Sickness, Seafood & Scuba

Happy Friday people! It's almost 6pm here so good excuse for you guys to crack open some cervezas. Some things to catch up on.

Barcelona has too much to offer all around. Lot's of stuff to see and do during the day as well as a bottomless pit of temptation at night which usually cancel out any daytime plans that you would have had for the next day. With the latter in mind, I extended my stay here until the end of June.

Onto my week. Last weekend I had some cold water thrown on my heater because last Friday as I was about to get the long weekend in full gear, I came down with a sore throat. Not just any sore throat. The mother of all sore throats. Daan and Brendan and a new addition to the group - Marc (a Barcelonian native and fellow hooligan), were all hitting the town. At 9:30pm I dressed up to meet them for dinner but fell asleep in my clothes because I felt super feverish on top of the sore throat. Was I going to let a sore throat put me out of commission 2 nights in a row? Not a chance. The next day I went to a pharmacy and asked for the strongest throat painkillers I can legally buy without a prescription. I took enough to sedate a small elephant. And hit the town with the fellas at night with a complete absence of functioning nerve endings in my throat. I woke up on Sunday googling ER's in Barcelona. But do I regret it? Not even a little.

After the weekend I grabbed dinner with some mutual friends from Canada that happened to be in town to watch the F1 Spanish Grand Prix. This is the second opinion I got to hear about someone who went to a major F1 race. The takeaway seems to be that unless you have tickets to the Grandstand (think front row seats), it's not worth going. With the General Admission tickets you get a few seconds of action every time they go around and when they're not in your line of sight, there are no TV's to keep track of the race, and no speakers announcing commentary. I care about F1 as much as I do about Japanese horse racing but I was surprised to learn that a sport as big as F1 could offer a disappointing fan experience. I had a great time watching the Barcelona Grand Prix on TV at home with some buddies, so unless you're a diehard fan, you're probably better off doing the same.

Lets talk cuisine. I've been pretty spoiled in over the last year food wise: pizza in Italy, tacos in Mexico, steak in Argentina, but nothing has compared to a mid-day Ceviche with Pisco Sour in Peru, followed by literally anything else on the menu because Peruvian food slaps. I wish I had the technical know-how to explain what it is about the flavors and spices that I like so much but my culinary skills extend about as far as the microwave. However, what I can speak to is a major factor that's contributed to their culinary variability is the climate variation they've been afforded due to Peru's geographical positioning. From nutrient-rich fish on Peru's pacific coast to a mind boggling number of potato variations grown in the Andes mountains. You'll find something you like here. This brings me to Spain where the main dishes here are seafood based. The one that you'll see at almost every restaurant is called Paella ("frying pan" in Valencian Spanish) - a dish typically cooked with rice, vegetables, seafood and/or meat. But usually seafood (see below).

Scorching Hot Take: Spanish food blows. Food shouldn't look like it can still crawl off your plate. On top of that you have to crack the shrimp/crab/lobster open yourself, of which only like 10% is edible. So you pay money to a restaurant to have to do the hard work of prepping the food yourself. You'll leave this meal hungry either because you lost your appetite from having a staring contest with the food in your plate or because too much of the stuff on the plate is just exoskeleton.

Then there are tapas which everyone knows. As if the Spanish were the first people to think of having meals in smaller portions in separate plates. Overrated if you ask me.

Travelling alone comes with the caveat of having many hours to yourself. You can drive yourself to bounce off the walls thinking about how much more fun it would be to be with your buddies from back home or in the comfort of familiar surroundings. Or you can use that time to pursue new hobbies (like writing a blog *wink wink*), meeting new people and seeing the new city you're in. In doing more so the latter (though I do have my downer days ofc), the biggest gamechanger for me has been the realization that I can have at least as much, but usually more fun than going somewhere with friends. No offense, friends.

Why?

When I rip solo missions to bars, I have no idea who I'm going to meet or where I'm going to end up at the end of the night. People overestimate how hard it is meeting new people when you're alone. 90% of the time it just starts with "Hi". From there, you form new groups of friends with people from different parts of the world who likely have had very different experiences in life than the average Torontonian and see the world through a different lens. More often than not, those differences rub off on you over time and that's how you end up doing stuff that would have never even come up in conversation with friends back home. Some of the craziest s**t I've done wasn't because I just woke up one morning and a switch went off. A close buddy who did it before usually planted the seed and it snowballed from there. For example, I signed up to get my scuba diving license next weekend so that I can do it anywhere in the world without an instructor. I've done it once for fun in the Canaries so I know what to expect but this was also something I would have never considered a year ago.

Additionally, being alone means I can do what I want whenever I want. I don't have someone here that I have to compromise plans with or make forced conversation with all day. If I wanna wake up at noon or walk around naked, I can do so with no one complaining (expect maybe the ppl staying in the hotel across from me).

Point is, don't wait for the stars to align and for everyone in the friend group to say yes to a plan. At that rate you're probably only going to make one or two trips a year and they're going to fall short of expectations because you spent months building it up in your head of how great its going to be. Know that if you pull the trigger yourself it'll be just as fun, probably even better.

The next few weekends should be more action packed as there's going to be some guest appearances from other people I've met in my travels.

Stay thirsty friends and get after it this weekend.

- MS