Had the best day in a while yesterday. We pretty much decided we all needed some time alone + wanted to explore Barcelona so we all went out together, but to different places to walk around and check it all out.

So I went down to La Rambla becausee
1. It IS a pretty huge street with all the little lanes to walk through
2. I've never been there alone 'cos I'm constantly afraid of getting mugged/picked/killed. So I guess I wanted to go down to sort of prove to myself that I was capable of walking down a street in Barcelona by myself without dying. Plus there's froyo there, so.

Bought my Llao Llao which I think is severely overrated in Singapore btw, but there wasn't a queue here so why not? The best part of the 3.20 euros spent on this though, wasn't the hard mangos or too-sour-for-me yogurt, but the fact that within 5 mins of walking around with my Llao Llao, I was approached by a Singaporean couple asking where Llao Llao was hahahahahahahaha. So I took them there and along the way we all laughed about how insane Singaporeans are about it vs. how there's no queue here. 

While on my way to Placa Del Rei, I walked into an art gallery and saw a really cool photo. Cue analysis of it and an additional 5 mins of trying to figure out how to recreate it when I realised it was digitally manipulated. Then I gave up and just bought the postcard version of it. 

Through my accidental eavesdropping of the conversation between the owner of the art gallery and another lady, I somehow managed to pick up that they were having an exhibition in Singapore aaand started a conversation with the gallery owner and told her about all the amazing food. 

A short while after, I made friends with this bubble man from Latvia (aptly standing outside the chapel with an exhibition on Latvia's independence) and he let me try making the huge bubbles. Just that mine were pretty small and popped almost right after they were formed.

And after shopping, I made myself some extra spicy noodles for dinner - because if chilli isn't part of your day, there's no way you can have a good day. 

Road trip: Seville,

wasn't really all that amazing for me, really. The food we had was amazing, but the attractions - not so. 

We hit up the usual TripAdvisor places like:

Hospital de los Venerables - can't tell you who's artwork it was, who the architect is and which era it was built in but I can tell you that they have a small, cosy and beautiful church inside which is totally worth seeing. 

Alcazar - Read fantastic reviews about this old palace in Seville and about how much everyone loved it but I honestly wasn't blown away, especially with how hard it was to navigate through the gardens (which we never got to do in the end)

Aand there was the cathedral. UNESCO World Heritage Site, largest cathedral in the world, Giralda tower with amazing view, but I was bored out of my mind. I guess it would have something to do with having been to Sagrada Familia 2 weeks before this and constantly comparing it against this. Given that they're both gothic, they had a lot of similarities but the Sagrada Familia was so much more interesting. The audio guide for the cathedral was also incredibly long given how huge the place is, and after the entire session we decided to skip the rest of the planned itinerary and to shop. 

Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza - We hit up the bull ring because how can you not when you're in Seville. I'd planned on watching a bullfight in Spain but we didn't manage to be in Seville at a time when they had a fight on since it was nearing the end of the season. So if there were any fights at all, their schedules were pretty irregular.

Anyway when we got there we realised it wasn't like a 'pay 4 euros and tour all you want for however long you'd like' thing because they actually had guided tours which gave you a whole 5 minutes to take your photos. Which obviously wasn't enough because we were a group of 5 Asians. And so we had to keep sneaking around to get back to the ring for photos with the ring. So yeah I have my photos (yay) and 0 knowledge of the ring. 

Road trip: Juzcar

Wasn't originally in the plan, but when I found that there was an entirely blue village sitting out there, I decided we had to go. And it was on the way too, sort of. 

We had amazing scenery along the way since we were driving on the mountains and eventually even Philo decided we had to pull over to snap photos. 

Aaand when we finally got to Juzcar, we spent 40 mins of the planned hour attempting to climb mushrooms.

And while the whole idea of visiting a Smurf's village sounds pretty dumb, it actually was really fun just goofing around with the blue walls/houses/everything. Not to mention that the view was real great too.

Although really, the whole place was in such a whacked up blue that when going through my photos after I couldn't tell if there was something off with my white balance, or if the blue really was that weird. I still can't figure it out actually.