Bad Luck in Barcelona

Barcelona...what to say? There is so much to say about the city and this past weekend, that I am having a lot of difficulties putting my thoughts into words.Unfortunately, for me, the trip was a little disapointing and frustrating. Although I wasn't in love with the architecture like I was with Paris and Sevilla (j like the old looking buildings, and in Barcelona had old and new and run down and nicely kept all in the same areas, which threw me off a bit), I don't think it was the city's fault. The entire day Saturday, the main sightseeing day, it poured. I have never been that miserable and wet in my life and have never been so mentally and physically exhausted. I know I may tend to exagerate sometimes, but this time I am not. You can ask my travel buddy, Tara from my phonetics class. The entire day Saturday did not let up once with the rain. It wasn't a drizzle. It was a downpour all day. I was fortunate enough to have brought my rainboots, but that didn't stop my jeans from getting soaken and even my hair (since my handy dandy umbrella had a hole in it).Because of all this, it was so hard to appreciate everything Barcelona has to offer. Barcelona has great art all throughout the city in random intersections, but I felt like our heads were down the whole time trying to stay as dry as possible. ...Ok, I know I just went on a debbie downer rant about the weather and how it kind of held us back. I should be glad that Tara and I were such troopers about the weather. Some girls that we talked to just went to the movies and mall. Lame right?!. Although the rain held us back, we were still able to see a lot of things! I'll start with Friday :)

Friday: Tara and I got into barcelona around 4pm on Friday and walked into the hostel, (situated in the perfect location in Barri Gotic) and fell in love! This place was so cool. Everything was so bright and friendly and their hangout room always had people chilling and music going as well.

the chillout/breakfast area. great place to meet new people!

We then went to the Contemporary Art museum. Tara is big into art and I really loved the contemporary art museum in Paris, so I figured why not. Plus, I figured it'd be free since all of the museums in Paris were). Well I was dead wrong on both accounts. The museum was so bad that it's laughable. There were barely any paintings. The rooms were filled with random TVs showing weird video clips. One showed a guy whose face was burnt and him putting creme on it over and over again. It was so unbelievably pitiful and we wasted 10euro for it as well. After that we decided to just stick to the list that my sorority sister, Courtney Guard wrote up for me to do. She studied in BCN last spring and was a lifesaver with her great suggestions.
Tara and I then went to a street that I had been told was a lot like Champ Elysees which is filled with higher end fun looking stores, great eateries and lots of bright lights and character. Las Ramblas in Barcelona was neat because there were so many people there, but it was more a touristy area filled with souvenir vendors and people trying to sell you things. To me, it wasn't really like Champ Elysees in Paris. One of the really cool things on Las Ramblas was the Boqueria which is one of the largest produce markets in the world. It was so neat and had so many different kinds of fruit and vegetables that I had never even heard of. They also had these drinks which were made out of pure fruit juice. I got a coconut and strawberry. It was delish!

Our next stop was the Monument a Colum (Christopher Columbus monument) which is right on the harbor. This was very cool because I loved seeing the ocean. Even though the day was kind of grey and blah, it was still great to see the ocean with mountains in the backdrop :)

The thing I loved about France was that we did a lot of random things that I think helped us get to know the city a little better (such as visit the Catacombs). Well one of our friends from CIEE told us about this cool chocolate museum where you get a chocolate bar as a ticket. How cool right? Well unfortunately, thats about the only cool thing that there was to the museum. The "museum" was a room with a history of how chocolate came to Spain with different sculptures of chocolate to go with it. Once again, we were kind of mad that we wasted our money. however, our anger cannot compare to dinner on Friday! Tara's friend recommended a more non-touristy tapas place, so we went there. They didn't have a menu so the waiter told us he'd bring us a variety. Can you see where I'm going with this? We he brought us out four plates of tapas (which means like  2 samples on each plate, one for each of us). The tapas were very food, but not filling at all. In Sevilla, one plate of tapas at the MOST is 3 euros (normally 2 euros). While we were waiting for our check, we're like cool, now we can be very spanish and go to another tapas bar to try their specialties. We had only been planning on spending 4 euro each, so when the 20euro bill was delivered to our table, we had a heart attack. Tara and I couldn't do much arguing in Spanish, so we just paid and left in frustration.
***I know that I keep talking about money, money and more money, and my dad keeps telling me to stop thinking and worrying about it, but just look at it from my friends and I's point of view. Every student here has already spent thousands of dollars and will be spending more on our little side trips. We're all college students with no money, so everyone is always trying to go the cheapest route. So this is why I mention it, because it is a big deal to not just me, but everyone here. Also, as you can tell, it hasn't held me back at all! We just try to be a little stingy at times. It didn't help when all of the sites that we saw cost an average of 15 euro to go in. I didn't pay for a SINGLE entry in Paris because I'm considered a European Union student. This was a bit of a shocker that we had to pay an arm and a leg for everything***
I am happy to tell you that our night picked up significantly after this. We visited the Arc de Triumf (which looks a lot like the one in Paris), and then visited the Parc de Ciutadella which was soo gorgeous and had a huge pond and stunning fountain called La Cascada.

