Barcelona

This last weekend, three other girls (Jillian, Leanna and Laurel) and I went to Barcelona, Spain. I was really excited about going because before studying Italian, I had studied Spanish for 5 years, and had yet to go to Spain. We booked a late flight on Thursday night using Ryanair. Now if you don't know what Ryanair is, it's this airline that has really cheap flights around Europe, but sometimes (most of the time) they fly you into a city that is outside of the city you want to go to. So then, you have to take a bus ride to where ever you really wanted to go. Our flight took us to an airport that was an hour and a half outside of Barcelona :( but that was ok, we were still really excited when we landed! We had planned on getting a late dinner there since everyone we had talked to had said that people in Spain stay out really late and don't usually eat dinner until around 11pm, so that sounded perfect to us!

When we got to the city we strapped on our luggage and determined to get some real Spanish food set out into the city. However, as we continued on our journey, store after store was closed, we didn't quite understand. It was also strange because it seemed like all the stores had names that were in Chinese writing. After walking around not finding anything open for about 20 minutes we finally ran into an open restaurant, although it was not quite Spanish, it was sort of a mix of Spanish and Chinese, run by Chinese but sort of Spanish food. We walked in and everyone awkwardly stared at us, while we awkwardly stared back. At that point our group wanted to just turn around and leave but we thought that would be even more strange so we sat down. Jillian decided to order this meal that said it was rice with a tomato sauce and eggs. It was a little weird because as one meal came out after the other we noticed that they were coming out of the little closet off to the right. We would hear a little knock on the door and our waitress would go over and fetch one of our meals. Jillian's lovely dinner ended up being a plate heaping full of white rice with about a gallon of ketchup on top. It was pretty gross. Oh and then the bread smelled like fish, very strange. Anyways, we awkwardly ate our meals, being the only ones in the restaurant that were actually eating, and got out of there pretty fast. We couldn't stop laughing about our disgusting first meal in Barcelona. But don't worry, that first meal was not a sign of what the weekend was to bring.

After dinner we caught the metro to our hostel, which actually turned out to be really nice! It's always a little worrisome not knowing what the hostel is going to be like. When we checked in, we got to know the guy that was working the night shift, Nacho. He was super nice and helped us figure out everything we should do over the next few days. He even offered to make us a real spanish dinner on Saturday night and help us find our first destination in the morning since he would be leaving around the same time as us.

So the next morning, Nacho helped us metro our way to the first park we wanted to see, then we all got breakfast. Then he dropped us off at our tour around Barcelona. It was a free walking tour that ended up being really nice. We got to see a bunch of the historical sites around Barcelona, including the art school where Picasso would sit on the steps of and draw, the church where the wood that Columbus brought back from America is located and a whole lot of other stuff. We ate lunch at this really good Spanish restaurant Nacho had suggested and I got to have a Spanish omelet which was sooo delicious! We also had Crema Catalyan which is the Spanish version of Creme Brulee, sooo good! After that we went to the Picasso museum which was really neat! Later that night we went to a dinner where we got tapas, and then saw flamengo dancing. The day was packed full of really fun stuff!

The next day, we slept in, which was sooo nice! Not too late though, because we had a full day of walking ahead of us. First we decided to go to Park Guell, which is a park that Gaudi designed, it was soo cool! If you have never seen any of Gaudi's work, definitely check it out, it's so different than anything I've seen so far, it kind of reminded me of Disney World, but real art. Then we walked to Sagrada Familia, which is a cathedral that Gaudi designed as well, it is sooo cool! Part of it looks like what a sandcastle would look like if you put water on it, or built it with wet sand. After that we walked to two other houses that Gaudi built. The second one, the one that he lived in, we took a tour of. It was soooo cool! Me and Jillian decided that we will live there someday. There was this really neat fireplace and the two front rooms were completely open to the street with huge windows. The wood around the entire house was so cool too, really smooth. Then there was the awesome rooftop that had the most amazing tile designs. I really can't describe the house in a way to help you understand, so you'll just have to look at pictures. Anyways, then we walked around for a while and found this restaurant/bar that was called "Obama-British Africa" or something like that. It was a neat place with all this african art everywhere. We thought the name was funny though. We got this super good crepe with a lot of chocolate, bananas and walnuts, so good! Then we attempted to go to this magic fountain show, but it was closed, I was sad.

That night, Nacho made us this amazing lentil stew. It took a long time to make, but that just made it all the better. We ended up staying up talking with Nacho and some of the other people staying in the hostel. We talked with this one guy that was from Colorado. He has been backpacking around Europe for 5 months by himself and he had a bunch of stories to tell us from that and then from his hitchhiking around the U.S. We learned never to trust a guy wearing a dolphin spray-painted shirt.

The next morning it was time to go back to Rome. As much as we enjoyed Barcelona, we were all happy to get back to our city.

I am looking forward to Thursday because we are going to the ballet to see Sleeping Beauty. And then this next weekend we are staying in Rome. Hopefully, we will be able to fit in a lot of sightseeing this weekend, but midterms are also next week, so unfortunately there will also be some studying.

Hope all is well back at home. Miss you all and wish you were here exploring with me.