Haha not really but I do really love it. Me, Christina, Lauren and Jessie all went and we were so excited because it was our first trip out of Italy! We flew on Ryanair and landed at a small airport about an hour outside the city (which is why the tickets were so cheap). Luckily they have a really convenient bus that takes you from the airport into Barcelona for 21 euro roundtrip. From the bus station we walked to our hostel which was in a great location, about 2 blocks from La Rambla, one of the main walking streets. It was my first hostel stay and I must say it was pretty nice for how little we paid. Nothing special, but clean and the 4 of us had our own room, lockers and bathroom so I can't complain! After we dropped off our stuff and freshened up, we walked down La Rambla to find lunch. La Rambla is such a cool street, it basically has a huge pedestrian walkway right through the middle of it and one way streets for the cars on either side. There are little kiosk type stands that to sell you things and out door tables for the restaurants that are across the street.
La Rambla
Friday was really warm and we didn't have to wear coats! We had tapas, paella and sangria outside and people watched. It was awesome. After lunch we continued walking down La Rambla all the way to the water. It was so beautiful to walk along the harbor and look at all the sail boats, it actually reminded me a lot of California, probably one of the reasons I love Barcelona so much!
The rest of the evening we wandered around, went shopping (of course) and had dinner at a falaafal shop! Barcelona is really cool because they have way more diverse people and food (and it's actually good) than Italy. They have a lot of American chain restaurants; our hostel was 2 doors down from Starbucks!!!!!!!!!!! I realize that half the fun of going abroad is to immerse yourself in that countries culture, but man was it nice to sit and drink a way overpriced tall vanilla latte in the cookie-cutter design of every Starbucks. Anyway we went home and relaxed before going out to Razzmatazz, a 5 story club. We knew people go out later in Barcelona so we headed out around 1 am thinking it would be good timing. Man were we wrong...it was empty, and didn't start getting packed until 2:30!
On Saturday it was overcast unfortunately but we still stuck it out without coats during the day. We had an early start and took the Metro to see Parc Guell designed by Guadi. It was so beautiful and really different, more of a gardens than a park actually. It also had a lot of mosiac designs including a giant 3-D lizard! They also filmed the season finale of America's Next Top Model there, the one with Carridee and Melrose in the crazy wedding dresses. So cool.
We walked around some more, saw some of the houses Guadi designed, had lunch and went to a HUGE food market off La Rambla. This market was awesome, it was basically outside, with just a cover to protect if it rains and had every kind of food: meat, seafood, cheese, fruits, veggies and tons of candy! We bought some chocolate- yum and went home to relax. Around 9 we went in search for dinner and found a spanish/mexican bar/restaurant; chips and guacomole+fajitas=heaven. We did some night time sightseeing, which works out better than you'd think because Barcelona is really well lit and there are tons of people out at night so it wasn't sketchy. Later that night, around 2am we went to Opium, an awesome club on the beach. It had a huge dance floor, lounge area and outdoor seating, if only it was warmer then we could have enjoyed the outside. I really liked this club and would definitely go back!
Sunday we didn't have time for any sightseeing, but we did get one last Starbucks before heading to the bus station and then to the airport. We arrived in Rome around 5pm to rainy weather of course and it's not supposed to stop all week! Oh well, I have 4 short papers to write and 2 midterms next week so I wouldn't be able to enjoy the nice weather much anyway. It's a good thing I'm staying in town this weekend!
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