Another Jaunt to Las Ramblas

It turns out that La Rambla is just a part Las Ramblas. Wow! That means more exploration! So at about 7pm we went out to check out La Ribera and La Rival. We found the street with all the high priced shops on the way. Then we found La Ribera. It's a part of town with the narrow, twisty, cavernous pedestrian streets (though we did see a Citroen slowly plow through a crowd gathered to watch a musician) filled with souvenir shops, sandwich shops, and bars. In many ways, it is similar to the 'Old Town' in Prague but without all the crystal shops. We started to get hungry so we popped into a place called the Pita Inn--a sort of fast food pita place. We got 3,50 euro chicken and beef wraps. Then Elena tacked on a 1,40 euro 250ml water. When we got our pitas there was only meat in them. You add your own toppings like onions, lettuce, tomato, beets, curried cabbage, and a couple more I can't remember. Then after we sat down, we learned the trick. Since you get your own fixings, you can order a 1,95 euro falafel pita and load up on the free stuff. Oh well we know next time. The cool thing for me was that I understood the price the cute checkout girl said both times. Siete con diez and uno cuarente. Or 7.10 and 1.40. Gee! Maybe my Spanish comprehension isn't so bad!

So let's look at some liquid prices:
1,40 Euro ($2.10) for 300 ml of water at Pita Inn
0,49 euor ($0.75) for 1.5l of water at a grocery store
1,128 euro for a liter of gasoline--about $7 per gallon
1,75 euro ($2.65) for 750ml of Rioja red wine
2,10 euro ($3.15) for a tall Starbucks coffee

After La Ribera, we walked on the main Rambla to the port and then went over to La Rival which is on the other side of La Rambla. That side is like the Little Morocco. Most of the signage was in letters and not Arabic script, but most of the people we either tourists or Arabish. There are a lot of hotels and hostels right in that area. We walked back. By now our feet we very sore. We had walked all day long.

One of the tricky parts of Barcelona is that all the intersection corners are clipped. They are all like octogons if viewed from above. This gets to be annoying. But it's even worse when a diagonal street crosses this intersection because it's hard to know if you are on the right street. And the lights are deadly because the 'walk' signal flashes for only a couple of seconds before turning to 'don't walk'. In America, the flashing 'walk' means, 'only start crossing if you are fast. In Barcelona it means, 'if you are in the intersection, sprint to the closest side.'