barcaaaaaaa!

Barcelona!

This weekend, five other girls and myself planned a trip to Barcelona! It was an adventure, but definitely something we needed to do while in Spain. Barcelona was the original city where I wanted to study in Spain because it was on a beach. That was my only logical reason for liking Barcelona back before I picked my study abroad program. However, my adviser told me to pick Sevilla instead because they don’t speak Spanish in Barcelona, they speak Catalan. So I chose Sevilla, even though it was a whole hour and a half from the beach So, I visited Barcelona from Thursday night to Sunday morning this weekend.

On Thursday, our flight left at 6:30 PM. We took a bus to the airport. It was funny because my friend Bianca lost her phone, and we couldn’t get in contact with her so we had no idea if she was going to show up or not. Eventually she did, calm, cool and collected as usual. Thursday in Sevilla was “Corpus Christi” – that’s the name of my church back in the US! But it’s a huge holiday here and it’s a serious part of a certain religion (something Christian). All of the buildings are closed and people have off. For class, we had a “picnic” in the park. So it was a very relaxing day leading up to our flight. We left for the airport around 3:30 and had plenty of time. Everything went smoothly, with the exception of Bianca being MIA for a little bit 

When we got to Barcelona (after an hour and a half plane ride), we arrived at our hostels. My friends Cristina, Charise, and Rachel were in one hostel, and my friends Florence, Bianca, and I were in one a few minutes down the street. It worked out nicely because we stuck together all weekend. I’m thankful, because Cristina is seriously a travel agent and sooooo good at planning everything we needed to do – from where to visit to how to get there! Our hostel was really cool. It was definitely a good experience because I’ve never stayed in a hostel before. It was a youth hostel so it was a bunch of people our age in different rooms sharing a bathroom. There were three of us in a four-person room (2 sets of bunk beds), so we had a fourth random roommate. We weren’t there at the same time much, but what we learned was he was from Australia and had an adorable accent! There were also people in the hostel from Italy, Germany, etc. – all around the world.

Thursday night we explored the town. Barcelona reminds me of the Spanish version of New York City. There are people everywhere, it’s busy, and it’s diverse. There are so many languages going on at once, since the majority of the people that live there speak Catalan, but know all the other languages like Spanish, English, French…etc. I don’t know how they do it! I didn’t realize what language I was speaking in half of the time! It is also very expensive like NYC. Nothing was cheap, which made it really hard to “get by.” Our hostel was right off of “Las Ramblas” – probably the most famous street in Spain because of its shopping and reputation for always being busy! That was cool to see. However, Thursday was some sort of holiday in Barcelona (different than Corpus Christi in Sevilla, someone mentioned Barcelona’s was like our Independence Day). The people were actually crazy, I was scared! They were setting off fireworks and sparklers everywhere. It was quite an experience to deal with!

Friday morning we woke up and were ready to take on Barcelona. Barcelona is historic, beautiful, and artsy. There are many buildings and monuments inspired by Antoni Gaudi, an extremely famous Catalan artist. So we started off our Saturday by grabbing a bite to eat, and then the six of us figured out the metro station. We took the metro to La Sagrada Familia. We stood outside of it and took pictures, but we didn’t go in which is okay because the outside was cool enough. It looks like nothing I have ever seen before! It was Gaudi’s most prized design, but it did not finish before his death in 1926 – in fact, it’s still not finished. They were working on it while we were there! The construction equipment kind of ruined the effect but it was still beautiful nonetheless.

After La Sagrada Familia, we went to La Casa Mila aka “La Pedrera” which is a building Gaudi designed for La Mila Familia in 1910. The architecture is soooo cool, especially for something that was made in the early 20th century. It was made of stone and is curvy! Now there’s a Gaudi museum in La Pedrera, but, again we did not go in. We went to the gift shop!

After La Pedrera, we made our way towards Parque Güell. Before we went in the park, we stopped at a restaurant and ate a very Spanish-y lunch. We were there for at least three hours talking about everything under the sun, which is such a Spanish thing to do. It was so nice to not be in a rush and to be on our own schedules. After forever, we walked into Parque Güell. It was beautiful, again designed by Gaudi. It was free and like a “regular park” but the architecture and design was like no park I have ever seen. It had a beautiful view of all of Barcelona. Very, very cool. We spent a lot of time there, then headed back to our hostel to eat dinner and go out to Barcelona at night. You’ll never guess what I had for dinner. A Kebab. With LAMB. Ew. But not ew. I really liked it - it was delicious! It was like a pita stuffed with lamb and other stuff. It was quick and cheap so that’s why we got it haha.

Saturday we were tourists again. We went to this market “La Boqueria” off of Las Ramblas. It’s an open air market with so many different types of foods. My favorite was the fruit stands that sold a huge thing of chopped fruit for 2 euros and then smoothies for 1,50. Delicious breakfast. We also got coffee outside of the market and the man drew hearts with chocolate syrup on the foam. Awww! After La Boqueria we went to the Picasso Museum. I LOVED it because Picasso is my favorite artist. My mom and I are going to go again when she comes to visit. She’s going to be in heaven in all of Barcelona because there is so much art to be appreciated – so of all people she’s perfect to join me!

After the museum, we got tapas for lunch then did some shopping of course. We ate dinner and then went out and then next thing we knew, Florence, Bianca, and I had to get up at 6:30 to get ourselves to our 9:05 flight back to Sevilla!

Barcelona was a blast. I loved it, and I can’t wait to return with my mom in a week. I didn’t get to go to the beach so hopefully I can do that when we go again  However, everytime I leave Sevilla, I compare the city that I’m in to Sevilla. I honestly adore everything about Sevilla and it’s been my favorite place we’ve been so far. I’ve traveled a lot in the past six weeks, but no matter where I go, I get excited to come back “home” to Sevilla. I could not be happier with the choice that I made for my study abroad this summer. With only a week left in my program, I’m dreading saying goodbye to this beautiful city and all of the amazing people that I’ve met here. But I just need to keep in mind how thankful I am to have been able to have this experience and I am so happy it happened. And I’m happy I have the best family and friends to come home to after this is over. That will make leaving 10000 times more bearable.

Well, this was a long entry but hey I had a busy weekend! It’s Sunday evening now, and I have NOTHING to do. I’m enjoying it by writing a REALLY LONG BLOG POST and sorting through my pictures from the weekend. Pictures will be up on facebook tomorrow most likely.

BESOS!