Hola Barcelona! Please Don't Take My Lunch Money.

The bus dropped me off at the Estacio de Nord and form there I took the metro to the Barrio Gotic.

Now I had read in the guidebooks that Barcelona was all crime ridden and full of pick pockets, but all guide books about every city say that so I really didn't pay no mind. That is until I saw someone getting robbed in the metro platform, and then at the transfer station there was a total butch-dikey, mullet-sporting police woman with a german sheperd with a metal muzzle on, patroling the station. I later noticed that there seems to be an army of hardcore tank-girls with dogs specifically recruited to guard every station. It was all very Mad-Maxette.

The metro left me right in the middle of the gothic neighborhood, which is pretty cool, with all sorts of churches, stone walls, broken down structures, and very ornate buildings and lamposts. And more pickpockets, as I saw another person getting robbed, and a gypsy sending her little boy into a group of tourists to dig through handbags. Aaah gypsies, can't live with them, can't live without them.

I worked my way through the maze of narrow, dark streets to my hostel, The Hostal Levante, which was housed on the top three floors of a gothic building. I deposited my tote bag, hid my passport, put my wallet in my front pocket and went out for a walk.