Last day in Barca!
Day Eighty One (octogesimo primeiro dia)
Monday (Segunda-feira)
We had basically checked everything off our Barcelona-Bucket-List by day 7 (aside from putting my toes in the Mediterranean). We decided to go back to Camp Nou and pay for the “Experience” of going through the museum, touring the VIP club seats, locker rooms, field, press seats, and boardrooms. Aside from La Sagrada Familia, it was the only attraction we paid to visit. It was worth it—we had a blast and took some more pictures. We took a picture of our seats from the other night. From the field.
We headed back to the hotel after, stopping for lunch at a traditional Spanish cafe (traditional in the sense that it had plates of the day that were not pictured outside in laminated pages). John had beefsteak with egg and I had chicken “skewers” (read: drumsticks) with croquettes (another typical tapas). We took the Metro back to our hotel to rest up for our afternoon stroll: we were going back to the pier mall (to exchange John’s too-skinny jeans at H&M) and then to the Arc d’Triomf.
We got to see Big Chris during the day.
We took the Metro to the pier because we were exhausted from our vacation! We are very much looking forward to sleeping in Povoacao with Romeo in our apartment. All this sightseeing is tiresome. While the morning at Camp Nou was cloudy, we were fortunate enough to get a super sunny afternoon. We got to see Christopher Columbus during the daylight and the Mediterranean at the pier. We indulged at Starbucks and poked around the mall. We eventually got back on the Metro and headed to the Arc.
I keep bragging about how good a job we’re doing getting around, how city-suave we are, and our trip to the Arc was our first (and only) sightseeing fail. We only had a little trouble deciding which way to go above-ground upon exiting the Metro and quickly found the Arc. I mistakenly thought that if we walked down through Parc Citudella we would just magically “arrive” at the Port de Olimpic. Ohhhhh, how wrong I was.
We did walk through the park until the end (after passing hippies on tight ropes, puppies playing fetch with their owners, and hipsters juggling a soccer ball) where the Zoo is. We walked (the wrong way) around the zoo. We walked and walked and walked along an industrial street to the right of the zoo. “I don’t think we’re going to see the water this way…” I said. Finally I pulled out the map and saw where we were. And where the port was. Eff that! We both said. We had walked too far. We hopped in the nearest Metro and headed home. We stopped at the Bar Granja again so I could grab another (hell, yes!) doner kebab to hold me over until dinner. Even without the sangria sillies it was still delicious.
We lazed around in the room for a few hours and collected our belongings—we were going to have a very early morning. Our flight was going to leave Barcelona at 6:40am (4:40am Azorean time and 12:40am EST… just for comparison!) so we set an alarm for 3:45am (1:45am: Azores).
After over an hour of researching Chinese restaurants and coming up empty handed, we agreed to have pizza again. I added it to my I-can’t-wait-to-BLANK-when-I-get-home list:
I can’t wait to have LEE CHEN’s when I get home
This list also includes:
I can’t wait to RUN WITH MY FRIENDS when I get home. Starting with the Nike Women’s Half in DC. Followed by: Amy. Nicole. Nikki. And the RunHens in general.
I can’t wait to have SAMBA sushi
I can’t wait to have BOOK CLUB
I can’t wait to hold the BABIES we left behind. Some of whom won’t be babies anymore. 
This was a good day at the FH.. See my Starbies in the background? Yeah, no child (or adult) had knocked it over yet. Good.Day. Also, neither Zaella nor Brooklyn are crying. Success.
There are two La Bella Napolis in Barcelona—one near our first hotel, and the second was three blocks from our current hotel tucked in a side street. We walked down a little after 8:00pm in our sweaties. After talking to the concierge for a few minutes about the best way to get to the airport (we decided to cab it) we walked the three blocks. We arrived at about 8:20pm to three Italian-looking men sitting on the stoop of La Bella Napoli. One of them mumbled “ocho y medio” which I understand, using my Portuguese deduction skills, as eight and a half. We still had ten minutes. We walked back to the main street to hit a supermercat for drinks. I got a water with gas and a lemon soda and John got an orange soda. After the cashier rung us up (which took twice as long as it should have because other cashiers kept handing her chocolate treats, biscuits, and cookies that she added to a plastic bag hanging from her work station—whether it was for her or not, I do not know) she left our three drinks just chillin’ in the bagging area. After I shot John a look of confusion, I asked her for a bag, “That will be two cents”, she said. I’m sure I didn’t hide my look of bewilderment well. After giving her a five cent piece I had to wait for her to stop, talk, and shove some more goodies in her baggie before she finally handed me three cents change and a plastic bag. Well, that was weird.
We walked back to La Bella Napoli and ordered a pizza with ham, salami, black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and half the mozzarella. And a piece of chocolate torte. Literally five minutes later we had our pizza and were walking back to the hotel.
The funny thing about this pizza (and our pizza the other night) is that they don’t cut it for you. It didn’t seem that strange the other night because most patrons had ordered individual pizzas that they ate with a fork and knife. But taking an entire pizza back to a utensil-less hotel room was a different story. We entered the hotel and immediately dipped left into the (currently closed) restaurant. We snagged two sets of silverware wrapped in napkins off of the set tables, but there were no plates. We went to the front desk and the concierge gave us two. We ate pizza and cake in bed on our last night in Barcelona. I think we fell asleep around 1:00am.
The Azores, as told by Liza 