Yesterday I mentioned that a woman had lost her purse to a motorcycle thief.

All day, I was extra careful with my camera bag with all my new toys in it (new leses, etc)

When we sat down for lunch, you ordered and then sat down and they would bring your food. I sat down after ordering to let my mum go order and I put my bag down and basically looked out the window. While I was waiting, I suddenly felt my spidey senses tingling and turned around to notice a man leaving with a bag similar to mine. I quickly looked down quickly to check on the satus of my bag and put it together -- he had MY bag. I immediately got up and ran after him as he was quickly making his exit out of the restaurant. As he got to the door, I grabbed the bag and him, and told him that he had my bag as well as adding a few choice words in Spanish that I learned from Yaz (thanks!!) and walked back into the restaurant to the surprise of some Spanish citizens who had figured out what had happened.

Had I lost it, my camera and money would have been gone. NOT FUN.

So, lesson # 2 learned. Don't detatch my bag from my body -- ever.

Spain is an exciting city!

Things that are great:

- It's warm!
- It's a really livable city. Lots of boulevards and walking space for people. I have also never seen so many people in the streets in any city before that I have visited. It seems that people very much enjoy walking with friends and going to large street cafés.
- People are friendly and generally helpful
- Taxi's are really inexpensive compared to Canada
- Lunch is super cheap! (Self made salad, rice with meat and then a drink all for $10!!)
- The city it super clean

Things that aren't so great

- Few tourist places actually have English interpretation. Often they have Spanish, Catalin (local Spanish variant) Italian and German, but rarely English even though staff only speak Spanish and English.
- Tourist things are expensive ($20+ to enter, each)
- Taxis are near to impossible to actually get
- Restaurants have absolutely awful customer service


We went to a number of places today and I especially enjoyed a building which had no flat walls. ie. they were all curvy. This included doors, windows, everything. The builders must have gone absolutely insane building it.

We went to a restaurant and it had some absolutely hilarious translations and scary practices.

We were waiting for a table and watched a waiter place salad on a plate with his hands. Clearly not sanitary. Not so bad until he got the asperagus out of a can and placed those on a plate as well. Needless to say, we didn't order any salad.

On the menu, I first noticed the homely haddock (as in ugly) but it got better!
Another one of their specialities were appearantly roasted kid. Frightening.
Next came the grilled or roasted angler. I guess they weren't a good fisherman.

On the wall we previous notable people who had visited the restaurant. Next to us were Charleston Heston (without a gun amazingly!!) and Robery Di Nero. DIrectly next to me was OJ Simpson sans esposa. :|

Tricky robbers!!

When leaving the hotel before dinner, some American's in front of us in the taxi line (who were more than happy to directly remind everyone that they were first, who were also dressed in hokey teeshirts and hats) had had a nice little incident. One of the women had appearantly been standing on the corner when someone on a motorcycle drove by, slowed down, and grabbed her purse. Lucky for her, only her glasses were in it, but lesson learned for us -- safe guard our things like a hawk!

So I'm off to Barcelona for my cousin's wedding. However, before I could get there, I had to fly to Montreal, then Munich and then finally Barcelona. Since I had an 8 hour layover in Montreal, I decided to go downtown. The girl at the airport told me to get off at the bus station. I'm not sure what she was thinking, but it seems the station is in a semi-ghetto as far as Canadian cities go.

So here was my first and last adventure to the bus station in Montreal.

1. I decided to grab a map and see if I could figure out where to go, so after not having any idea where I was, I went outside and found a big pole with directions, but couldn't figure out where I was on the map. Shortly after, a homeless man approached me with a whole speach about how he was $4.76 short of getting his student ticket (clearly was NOT a student) and if I could help him out, he could tell me where things were. For $2 I thought it was worth it and he helped me out and went off finding 3 more "victims" before I left the area.

2: I decided to walk towards a nice Church and take some photos but noticed a number of unsavoury characters including one woman who wouldn't stop hitting herself so I left that area.

3: Next I found a nice looking street and decided to check it out. Half way down, another homeless woman approached me and said something about God and a nice day. Turns out she went on and on and before long was asking me for $20 for crack or coke. She kept saying F this S on that and kept tying Jesus and God into crack and asking for that $20. Weird.

4: To make me feel better about my experience so far, I decided to go to Zing, which was awful with their new TINY bowls and expensive good. Zing was also graced by my crack lady again. *sigh*

5: I walked uptown (or something) into a nicer area which was boring so I walked back downtown which went from nice to ghettoized quickly. First came the homeless man with at least 7 dogs all attached to leashes and to him. Not sure how that all worked.

6: Next came the nice gentleman across the street who turned out to be a crack dealer. Best dressed crack dealer I have certainly ever seen. First he sold some to random people and then to a quite unattractive hooker.

7: I get to the airport and the airline people are finally there. As I'm waiting, a guy who wanted to fly with Czech airines 10 minutes before his flight with 1 suitcase and 2 tires for a car, one which is sealed and one appears open and used is denied boarding. Then he can’t understand why he can’t get on the flight, as there aren’t even agents from the right airline there anymore!!

Oh well, hopefully the flight is better :D