First day in Barcelona

We left Madrid on bus for Barcelona.  The bus took 8 hours and we bought a crappy lunch before leaving (they don't understand what sandwiches are supposed to be).  Driving through the countryside, it looks like a lot of Spain is rocky and dusty and not very green.  We also saw huge numbers of windmills along the way.

Once we got to Barcelona it took us an hour or so to find our way from the bus station to the metro station to our hostel.  Luckily when we got off the metro, we met two girls who were headed to the same hostel as us and lead us there.  Both girls were from the US (Iowa) but one was living in NY and the other just finished grad school.  We didn't check into our hostel until 11:30pm but had to go out and get food.
Reception told us about a place that was open that wasn't too far away and we ended up having semi-amazing food (partially because we were starving).

Random statues on Montjuic

a very weird installation at the free museum

The next day we went to the grocery store to stock up on meals and snacks for the next couple of days.  Our plan for the day was to explore Montjuic, which is an area of Barcelona on the top of a mountain.  The cable car to Montjuic is included in the price of a metro ticket, which is pretty awesome.  Once there we wandered around random outdoor statues, went into a free museum with no english subtitles, past the 1992 Olympic stadium, and took a cable car up to the top of a castle/fort.

The castle had amazing views of the harbor and all of Barcelona and we spent a couple hours exploring it.
For dinner we made pasta, had a bottle of wine, and cookies for dessert.