Barcelona Day 3 - Rebounding at Las Ramblas

So what do we do on our first excursion out after taking care of all the suitcase theft stuff? We head out to stroll Las Ramblas, one of Barcelona's well known areas for thieves and pickpockets. Those assholes weren't gonna beat us! We only took our bus passes, ID and money, and those were zipped in pockets in our shirts.

The Ramblas

The Ramblas is a mile-long pedestrian boulevard lined with bars, cafes and all kinds of artisan booths. Everything is in sections; you'll walk through a souvenir section, a jewelry section, a flower section, fruits and veggies section, even a pet bird section, then it all starts again.


It was an interesting stroll, with several side excursions down streets to look at the cool old architecture.

There was also a huge farmers market, rather like our Pike Place Market but bigger and, shall we say, more direct. For example, if you wanted to buy some ham, the vendor simply sliced it off the large leg of ham that was hanging in the stall.

We had lunch at an outdoor cafe, where Jorge and Ally tried the local paella. Me? It was another plate of grilled vegetables. They'd been waiting to try paella, but were disappointed in this one...thought it tasted like an instant dish made for tourists (which it likely was).

After we'd finished the Ramblas, we took the metro out to Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona. We exchanged our receipt for our game tickets, visited the team megastore, and Jorge observed a training session at the FCB soccer school with their younger players.

Tickets!

The exterior of the stadium was nothing special, certainly not as stunning as the Chelsea field in London. Just a large beige stadium. We got the tickets, which saved us having to stand in the will call line the night of the game. Big smiles all around when the tickets were in hand!

Hello, Xavi!

The team store was two floors of everything FCB. As you walk in, you're greeted by mannequins wearing the uniforms of the FCB starters. Ally took a moment to get to know her favorite, Xavi (#6). We had fun looking at all the stuff. Jorge even bought an FCB shoulder bag to replace his suitcase.

The Messi "shitter"

The big surprise was finding a display of ceramic figurines of the FCB players...with their pants down taking a crap (and with a sizable pile of poo to prove the point). Who could resist? Jorge asked the clerk about the figurines, and she explained they are called "shitters" and are (believe it or not) part of the Catalan nativity scene! We later looked this up on Wikipedia, and found these "shitters" (Catalan name "caganers") represent the common man in the nativity scene, and it's even a game for the kids to find the shitter hidden in the scene. It is considered a high honor to have a shitter in your image, and the local company that makes them has a whole slew of world leaders, sports figures and even cartoon characters to choose from (read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-120599690).

Then we wandered out to the FCB Escola, the training center for the youngest players, and watched all these little boys in their FCB uniforms doing their training. So cute...and some were so tiny. First thing Jorge noticed was a player doing a cartwheel; he was happy to see that even the FCB school deals with short attention spans.  We watched them train, while unknowingly the mosquitos were attacking Ally and I.