Remember the list from this post? Well, add ‘hot water’ to that. That’s right! As of last night, we no longer have hot water. Because the boiler does not turn itself on when you turn on the hot water. And of course this happens on a Friday night, when there is a long weekend ahead of all of us! I desperately need to take a shower, and luckily Clara said I can take a shower at her place [I'll be going over there in about half an hour], but that doesn’t solve the issue at hand. We don’t have hot water! And it’s Easter! I doubt we will even be able to call anyone before Tuesday [and I will be in Madrid then, so my roommates will have to handle it]. I hope I can find a place to take a shower again on Monday morning [or sometime during the day, can't be picky now, can I?], and then after that I won’t have to deal with this issue until Saturday when it will hopefully be resolved. The really crappy thing is how unreliable Jordi is. Since he doesn’t live here, it is really hard to get a hold of him or to get him to do anything [because, after all, it doesn't affect him], but ultimately it has to be him who gives the okay to call a technician because he will be the one paying. [Oh yes, he will, that's not our job.]

My parents left today. This morning we went to the MACBA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was, well, interesting. I think some contemporary art is just too weird for me. Yesterday, we went to these gardens up in Horta [a neighborhood of Barcelona] which was really nice. On Thursday I also found a new area of Barcelona that is really nice, Pedralbes, which is a suburban kind of neighborhood and you can tell the more wealthy people live there. The houses are very beautiful, and well, they are houses, not apartment blocks. Last night we went to see the Easter procession in Barcelona, and we made it just in time to see the beginning of it [I am not sure how long it took, but it was really crowded and went very slowly, so we left after half an hour or so after getting a good idea of what these processions are like]. After that we went to see the Magic Fountain at Plaza Espana, and wow, it was crowded. It is the Easter weekend so I suppose that is why, because Barcelona generally seemed packed with tourists, but it was so strange compared to the other times I have been there. It kind of felt a little like all these tourists were stealing my city. [Which is of course not true, but it amused me to find that I feel that way about Barcelona.]

On my way back from the airport, I stopped at a mall, the Gran Via 2, a huge mall I had seen from the outside many times before [on the way to the airport and to IKEA] but that I had never been to. And gosh, it is amazing! I only had some change with me, as it was more of a spontaneous decision and I only went in there to look for flip flops [for showering at the hostel in Madrid] but I really need to go back there when I have some money to spend. There are so many cool stores and the mall itself is also really beautiful, it is very new [only five years old] and looks so nice.

Well, I will be getting ready to go over to Clara’s now [I don't think I have ever looked forward to a shower this much!], but I will be posting pictures of the past week tomorrow or Monday, before I leave for Madrid. I am really excited to go there, but after a week of playing tourist here, I really need these two days to relax a little, to be ready to be a tourist again for five days. And by the time I come back, my spring break will be almost over.

Happy Easter to all of you!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 21:19 and is filed under Life in Spain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.