Day 149: Olympic Stadium, Razzmatazz

In the afternoon I took the Metro to Espanya Plaza Station, at the foot of a massive park and sports complex that sits within the Sants-Montjuïc district.

Here they have an abundance of museums that sit intertwined with gardens and the old Olympic stadium area.

Palau Nacional, a modern art museum

After getting lost among the gardens, I found the Olympic stadium, which sits behind the Palau Nacional pictured above. Originally constructed in 1927, it wasn't able to host an Olympic event until 1992.

I left the stadium to the west, where there is a large courtyard with a telecommunications tower posing as a piece of art.

For how expansive the place is, it was very empty. I left in the direction of the Gothic Quarter in search of food and WiFi.

An impressive view down a street in Eixample

The Ecuadorian girl I had met yesterday had invited me to go clubbing with her and her friend, who was having a birthday party the next night, so I decided to try to find some cheap pants to go in, since I had left my jeans in Budapest and I didn't want to go to the club in shorts. I ended up spending 33 Euros on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that were on sale at an Urban Outfitters.

It was 10pm at that point, but I still had to go back to the hostel to change. We had arranged to meet at 12am at a club called Razzmatazz in the Sant Martí district.

At 11:30 I let my friend know I would be there in 40 minutes. When I arrived I got a doner for a mid-night dinner then left in search of a free WiFi hotspot, since I still didn't see my friends in front of the club. Some chap had left his WiFi hotspot unprotected (bless his soul) so I was able to connect, only to find a message my friend had sent me asking me to meet her there at 1 instead.

It was already 12:40, so I decided to wait. At 1:00 I gave her a call to check on her progress. She told me she would be there in 10 minutes. At one point during my wait I witnessed the trashiest thing I'd ever seen out on the streets of Europe. Two girls, one after the other, decided to drop their pants between a pair of parked cars, pop a squat, and pee on the street. At that point I was probably the only sober person in the area, so it must have seemed way weirder to me than anyone else around. At 1:50 my friend finally replied back to my subsequent messages and missed calls, saying she just got inside the club -- but by that time I had lost all enthusiasm for a night out and took a taxi back to the hostel.