from our
table. I managed to keep my composure while Ben
demanded they bring the rest of our meal. We miraculously regained our appetites and
attempted to forget what transpired moments earlier. The owner promptly arrived back at our table with a mea culpa
along with his best wine. He must have told every server
in the restaurant as each one came up to check on us and see if we would order anything
else. The patrons around us must have thought we were some American celebrities
with the way the staff was fawning over us. If they only knew…
We decided to refer
to our unexpected creepy crawly visitor as "Antonio" to help lighten
the mood. At least we can laugh about it now and joke at how the situation could have been much worse. We concluded that Antonio really had the
worst night of all.
Moral of our dinner
story: Always double check the sangria!
