Barcelona Day 2 - Sitges Beaches!

Today Matt, Paul and I decided to hit the beaches and enjoy a day of extended leisure after our long travels yesterday. The guys at our hostel suggested that instead of going to the Barcelona beaches, we go to the town of Sitges which is known for its beaches. (Sitges is pronounced See-ches so it rhymes when you say it. Go ahead... Sitges Beaches.)
First, however, we decided to have a "family dinner" that night and since Matt's middle name is Magaldi, we quickly concluded that an Italian dinner was the way to go. We went to the grocery store across the street from our hostel to get our ingredients.
We took the metro to Sants Estacio and then took a local train for a thirty minute ride to Sitges. In keeping with our theme of meeting interesting (or crazy) people on trains, Paul got fairly close with a group of old Catalonians. We were all cramped in the train and Paul was hanging on to the handrail on the roof of the compartment. Apparently, when he swung along with the train, he looked like a dancing girl, which the old lady sitting next to the aisle told us. Paul and Matt then started talking with the woman and her friends including this one old man who had been in the navy and was telling jokes. I stood there and smiled politely and zoned out.
When we got to Sitges, I realized that it was everything that one hopes a small Spanish town would be. There were adorable winding, narrow alleys with picturesque apartments and storefronts. The weather was a perfect 86 degrees with just a few clouds in the sky. We wandered through the town until we got down to the beach. We staked out a good spot in the middle and then headed in to the Mediterranean Sea.

 After spending a few hours at San Sebastian beach, we went back into the maze of alleys and found a small cafe to have a quick late lunch at around 3. The girl at the desk was really nice and it seemed to be a family cafe since she kept asking her mother for instructions. On our way out we asked if there were other good beaches in the area and she directed us to a beach past the church. This was an awesome direction since it allowed us to explore even more of the town and see some beautiful views.

We spent about an hour at the second beach and then slowly headed back to the train station.
We got a little lost on our way home because Paul and I got off the metro a few stations early. Still, we got back pretty quickly and decided to proceed with our dinner plans. Paul and Matt went to get meat for a meat sauce for our spaghetti while I showered off the untold amounts of sand that snuck into my hair.
For our dinner, I provided the appetizer in the form of a tomato Mozzarella salad (sensing a pattern here?) Matt, being Italian, inherently knows an excellent meat sauce recipe so he was in charge of that along with Paul. They prepared spaghetti and Matt's mother's meat sauce. We also tried to make garlic bread (by putting chopped garlic in a pan, letting it melt a little, and then throwing bread and olive oil on and around it and adding cheese). It smelled great until the bread burned.

After our feast we decided to just stay in for the night and I discovered the wonderful IPhoto feature called "enhance" which has helped me make my photos look REALLY nice. So get excited for that.

Cheers!

-Simon