Last week we received our first visitors. We had just barely enough time to kick out our boarder, who still hasn’t paid us – something about money tied up in the Czech Republic – fill the house with croissants, and dry some towels, when Josh and Roz braved the creaky elevator to our 6th floor apartment. After a little breakfast, their eyes started to close. We sent them to bed to prepare for the Sitges Carnaval parade later that day.

When we woke them, a few hours later, it was clear that they could have slept all night and were maybe regretting mentioning that they wanted to see Sitges. But they summoned all the strength possible for people whose last coffee was courtesy of Delta Airlines and boarded the train with us and José and Melissa. We prepared ourselves for the worst, or at least for the infamous: crushing crowds, obscene costumes, gallons of alcohol. In fact, it was a moderately crowded beach town with a nice boardwalk and some pretty houses. We stood in a bit of a mob to see the children’s parade, which featured a lot of tiny people in matching Native American outfits. We were not sure whether these costumes – complete with spears, war paint, feathers, and faux buckskin – were just based on the movies or, like our old Cowboys-n-Indians disguises, which seemed to end around 1983, a bit of willful forgetting of the levels of humor involved in imperialism and genocide. Not that I’m claiming that we haven’t seen questionable costumes at home; I just thought war paint was out of style.

They next day was committed to sleeping (them) or going to class and work and normal things (us). Also, there was one of our typical tired lunches. What’s tired lunch? That’s when we go out to lunch, but we’re tired, and so we either can’t pick a place (since pretty much all the lunch places look the same: a combination menu, low prices, a slot machine) or we wander around for hours. Then, once we do pick something, ordering takes a long time. Essentially, we can never remember what the word is for each different kind of meat. But anything with pudding included can’t turn out that badly, and we were nourished enough to do some quality wandering around. I think we might have made some chicken for dinner. If that was the night, it was noteworthy because Roz, who has helped cut open live humans, lest you think she isn’t worldly, had never before consumed a roasted chicken. She did great.

Tuesday, Josh and Roz meandered their way to the Sagrada Familia, an impressive cathedral that I must admit having no more patience for visiting. In some guidebooks, it is billed as “the only cathedral still under construction in the entire world,” which to me is only interesting because it made me realize that maybe I have no idea what the definition of “cathedral” is. Anyone out there looking for something to do ought to start building one – even if you have to start small. You might get famous. Later, we headed to our favorite tapas and montaditos (finger food on bread) restaurant with José and Melissa to fortify ourselves for our second trip to Sitges. After a dinner of a lot of good snacks that somehow made everyone full, we hopped the train. The platform was moderately crowded with young folk in costume. Few of them were dressed as Native Americans this time; many went the “wig + makeup + funny hat + various plastic body parts” route, and the best costume was a fleet of taxis. We sat down and talked about how it didn’t seem like that many people were going…until we hit the next stop in the city. At that point we were joined by everyone under 25 in Barcelona, a number unquestionably greater than the capacity of the train. Soon after, we learned that a member of our party had a bit of the ol’ claustrophobia, which made it touch and go for a spell. Even though we were technically inside, people used their outside voices. Finally, after a bout with secondhand smoke and body odor that would have convinced lesser travelers that they had already had their night out, we landed in Sitges and got right to work…again, wandering around.

In what can only be described as either a god-on-our-side moment or a sign that most people who fight the crowds to get to Sitges don’t come to sit still, we found a nice outdoor table where we could watch the parade. Every now and then, one of us made the trek to the street to photograph a few of the parade floats, but mostly we sat around and amused ourselves. Even the fact that we were seated directly next to the unofficial outdoor urinal couldn’t…uh…dampen our fun. But suddenly, Melissa remembered that she had to work in a few hours. Like, four hours. It wasn’t the kind of sudden remembering that happens after you actually forget something; she knew she had to work. But around six in the morning it stopped being a late night and became morning. We began to fight our way to the train.

And even though it seemed like everyone else was still going strong, it also seemed like everyone else was waiting in line for the train, too. Ok, well, not “line.” About five thousand people were standing, mostly calmly, awaiting their turn to go through a small doorway and one of five subway turnstiles. It took a long, long time, and allowed J and R to see some things they would rather not have, like the sun coming up. After a groggy ride home, we emerged in Barcelona in the middle of the rush hour commute. It felt a bit like coming out of a long, long movie, in a theater that had a lot of nauseous twenty-year olds lying on the floor, wearing wigs and plastic body enhancements. But, after sleeping until mid-afternoon – hey, do you want jetlag? No, no one does. – we went straight into our official Paella Lesson.

The Paella Lesson consisted of Gloria cooking, Dan taking notes, and Leah translating. The recipe, for those of you who like to try the things you read about on the site and so far have not been enticed to do anything you’ve read about today, will be posted tomorrow. Be forewarned that you will be instructed to buy parts of a rabbit. But you can use chicken if that doesn’t tickle your fancy. This made for a good dinner, to be topped only by the next day’s journey to our favorite place, recommended by J and M. Aside from martinis made with wretched sweet vermouth, the only problem was being too full. And one good thing about the Sitges Train Ride Debacle is that when we realized that the metro had stopped running when we came out of the restaurant, it didn’t seem like any problem at all.

When we arrived home, the beatings began. No, no one tried to tell Roz that Otis Elevator was the true industry leader. Far from it. It was the traditional Boys-Against-Girls Catalonia Euchre Invitational. Do you even need me to tell you that the girls lost? They lost badly. The drubbing was such that only the rapid purchase of a few pairs of discounted shoes, known throughout Europe for their palliative effect, could ease the pain. That took care of Friday. Saturday we welcomed Mr. Kevin C. Joseph, Esq. Everyone headed off to Parque Guëll to picnic and get some sun. Really, though, we mostly walked up hills. It seems like whenever we go to Parque Guëll, we forget that there’s really no grass there. Hence, one winds up either walking or sitting in dirt; we did both. The week of intense touring finally caught up to everyone, and we dragged ourselves home. Both spaghetti and meatballs were created, then heated over a fire, for dinner. Leah fell asleep on the couch. Hearts replaced euchre. We set the alarm early for the first time in a week, then called a cab.

The thing about having visitors when you live in a new place is that you’re between vacationing and hosting. We really don’t know everything to show people about Barcelona, yet, and we probably still won’t in May. We’ve got our handful of restaurants, our good and bad museums, our discount stores. But we get lost, too. We still haven’t seen everything Fodor’s recommends. Our Spanish is pretty solid for ordering the proper kind of coffee, but not, say, for uncovering the details of when trout season begins in Andorra. We stay home a lot; when the weather’s nice, we go for a long walk. So it was good to look at things we made ourselves see once during the first week, and it was also good to be encouraged to get out of the house for the first stretch of beautiful days since late October. We’ve already gotten together a few ideas for how to better help our guests deal with jetlag and find La Rambla easily. It's sort of funny, also, that moving to Spain is turning out to be the best way to get to see various friends from home for a week straight. Even if for that alone, this is turning out to be a pretty good idea.