Barcelona for Birthdays

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!