Barcelona

On Friday afternoon after classes, me and three of my friends flew to Barcelona from Sevilla which was about an hour flight. Once at the Barcelona airport (which is HUGE) we took a bus to downtown near where our hostel was located. We got off the bus at one of the major squares in the city and the first thing that we saw were hundreds of camping tents set up all over the square and even some tree forts. At first it looked like a bunch of homeless people, but then we saw all of the signs and realized it was a huge protest, part of the M15 protests that have been going on all over Spain in result of the recent presidential elections. The protest wasn´t violent and we knew we were safe because there are a million of other people around but it was interesting to see. From the square we walked down Las Ramblas- one of the most famous streets in Barcelona for toursists. It is a really wide street that has restuaraunts, hotels and shops on the sides and then in the middle of the two ways of trafiic there is a huge walkway down the middle of the road filled with small souvineir stands, ice cream stands, outdoor seating for restuararnts and the most street performers I have ever seen! There were definitely a ton of tourists but it was really exciting to walk down. We also soon notcied taht there were a lot of police walking around which made us feel really safe becuase we had been warned that the pickpocketing in Barcelona can be a problem.We walked to our hostel which was on a side street right off of Las Ramblas and checked in. When we checked we found out that for the private rooms (which we had) we were actually in a seperate aparmtent building that was actually right on the Las Ramblas street. We found the apartment and climbed lots of stairs to the top floor where our apartment was. In the apartment there were 3 private rooms and 2 bathrooms. Our room was actually pretty spacious and it was a lot cleaner/nicer than I was expecting and we had a balcony taht looked right out onto Las Ramblas! Also, we only saw the people who were staying in the other rooms once, so it seemed like we bascially had to bathrooms to ourselves which was really nice. Also, the apartment building was right next to the police station (I knew my Dad would be happy to hear about this) so we felt really safe. After dropping our stuff off we went to the ¨Pita Inn¨ for dinner and had really good filafel and hummus pitas. There were delicious and hummus is definitely a food I have been missing from the US!


After dinner we explored Las Ramblas a little more and signed up for a ¨Pub Crawl¨. We are definitely glad that we signed up for this because it took us to 3 different bars and then to a discoteca. We got to meet a bunch of people from all over and because we had just arrived in the city, it was nice to have people show us around! The discoteca was really fun, I am still suprised by how much AMerican music they play. Barcelona is definitely a night city though because when we tried to go to bed we could still hear people outside until at least 6am! I guess that was one downfall to being right on Las Ramblas... the noise from the street.


On Saturday morning we got up and went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee and then to a fruit market to grab breakfast. I was excited to get iced coffee! Afterwards, we got tickets for a hop on, hop off tourist bus that we could use all day and took us to all of the major spots in the city. First, we got off at the Olympic Ports (sea ports taht were built specifically for the Olympics in 1992) and we walked on the beach and touched the Meditteranean! The beach was nice for being in a city, but the water was pretty cold!

Afterwards we went to the Sagrada Familia. We knew it was under construction, because it has been for many years, but it was still really cool to see and definitely had a style unlike one I had ever seen before.

Afterwards we went to the Park Guell which was designed by Gaudi and was filled with hundreds of scultupres and architecture with great views of the city. This was definitely my favorite thing that I saw in Barcelona and maybe even my favorite thiing in Spain! Although there were many tourists around all of the park it was really unique and beautiful and really spread out. I could have easily spent many hours exploring.

Afterwards we took the tour bus to the Olympic Stadium and the FC Barcelona (soccer team) stadium which were both really interesting.

Rachel, me and Alexis is front  of the Olympic stadium

From the bus we were able to see many different things like the Plaza Espana and Gaudi's house which was really cool because it is in the middle of all of these modern apartment buildings and has really unique architecture- it definitely looks like something from Disney World! The tour bus was definitely the best way to see the city in a short amount of time and we were so impressed by how much we were able to see in less than 24 hours.

Gaudis House

After the bus tour we went back to Las Ramblas and walked through the market there. The market is a huge covered space with many different booths of fruit, candy, nuts, meat, fish, ice cream, olive oil and bascially anything else you can imagine. I have never seen so much fresh fruit in my life. Afterwards we went to dinner and all had paella which is a very typical spanish dish. It is rice with veggies, chicken and often seafood and comes on a big skillet kind of like fajitas. It has a really good sauce and we were all excited to get it because everyone says that Barcelona has the best in all of Spain. After dinner we walked around Las Ramblas and watched all of teh street performers. We then headed back to the hostel because we had an early flight the next morning. When we woke up at 4 am to leave for the airport the city was definitely still alive. I couldn't believe when we drove by discotecas and people were still waiting outside to get in at 4am!