Market in Barcelona

The fresh food market in Barcelona is made up of hundreds of little stalls that have all different kinds of food.  Its right in the middle of Las Ramblas and its covered almost European railroad station style.  The meat stalls like the one above, have multitudes of chorizos, legs of iberian ham (cured legs of ham similar to prosciutto), and tons of sliced salamis.

The fruit juice stalls have one euro containers of pure deliciosity.  They mix all different fruits together.  My favorites were pineapple-coconut and mango-coconut.

Tons of fresh fruit, yummy figs.

Beautiful fresh seafood, most of which I had not scene in a good three months, a very welcome sight.

Stands devoted to salt cured and oil cured fishes.

All sorts of cheeses on display ay the cheese stalls.  I had a nice and smokey, smoked (surprise) Iberian cheese.

Some of the stalls only sold a single type of mushroom.

An eggery using ostrich eggs as price signs.

They even have chocolate shops!

Many of the stall spaces are taken up by these small petit restaurants that have bar seating all around.

I had to splurge on a slice of the iberian ham in the middle.  At 149 euros a kilo, a slice ran about four euros and was well worth it.  It was a melt in your mouth mix of muscle and fat that was salty and delectable.  The market is a must check out for anyone going to Barcelona.

Dunkin'Cofee

Apparently in non obese countries like Spain, the stress is on the coffee not the doughnuts! 

Absurdly Cool Italian Loft Furniture

This Italian furniture company Tumideispa makes these incredible sets of loft furniture.  Their other furniture is neat too but the loft sets blow me away.  The set above, Compisizione  559, is my favorite.  Bed, work space and walk in closet, doesn't get any better than that.  The best part of these sets is that most if not all have lofted work spaces, lots of them also have an elevated walkway as well.  The storage space that these units allocate is astronomical.  It has now become my plan to have one of these one day, or at least to build my own based on the same principles.  In my mind, I'm seeing a complex tree house type of network connected by bridges and swings in a warehouse loft on the west side, each room can have a different theme and crazy lighting!  But alas, something tells me this will be an unrealized plan for a very long time.

Election Night Fun

Given the vast importance of this past election, mixed with the zealotry of crazy liberal NYU students and the fact that this was most of our first presidential elections the NYU bubble in Prague was full of election spirit.  We were notified of two bars that were going to stay open all night to show the election.  The first was The Globe, a British ex-pats bar that was packed solid the entire night.  The second one was the not-as-packed, but still crowded "sportbar."  I went to this one, it had a big projection screen in the back as you can see above.  Wolf Blitzer was at least nine feet tall.  Aside from the crowd of NYU students there were four obnoxious Czech students in there Palin 2012 and overall red uniforms, as well as a single old member of the green party who was screaming something about Nader, I think.  It was actually a lot of fun to watch in this way, every time a new set of polls would close, the whole room started counting down and there were screams of joy with each state that voted for Obama and ominous boos for McCain.  I was pretty blown away by the lead that Obama had, I was very worried that McCain would have been right on his heals the entire night.  By around 3:30 (Czech time) and my third beer I headed back to my dorm to learn that Obama had both Pennsylvania and Ohio!  Then I was just a matter of staying up till Florida was secured, but no need, he was announced as President.  I have to say that the people in charge of Obama's campaign are brilliant.  For the web integration alone they are brilliant.  They did more for Obama and voting than P-diddy ever did.  The website was a beautiful display of ease, form, and function.  And its good to know, now that the campaign is over Obama will continue with this strategy,  he just started up his new website from the election on.  It was a pretty unique experience spending this election in Prague.  I can safely say that in the travel I have been doing that Obama is the best thing that ever could have happened for our overseas relations, it practically erases all the bad reputation we gained under W.  In my Modern Dissent class we were discussing some of the potential outcomes of this election.  Our professor, who was a leader of the Velvet Revolution, and one of the worlds best journalists, was telling us that his contacts (high ups in Arabic nations)  feel that Obama's election is Osama's death sentence.  They feel that America showing that they can democratically elect a minority will pull the power out from under the extremists and will actually promote democracy as a system that works and is fair.  Either way I do not envy Obama, he will surely have the most difficult presidency yet.  He must be perfect and make all the right moves, there is too much riding on his shoulders to do otherwise.

Paella in Barcelona

Some amazingly delicious Paella we got on the first night in Barcelona.  It was the best Paella I have ever had.  The restaurant had a great outdoor eating area where we could hear the waves.  This meal with a few pitchers of sangria was a great way to start my vacation in Barcelona.

Bond, James Bond

With the release of the new movie a few days away in the Czech Republic and a few weeks away in America there is Bond excitement all around. The Bond marketing strategy is probably one of the most incredible forces in entertainment. In the past five or so years, they have managed to make Christmas into a week long Bond-fest with the "007 days of Christmas." Every time they come out with a new movie, the entire collection of bond movies is put into a new box set, and they sell! The temptation is overwhelming, even though I have every single bond film on DVD, a little part of me cant help but want the shiny, neat new box set that even includes the very last film to come out. Now with Blue-Ray becoming the next media standard, they have started releasing Blue-Ray volumes of three movies at slightly less than sixty dollars. But the marketing genius does not stop there, they have there product placements of high end luxury goods. In Paris, the Omega watch store has a huge banner of Daniel Craig behind the showcase. In Prague the Sony Ericsson store has the Quantum of Solace logo with a conversation quoted in Czech, but there is still the unmistakable, "Bond, James Bond." Brand consistency is a key, "Quantum of Solace" is one of the only movie posters that I have scene that is the same in every country, this is mostly due to the 007 that diagonally lines up in the movie poster. Swatch has recently teamed up with Bond for a brilliant series of Bond villain watches. There are twenty-two in total, one for each movie, and they hit the full range of Swatch watches, from the plastic, glow in the dark "Live and Let Die" shamen watch to the Folex, gold plated "Gold Finger" watch. One of my personal favorites is the "Thunderball" watch which was also one of my favorite Bond movies growing up. The Bond movies also have a unique tie into pop culture through their theme songs. They usually feature some of the most popular artists of the time, for example, Duran Duran in the eighties and for "The Quantum of Solace" Jack White and Alicia Keys perform the first Bond Duet. I'm only scratching the surface of the marketing behemoth that is Bond, but I bet the strategies will get more creative and more elaborate with each new movie that comes out.

OCD-ing Out My Suitcase

So in preparation to go to Barcelona for four days and then Paris for four days I have to pack my overnight bag. I was debating whether to do the flat pack or the roll method. As you can see I opted for the roll method, I figure it will just be easier to grab a pack of clothes and change. Just thought I would share the above picture to those who know me, I am just as surprised as you are that my bag is packed this neatly.