Me Encanta Barcelona!

Well, I guess you're probably all wondering how the trip to Barcelona went, right? And you're just dying to hear every story? Of course you are. :)

Well, to put it very simply and straight-forward, I have fallen in love with the city of Barcelona. It is one of the most amazing and beautiful places I've ever been. The beaches were amazing, every building was photo-worthy, the plazas were always packed with people, and the night life was extremely lively.

I feel so incredibly lucky and privelaged to have the ability to, you know, just take a quick trip to Barcelona. No big deal. haha For real though, Barcelona = coolest city ever.

And of course, I took over 200 pictures while I was there. So I warn you, there are a LOT of pictures on this post. Sorry for those of you with slower Internet connections, but it was almost impossible to narrow the selection down to the 20 or so pictures I used.

So, without further ado, here is my trip to Barcelona in pictures:

We took the overnight train to get there from Madrid, which basically meant that we stepped on the train at 10:30 at night and we didn't step off again until 7 the next morning. So it was a looooooooong train ride. But we got a sleeper car on the way there, and as you can see, even though it was a bit crowded, it was still comfortable. It was nice to able to sleep and to not worry quite as much about our stuff getting stolen.

The top picture is of Kami (dark hair in the top bunk) and Hannah (blonde hair on the bottom). Both girls are extremely cool and awesome travel buddies. The girl in the picture with me is Elizabeth. She rode there with us and got to spend a little time with us, but she met up with some other friends who were studying abroad in France, so we didn't get to see much of her while we were there.

And, of course, what would travelling be if you didn't get lost right from the start? We took the metro from the train station into the center of the city, where we thought our hostals were. But naturally, we were pretty far off mark. So the top picture is of Hannah and Kami trying to figure out where the hell we were and where we needed to be. The bottom picture is of Elizabeth being honest and showing that we had no clue.

This was one of my first views of Barcelona at the train station. Not too much to talk about here, except that we argued our way into a free train ticket. Long story short, the train station printed the wrong date on one of our return tickets and we were going to have to buy a whole new one, which would have been around 50 euro. But we used our superior Spanish skills, and our American ability to nag until something gets done, and talked our way into a new one. We were pretty proud of ourselves. :)

Finally we found our hostals. I stayed in a separate hostal from the girls because I had some friends coming down from France also and I stayed with them. We all hung out together, though, so I didn't ditch Hannah and Kami. This picture is from the inside of my hostal. It was actually surprising about how clean and even kind of hip the hostals were.

One of the first items on our agenda was to locate the beach. However, we made sure to take every opportunity to take pictures with everything cool looking along the way. For example, I have absolutely no clue what this statue is of. But it looked cool. Therefore it was a photo op. And here are the girls in front of it.

Eventually we found the beach. And what a beach it was. The Mediterranean is such an amazing place that once we got there, we didn't want to leave. You can kind of tell from this picture that the weather was perfect, sunny, and warm. We couldn't have asked for better. The water was still a little cold, but that didn't stop me from swimming in it. And now I can say that I've been in the Mediterranean Sea. And I think that's pretty dang cool.

These are mine and Hannah's feet. In the Mediterranean. Crystal clear water. Kinda chilly, but nothing we couldn't handle. How cool is that?

This was a little restaurant by the sea where we had bocadillos and people-watched.

And this, of course, is me in front of the Mediterranean. Such a once in a lifetime experience.

One thing that was a big difference between Madrid and Barcelona is that Barcelona seemed to be much more of a tourist destination from all over the world, whereas Madrid, while it is a tourist spot, is more just a giant city full of spaniards. Since Barcelona was so tourist-oriented, there were tents and shops and outside stores everywhere with all kinds of souveniers and trinkets to buy. Of course we stopped at a few to see what we could bargain for. Which wasn't much. Barcelona is an expensive place.

This is Hannah and I on top of the Cathedral of Barcelona. It was such a huge amazing church that had been built several centuries ago. The view from the top was amazing. I have a lot more pictures, but in the interest of not putting 100 pictures up here, I cut it down to this one.

One of the things we did was to go on a tapas and flamenco tour. For only 18 euros we got a ton of tapas, an amazing flamenco show, and entrance into several bars and discotecas. It was definitely money well spent for the flamenco show alone. I never would have imagined that dancing flamenco was such a difficult skill. I have never seen feet move that fast. I took a video of it, and I love looking back at it and still being amazed. This picture is of the three of us at some point throughout that night, I think at the flamenco show.

Once again, we took the opportunity to pose in front of everything. Absolutely no clue what this statue is. But I've got a picture in front of it. :)

We finally met up with my friends who were studying abroad in France and they joined us for the flamenco and tapas tour. The other guy is Kely, a guy in my fraternity, and the new blonde girl is Danielle and the new brunette is Erin. It was so great to see some more familiar faces in this foreign country. And even though none of the girls knew each other beforehand, we all had a great time together.