Since we didn't eat anything after our tapas "snack" we decided to fill up on a gofre. A gofre is a type of waffle looking thing that usually has a really yummy topping. I'll post a picture of some typical gofres. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of ours, but ours were extra special because we got to choose what kind of ice cream we wanted on top. I put caramel ice cream with chocolate syrup and cool whip on top. It was to die for! So delicious! While we were eating, these two girls came up to talk to us. They said they thought we were cool because we were sitting on the ground eating our desserts like "homeless people" (there were no benches anywhere ok?!). Klaudi and Jessica were from Poland and Germany.

Me, Tara, Klaudi and Jessica. 

 You could automatically tell they were great people. I really think they are one of the reasons I enjoyed my trip. They had come to Barcelona through couch surfing, which is where you can literally sleep on someones couch for free, and were staying with a French guy that lived in Barcelona. We decided to all go back to our hostel and get ready for Barcelona Night Life! Like has been tradition since getting here to Spain, we didn't leave the hostel until midnight to go out. However, we had so much fun in the hostel before we left. There was a DJ playing music until 11, and then a random guy started playing the guitar. We joined int with a bunch of people showing everyone different drinking games from the different countries. The thing I loved about this weekend is that I made friends with foreigners, not just acquaintances, but friends with Klaudi and Jessica. We did everything with them this weekend. They were just great and will be visiting the US this summer and I will be meeting up with them for sure. That night, we went out with people from Wales, Australia, Italy, Brazil, and of course Spain. We went to a shot bar and a discoteca (dancing place), but  I had so much more fun at the shot bar! The shot bar probably had more than 200 different shots to choose from and all of them were a lot of fun. For example, we did a Harry Potter one that lit on fire (like the goblet of fire) and then sparkled too! We also did a Boyscout shot which was the best shot I've ever taken! The bartender put a little fire around the shots and then we literally roasted a marshmellow! Here is a video because words don't do it justice!

As you know, Saturday, we woke up to rain, rain and more rain. We hit the famoso Sagrada Familia. For those of you who don't know about it, the Sagrada Familia is this church that the famous Barcelona artist Antoni Gaudi worked on for 40 years of his life before dying in the early 1900's. The church is still being built almost 100 years later and isn't expected to be finished for another 20-30 years. There is so much secret religious and nationalist symbolism to all of the architecture too, which is really neat. After visiting Barcelona and just seeing 2 pieces of Gaudi's work, I definitely would like to go back and see more. Some cool things about the church is that there is a crypt that we were able to go into. Its underground and houses another church that is actually used right now. Also, Gaudi designed the choir area to be able to hold 300 something singers. The last cool thing I can remember is the door that we walked in through. It had writing carved into it. It is the Our Father in some crazy amount of languages (I want to say like 150 languages, but I don't really remember).

Unfinished Sagrada Familia. 

Ok, so I stole this off the internet, but I mean, have you ever seen anything like this?

Everything about this church is just stunning and breathtaking. Look how light it is and remember how rainy I told you it was. The church just brings in nonexistant light lol

The most unique display of Jesus on a cross that I have ever seen.

After our first taste of Gaudi, we had to have more. We then trudged up the steepest and longest hill of my life to get to Park Guell, which was also designed by Gaudi. It reminded me of the Ernst's driveway, but steeper! lol. The architecture was so neat! It reminded me of candy land houses or gingerbread houses. Everything was so cute and looked just like a fairy tale. I took a picture from the top just because I wanted to show a picture of the two cute gingerbread houses. However, I come to find out later that this was supposed to be the best view of the city. I'll show you a comparison...

our view. (still adorable houses though)

A sunny day's view. yes thats the ocean in the distance :(

there were so many gorgeous and intricate mosaic designs. Every little area had a different pattern. I loved it!

