Why see the world when you've got the beach?

February 19:

My alarm went off at 9:30 as per usual but I decided today I wanted to sleep in. We were both slow to rise. It was cloudy out and the weather forecast said it might rain in the near future. We had planned to try and see the beach but with the weather we were unsure. We headed out in search of some food wandering parallel to Las Ramblas until we reached La Boqueria. We hadn’t explored this famous market yet. It was really cool to grab food and wander around the market while eating calzones. We got delicious fresh fruit smoothies for a euro before leaving.

We headed down Las Ramblas towards the Mediterranean. They have a mall out on the water we considered walking through but by the time we reached the water it was sunny out and we decided to hit the beach. It took us a couple of hours to get to the beach and walk the length of it. I dipped my hand in the Mediterranean! On the way back we stopped by the train station to see if we could get tickets to Madrid but apparently we had to go to another station for that. We headed back to the hostel tired and sore from all our walking. After a rest we tried to see if we could get tickets from the other train station. When we got there we took a number but after 40 minutes of waiting and the queue barely advancing we decided we would have to get the tickets the next day as we had plans for the evening.

Our plan for that evening was a cooking lesson arranged through Travel Bound, the company who ran the walking tours. We first went with the Chef to La Boqueria to buy fresh prawns, muscles, clams, and squid. After touring around the market for a bit we went to the Port Bar. There we learned how to make some simple traditional tapas and consumed tapas and sangria. The chef cooked us paella in front of us using the freshly acquired seafood and explained why he was doing what he did. Once he finished and the paella was left to simmer we got a lesson on how to make sangria. After our meal we stuck around for a bit, hanging out and talking with the people from our table but after a while were tired and decided to head home and to bed.