My trip to Spain

I recently got back from a trip to Spain with my family and I'm giving my trip report/impressions.

Flight:

Flew Iberia Business Class direct to Madrid. Flight attendants were nice enough, barely spoke English. Same with the Captain. Their little screen/media center was terribly laggy and the remote didn't work on the way back. Movie selection was okay, watched Dungeon & Dragons, Ocean's Eleven, some Family Guy episodes, and Puss and Boots. Must have been some other stuff because total flight time was 20 hours. The food was good but still airplane food. Very smooth flight except the last hour on the way home which was hilariously bad turbulence. Didn't sleep either route, never suffered jet lag but now that I'm back in the states I'm waking up at 4am. Customs both going in and out took about 2 minutes.

Madrid:

I stayed two nights in Madrid, the first and last day. It seemed interesting enough and I should have spent more time here. First night was near Atocha and there was some festival/concert going on in the plaza called Hispanidad. The hotel I stayed at was renovating and had probably the thinnest walls I've ever experienced in a hotel. I could hear everything in the street, including a bunch of cars blasting their horns at 3am for an hour straight for some reason. Only real touristy thing I did was a tour of the Palace of Madrid the next morning which was neat. The last night I stayed there was a nice hotel, but near the airport and basically in the middle of nowhere. Walked 10 minutes to some restaurant that vaguely reminded me of Chili's and had a chicken shawarma.

Train:

I took a highspeed train from Madrid to Barcelona. Round trip was $60, about 2 1/2 hours each way. Super convenient, showed up 20 minutes before departure and security took about 2 minutes total. There was a food cart on board and the wifi had some movies you could watch on it, or pay the astonishingly high fee of 20 euro. Cell service was iffy. On the way back to Madrid, they didn't even bother checking my passport. Just asked me if I had it and I said yes. Really need to build these things in Texas.

Barcelona:

I stayed here for 8 days and it felt about two days too long. Apparently the whole city was built within the past 100 years and it is basically a tourist trap.

The people- It's one thing to know it, it's another thing to see how fricking fat Americans are. I would say about 80% of the women just walking on the street would be considered model thin here. The rest would be described as thin. You could tell who was American/British just by them being noticeably fatter than everyone else. I must look like a Spaniard or I carried myself with overwhelming confidence in the subway because I had about 12 people come up to me asking for directions and I had to tell them I had no idea what they were saying. Most people spoke some amount of English, and I knew enough Spanish to at least get the point across. Google Translate works really well too.

Las Ramblas- overpriced, touristy, also didn't have nearly as many thieves as people said. Also took a wrong turn and ended up in some weird Arabic section where everyone stared my brother and I down

Sagrada Familia- Church which will never be finished. Once again, only ~100 years old.

Bike ride tour- Should have done this the first day, but we did a bike ride tour through the city. Hit the city park, Sagrada Familia, Olympic Village, and some other places while riding on the streets. Pedestrians are a menace. Saw one woman get between a truck that was backing up and a wall and nearly get crushed. Completely fricking r-slurred.

Zoo- Not great but they had gigantic seagulls hanging around. The only picture I took was terrible but they were seriously about two feet tall and were bigger than most marseys.

Olympic Village/beach- Okay section that's noticeably different than the other parts of the city. The beach itself is only 30 years old, created for the Olympics.

Casino- Extremely mediocre and didn't have craps. Played a poker tournament there and got knocked out 24/110. One fricker kept on making weird bet sizes in Spanish that were hard for me to understand. Shit like cuarenta y cuatro mil seiscientos cincuenta. I was told the week before the tournament had 400 people so it varies a lot.

Subway- Neat system. Took me a couple of days but I was very comfortable using it to get around after the fact. Funny enough, the only trouble maker I ran across was a Black American getting arrested by cops for jumping the turnstile. Seriously. Also my dad's phone got pickpocketed the last day.

Museums/Houses- Went to a couple of them. Picasso, Gaudi houses, and a contemporary one. Gaudi is a famous architect there that built weird houses, and was the chief architect for Sagrada Familia until he got hit by a tram. Once you see one of the houses, you've seen enough of them. The contemporary one was pretty meh, but it did have an interesting artist who did surrealist/nightmarish pieces. His name is Guillermo Lorea and appears to have no web presence at all.

Montserrat- An actual 1,000 year old monastery in the mountains with a Virgin Mary statue. Great views and well worth the day trip. Lit a green candle in hopes for a good harvest this upcoming year.

TV- The only things in English were true crime stories, Ancient Aliens, and the news (DW, BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera). The news heavily was leaning against Israel, as in anchors were just grilling hosts that were part of the Israel government. Definitely no in Europe. I watched parts of a really weird German dub of Payback in Madrid. It was this scene (1:20 if the timestamp doesn't go through) but they included low budget 70s movie music in the background.

American Embassy- Visited a McDonalds for the heck of it. Got stuck behind two British women at a kiosk who legitimately took 7 minutes to order their food. They simply couldn't handle the options. The menu and food itself were basically the same but the largest chicken nuggets option was 9 instead of 12 here in the states

Gay S*x Shops- My hotel was near a well known gay district that had a ton of gay s*x shops. Across the street from the store called "S*x Shop" was "Sauna Gay Casanova".

Overall, I enjoyed the trip. It's different enough from the US but not wildly different. As I said above, I would limit Barcelona to about 4-5 days though. It really felt like we were running out of things to do on day 6.