The next day we woke up and decided to take in all that Barcelona had to offer, which is a lot. We all really wanted to see el Parque de Guel, which was designed by Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi has stuff all over Barcelona and his architecture is really famous all over the world. The Guel is situated really really high up on a mountain, so this picture is of the hill we had to hike to get to the top. You can take an escalator almost the entire way, but I am proud to say that I walked stairs the entire way. If I don't come back from Spain at least a little bit skinnier, I'm going to be pissed.

The Guel has so many different things to see in it, including one of the best vistas of Barcelona in the entire city. Since it's situated at the very top of the mountain, you're able to see everything, far and wide. It was really breathtaking. Another amazing thing in the park is the longest bench in the entire world, which circles a huge open plaza that is about as big as a football field. The amazing thing is that the entire bench was sculpted by hand and the tiles for the mosaic were all laid by hand, all by Gaudi. It had to have taken so much time for such intricate work, and it shows. This is a close up shot of one section of the bench, but the mosaic is different all over the bench. It is truly something everyone should see.

This is just another section of the park underneath the area where the bench is. Gaudi had a very unique and unusual style of architecture, so every structure in the park looked similar to this.

This is La Sagrada Familia, the cathedral designed by Gaudi. It is separate from the park, but not too far away. This is also well worth the trip to Barcelona to see, because it is absolutely amazing. It is so huge that it is easily distinguishable in any photo of Barcelona. And so much detail and intricacy went into the design, for both inside and out, that the church is still being built and worked on even all these years after Gaudi's death. This is another thing I have tons and tons of pictures of, but couldn't put them all on here.

One of my favorite things about Spain that I feel is represented well in this picture is the fact that Spanish culture is very people-oriented. Every evening Spanish families go to the plazas of their city just to hang out and be around other people. In this particular picture, a live band was playing in the plaza and huge groups of people, none of which knew each other, just grouped together and started dancing together. The dance was an easy one, one in which everyone got in a circle, grabbed hands, and did some foot moves while moving in the circle. Everyone was invited to join, young and old. It was a very cool sight to see.

That night we decided to spring for a nice meal because all we had eaten thus far were sandwiches made with materials we had bought at a supermercado in the interest of saving money (again, Barcelona is an expensive place). So we went to a really great restaurant in one of the main plazas of the city and sat down for good food, good sangria, and good wine. However, two of the girls, Hannah and Erin, decided to be adventurous and try a native Spanish dish. As you can see from this picture, it looked very similar to a big bowl full of tar. What it was was cuttlefish (a kind of squid) in rice cooked in it's own ink, which is what gave it the black color. Despite it's disgusting appearance, it really wasn't bad. We all gave it a try just to experience it. But I stuck with something safer, and I'm sure any family of mine reading this will know exactly what I ordered. I ate chicken. :)

On our last day we just lazily walked around and enjoyed the city for a little while longer. This picture is me with one of the most famous places in the city, the monument of Columbus. It is a GIANT statue in the middle of the street (you can tell how big it is by comparing its size to the people standing at it's base). I had always seen pictures of this and I was so excited when I saw it that I took several pictures of it for myself.

For lunch we decided to go for native Spanish food again, except this time it was something we all knew we liked: paella. For those of you who have never seen paella, this is what it generally looks like. Cooked rice, vegetables, some kind of meat (usually seafood, but also can be chicken, pork, or whatever). It is definitely a delicious dish, and I actually find myself kind of craving it from time to time.

And then, sadly, we had to make the loooooong train ride home. We weren't so lucky this time to get a sleeper car and had to ride overnight sitting straight up in these seats. Not exactly the most comfortable ride ever, but I suppose it could have been worse. This picture was from around three in the morning when I couldn't sleep and I was bored. I'm pretty sure Hannah still doesn't know I took this.

And, of course, what would a trip be without some souveniers? I got several things for people back home that I'm pretty sure they will all like, and I splurged on something for myself. There was an artist on Las Ramblas (about a two mile long stretch of a huge sidewalk with tons and tons of street vendors, performers, etc.) that had these amazing paintings. I automatically knew I wanted some, and was almost scared to ask how much. However, you should all be proud to know that I haggled the price down from 30 euros to 20. All in Spanish. Hooray for me. :) They're small paintings, but I think they make an awesome memento of my trip to Barcelona.

So thats all I have for now. This took me an incredibly long time to write, so I'm going to get off now and go take a siesta. I'm telling you, life is rough in Spain. :)

However, I want to end with a quick story that happened at dinner yesterday that cracked me up to no end. Tony, John's and my host dad, was cooking us chicken and vegetables for dinner and was asking us if we had dinners like that in the US. John started saying (in spanish) that yes, we do eat chicken but not necessarily like we were having that night (it was kind of like sausage links, except chicken). And John was telling what parts we eat and how we eat it and all of the sudden our host dad started cracking up and we had no idea why. Apparently John, when describing that the breast meat of the chicken was his favorite part, had told our host dad that we like to eat "chicken titties." Which made me laugh until I cried. And I'm laughing again now just thinking about it.

Sorry for the long post and I hope it wasn't boring, but there was SO much to talk about, I couldn't have shortened it a bit.

I hope all is well in the states!