Since it took us about an hour to get to Park Guell in the rain, Tara and I were about spent by the end of the park. However, I had been wanting to see Camp Nou (Barcelona's futbol club's stadium). Tara was such a great friend because she wasn't really into it and didn't wanna pay the 20 euro to do the tour, so just hung out for an hour while I did the tour. I am so so glad I did it. It totally made my day. Before you got to tour the stadium you were able to walk around in the museum. I think this was the first museum that I ever stopped to read the stuff that there is to read. The walls of the museum were lined with trophies upon trophies from all their years of success and along side it were old cleats and soccer balls from important games.They also had a lot of interactive touch screens and videos from their most important wins. The museum was so much fun and I learned a lot of cool things about FCB (futbol club Barcelona). For example, did you know that there are supporter clubs for FCB all around the world on every single continent. There's a supporter club in a Russian jail to try and get the younger kids to see good in life with one of the most winningest teams, there are clubs for disabled people, children in the hospital, and so on. Also, for those of you who didn't know, Spain won the world cup this past summer. Spain scored 8 goals during the tournament and every single goal scored was by a Barcelona player.. Pretty cool huh? During the tour we got to see the stadium (would have been able to walk on the field, but it was raining and they didn't want to mess it up), see the media room, press box (that holds over 300 journalists who come from all over the world to report FCB's games) and of course the locker room! 

That night we joined up with Annie and her friends,(my roommate in Sevilla) and went to this really cool fountain/light show! 

Afterwards I was on my last strand of being in a good mood. Everyone was exhausted and grouchy and since I knew how the metro system worked the best, I fell in charge of leading all 10 of us back to the hostel to find somewhere to eat (its 10pm right now and we hadn't had dinner). Once we finally got back to where we were going, most everyone was walking slow, but i was getting antsy, so me and annie were walking ahead of the group because all I wanted was food and a roof over my head so I could be warm and dry. Welll, we were walking on the sidewalk and like I said, it had been raining all day so there were tons of puddles on the roads. So I'm sure you're guessing what happens next. A car flies by and literally soaks Annie and I head to toe. Luckily Annie was wearing a garbage bag, so just her bottom half got soaken. I literally was soaken wet. I thought I had been wet before from the rain all day, but that wetness was just dampness compared to the drenching we got. It was the tip of the iceberg for me! Erg! lol. Luckily, we found the place we wanted to eat really soon. It was called Bo de B's and was soooo delicious. It was a really really small eatery (they only had 3 tables, so you had to wait outside until your turn to eat), but it was definitely worth the wait. It was probably the cheapest, yet best and most filling food I had in Barcelona all weekend. It kind of reminded me a little bit like a mix between Penn Station and Chipotle. They were sandwich buns where you could chose either chicken, salmon, or beef. Then, you were able to put all these really exotic and random toppings onto the sandwich. They had 4 different kinds of sauces that they put on my sandwich, then I just said I wanted everything on mine (which I usually would never do). But on my sandwich I got olives, rice, lentil beans, lettuce, red peppers, and those purple crunchy things they put on your salad. It was the best sandwich I've ever eaten!

Our new friends enjoying their salad. At the bottom of the picture is my amazing dinner!

 Sunday: We woke up Sunday to the most gorgeous day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Tara and I had to leave at 11:30 in order to catch our plane, but still wanted to see the beach. Although I only got to see a glimpse of Barcelona on Sunday, this is the Barcelona I had heard about. There were so many people outside running and socializing on the beach. There was even a huge parade that we got to see too! It was so neat and I can't wait to go back and experience that kind of Barcelona!

Add caption

One last thing I wanted to talk about was the Catalan language. I had been told that people from the Barcelona region speak a different language, but I had always thought it was just a different dialect (like southern dialect in America). NO! it was a completely different language. To me, it kind of looked like a mixture between French and Spanish. I don't know, it was really interesting because at all of the touristy locations, there was Catalan first, Spanish second, then English. The Catalan was hard to read, but I could still communicate with my Spanish, so maybe the people know both, I'm not sure! I took a picture to show you what I'm talking about.

for those of you who know Spanish, you can see what I mean. There are better example, but still, I'm not really sure what this means!

Ok! Well that was my trip to Barca. I had a good time with my friends, and for the sights that I got to see, I really enjoyed myself. The great thing about this trip, although a tad disappointing with the weather, it has definitely made me want to come back for longer, maybe a week. Because I'm studying abroad now and traveling so much, I know in the future I will definitely continue to do so. One of the places I will be revisiting will definitely be Barcelona!