Barcelona!

Ok, I'm pretty late in writing this entry, but here goes.

We met up really early on the 21st at Prado to catch the bus to the airport. Things went pretty smoothly, except our plane caught a tailwind during our approach, and we had to abruptly ascend and turn around to land against the wind. You could feel the plane getting jerked around by the wind. We landed in Reus, a little town about an hour outside of Barcelona (because that's what you get when you fly Ryanair. We hopped on a bus to the main city and checked into our hostel in el Barri Gótica. Gothic Point Hostel was really cool--vividly decorated walls, big rooms, and a lot of activities.

After a quick lunch, we spent the afternoon exploring the Gothic quarter of the city and just getting a feel for the place. We saw the Plaça Catalunya (ç se pronuncia como z...oh, that's "th" for you seseantes), which had some interesting artwork, and a lot of pigeons. Not as cool as Sevillano pigeons, however. After that we went to La Boquería, which is a famous market. It's one of the remaining throwbacks to history in such a modernized city. There were gigantic candy stands, fruit shops, meat and seafood venders...I had to remind myself that I had already eaten many a time haha.

We made our way to the port of Barcelona, where we took pictures with the lions in a traffic circle before hanging out on the docks. There's a sense of purity about the lack of supervision around the water that the US with its obsession with safety and liability just seems to lack. It was great to just dangle our feet over the edge and see the fish and birds. We had wanted to see the sunset, but it set over a mountain and a castle, which was pretty cool regardless. Later, Blake, Allison and I walked to a little park and saw a Gaudí fountain by night and also the Arc de Triunfo. We went to bed around midnight because we were going to get an early start the next day.

8:00 our alarms started going off. Grr. But it was exciting because we were off to see some important sights. First stop was the Sagrada Familia cathedral. The construction was started in 1882 and is still ongoing. It was originally designed by Gaudí, who at one point, when someone asked him about why the construction was taking so long, replied "My client is not in a hurry," referring to God. What's already been built is extremely impressive, nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. It's scheduled to be done in 2026, meaning at some point after that I'm going to have to journey back to Catalunya. We paid a couple euros to take an elevator up to the top of the tower where we got an amazing view of Barcelona (the first of many).

Next stop was Parque Güell, which is a massive park that contains a lot of famous Gaudí architecture. Nobody warned us that after you get out of the Metro (which was great by the way, DC-esque in simplicity), you have to climb almost a kilometer of hills and take about 3 esclators to the park, and then climb up more hills. But when we finally made it there and it was all worth it. It was great--you have to check the pictures on my Facebook albums to get a feel for it.

We stopped to get a couple tapas for lunch (we found a place that actually didn't charge 4 euros for a tapa...a rarity in Barça. We stopped in our hostel for a bit to drop off some stuff before heading to the beach. It was really relaxing to be out there. We hung out on a pier for a while before walking down the shore. After that we returned to the park from the night before to see it all by daylight.

Later that night we went to Barcelona's Plaça de Espanya, where every Friday and Saturday night there's a fountain light show. Again, check out the Facebook pictures (too lazy to post them on this). After that, we went to Chupitos for some chupitos. They had all these crazy shots--one was called the Boy Scout, where the bartender lit a fire and we roasted a marshmellow as a chaser.

We also had Pecha Zeta, which involved Pop Rocks and jumping around. El Punto J and an Orgasmo de Monjas were also had. At the end, we were all given a free one by the bartender (probably because between the 5 of us we spent almost 35 euros). Then we went home, well, Blake and Allison went by the Med for like 10 minutes, because on the way home Blake decided he needed to use the bathroom. Katie and I wanted to call people back home...and you all know how that went haha. In any case, we were in bed by 1:30ish.

The next day, we "slept in" until 9 before checking out of the hostel. There weren't many stops on our to-do list. We went to the Olympic stadium (which was a lot smaller than you would imagine), and saw the rest of the Olympic grounds. During our exploring, we came across a dirt track where people were racing remote control cars...really durable, really fast remote controlled cars. It was really cool. After that, we made our way up the mountain (we were with Allison, obviously) to see the fortress. Let me start by saying that I was developing a cold, so it was not exactly a pleasant walk. But the view was worth it. We stared out across the Med from one direction, and the city from the other.

We caught an early bus back to Reus and toured the town for a while, stopping for coffee and aceitunas...and ice cream. It was a nice little place. We met up with some other CEA Students in the airport and made it home smoothly.

Reflections: Barcelona is pretty much exactly as I expected it. Great for a visit, could never live there, and I'm glad I studied in Sevilla. It's too big of a city for my tastes, and the Catalan would definitely make it difficult to learn Spanish the way I've learned it here. But it's full of life and culture and I definitely think I'll be back to see the finished Sagrada Familia one day.

I got back from London yesterday, so expect an entry about that by the weekend. I can't believe I'm going home in just 11 days!