Dear Barcelona...love your beaches. Your fitness centers, not so much.

This, I admit, is not entirely true.  But let me explain. During CIEE orientation we were each given a card for a fitness center, The Holmes Place, that included a free trial AND a special CIEE student rate, 162 E for Jan-Apr., which seemed kind of steep for a special student discount.  However, Andrea and I decided to visit considering we had a free trial, and we might as well use it.  So we went to the gym to work out one night, and fell in love with it. It was such a nice facility, very classy, and had everything you could want in a gym.  But we decided that, since we would be missing out on our membership for all of January and half of April (when we have vacation), it really was too expensive for 2 and a half months.  So instead we thought we would look for other gyms to try...well, we had good intentions to anyways.  But on Sunday, after church and una 'cena fraternal', we decided to visit the beach.  It was a beautiful day, and the beach was more than impressive. we took tons of pictures and walked around for over an hour, taking our shoes off and walking in the sand.  I was in love...momentarily scarred by the very tanned naked man casually strolling along the shore, yes, but even that unfortunate event wouldn't deter me from returning to this beautiful place when the weather got warmer.  And then we realized, the weather is already starting to get warmer.  Spring would be upon us in no time, and we both decided it might be a good idea to hit the gym once or twice before pulling out the old bathing suits.  So, after classes today, (well. class. I was supposed to have 2 but the first one got canceled, 2nd canceled class in two days, and it's only the second day of classes. I think i like how they do school here in Spain... :D ) Andrea and I started looking for another gym to try.  I found one online that looked really nice and was advertising a whole month for free without promise of membership! just to be sure I called to get the details and see if we could try it out...yes mom, I called. and even spoke to the women in Spanish.  Sadly, their advertising wasn't quite accurate and the free month was only for people who were going to register.  So back to the drawing boards.  After a few quick searches, I found another gym that is apparently very impressive.  I plugged in a bit of info and got a quote for prices.  When i saw 13.62 E for the ONE package, i was excited.  However, after further investigation, we figured out that it meant you could go once a month, for 13.62 each month.  But after plugging in names and email addresses, we were awarded with a free pass for the gym.  Considering we had nothing else to do, and once again had a free pass, we figured why not try this gym too.  So we hopped on the metro and in no time were at DiR Barcelona.  It looked nice, not as chique as Holmes Place, but good enough for free.  Right after walking through the doors, we were greeted by an enthusiastic, fancy Spanish man, David (dah-VEED).  He pulled us over to the counter, explaining the memberships and everything about the gym, pulling out brochures with all kinds of information.  Then he wanted to know which one we wanted.  We were a little confused.  We told him we wanted to see the gym before we actually made our decision, thinking we could use our free passes and that would be that.  However, we were sadly mistaken.  Yes, David showed us the gym, we got a grand old tour all the way through. and then out. back to the counter again. without even breaking a sweat.  You see, the "free pass" we had received for the gym meant that the registration fee was waived for this month, making the registration for February only 47E.  Neither of us were prepared to, nor really wanted to, become members of the gym, but David insisted, telling us it was such a great offer.  Andrea wanted to know why, because we couldnt really see the wonderful offer, and he explained that usually the registration fee is 130E, so THAT'S what was free this month. but not next month...or the one after.  After trying to let him down gently, not refusing to become members, but insisting we would first have to talk to our parents about it, we booked it out of there, not turning back for fear that David might be crying.  So that ended up being a fail.  But, I had seen online that if you wanted to go to Holmes Place for one day, instead of getting a monthly membership, it was 15E.  It ends up being much more expensive paying that way, of course, if you go a lot, but we figured we just wanted to go to the gym and 15E was better than David and his 130+47E, any day. Plus, Holmes Place is on the next street over from DiR Barcelona.  So we hurried over there to get in even an hour of working out before it would be time for dinner.  We walked in and asked the receptionist how much it would cost for one day, just to make sure, and she confirmed the 15E...PERO, (there's always a pero) you have to get it for 5 days, not just one. There's a big difference between 15 and 75. at that point, we were just so fed up, we decided our exercise for the night was skipping the metro and walking home.  So, I was sitting here in my room, contemplating doing jumping jacks on my balcony and sit ups on my tile floor, when i remembered the Parc de la Ciutadella that we visited a couple weeks ago.  So now, we will finally get our exercise.  Tomorrow we're going for a run through the park at 8:30 am, that is, unless the metro randomly stops working or the park ends up being closed for the day.  But with our luck, who knows.  More exciting stories later. 

Sincerely,
Fitness Failure