Grant calls his friends who say they’d be at a restaurant in the Olympic Village in two or so hours at 3:00. So we have some time. And what does one do with time in Barcelona under that sweltering Spanish summer sun? Why one goes to the beach of course. And so we do, but not before stopping by a hole-in-the-wall liquor store for a couple tall cans of Modelo Especial and some Granini pineapple juice. The two hours fly by, which isn’t surprising at a beach where the water’s lukewarm and there are no prissy nudity laws. Our extinguishing of the beer/juice cocktails coincided quite nicely with our timetable, so when they're done with, we trek down the beach towards that massive metallic fish swimming towards the sea.
We meet Grant’s pals at a clean-cut-looking restaurant set at the base of the fish’s mouth. They're likable. A somewhat refreshing splash in the face of that long lost, familiar Laguna Beach attitude. This in the sense that one is soft-spoken, handsome, and looks a strikingly similar to our friend Taylor, and the other is a bit more boisterous and odd-shaped, a characteristic he masks to a tee with a mustache and a girlfriend from USC; the looks and the personality, two individuals perfectly complimenting one another, almost symbiotically.
With the weather like it is, sitting outside's a must. Our lunch orders vary, but all include some sort of seafood persuasion. Except pour moi. Not on purpose mind you, it’s just that the seafood dishes on the menu, tantalizing as they may be, all have rather staggering prices next to them, especially considering my financial disparity. So I opt for one of the salads. It isn’t the cheapest, but it does make the seafood plates seem more priced like bad contemporary art (expensive). Plus there's one important word in its description that catches the attention of my eye, my stomach, and mine soul. That word is bacon. And when our meals come out, I'm not disappointed. My salad's served on a main dish plate piled high with no less than four full grizzly slabs of bacon sliced and laid down decoratively on top.
The table talk is quite interesting. They had been traveling for three weeks in a similar fashion as us, but with some stark differences. For one, they're a bit older, clocking in at twenty-five and twenty-six years of age. As to be expected, they are afforded a certain fiscal promiscuity that is not available to some of us (myself), and with that luxury comes a very different perspective of European travel. It's a subtle difference, one that would only stand out in comparison to our escapades, I suppose. Of course they have a bit more money to play with, but that’s not the difference I’m talking about. It’s a predisposition that I guess comes when one is born into a financial safe-haven. I’m talking about making reservations. It’s always been a thing that I’ve regarded with a quizzical demeanor. They paid to reserve seats on their trains. They made reservations at restaurants. In no way am I saying that it’s something to look down on. It’s actually something that, if anything, is something of a status symbol; a show of preparation, etiquette, and class; a status that many of us probably strive for. And the only reason I think it sticks out is for the peculiar situation it brings us to after they tell us of a place not far off Las Ramblas that we should check out for dinner while we're still in Barcelona.
By the way they describe it, this place was a veritable seafood haven; sushi, seafood, both fried and raw, salads, desserts, buffet style and all for only 10 EUR. “You should definitely make reservations,” Taylor 2.0 tells us.
With a full meal in one’s stomach, it’s much easier to fully appreciate the beauty of a place. And so it is as we return to the beach. The sand's coarse and hot with my sandals in hand. The boardwalk helps. As we lay back and breath deep the salty seaside, we're afforded a chance at an observation that I personally love; that frank unabashed stare of curiosity that is becoming only to one wearing sunglasses. And what does this knit-picky, inquisitive scan of our surroundings bring to our attention? Take away the topless Aphrodites, take away the curious looking Asian women walking from beach-goer to beach-goer whoring out skill sets ranging from deep-tissue massage to braiding corn-rolls, take away the cruise-ships and high-rise hotels on the horizon to the west. Take it all away, and still, there's one thing that dominates my thoughts. It is the sea. There's a breakwater about one hundred yards off the shoreline that calls to me, beckoning me to swim out and run across its uneven concrete surfaces, to dive off the corner of one of the hundred or so concrete sugar cubes that Spain has seemingly barged out and dropped there for our enjoyment. So we all do, the lot of us.
