BARCELOONNNAA!!!!

*Friday, February 11*

Sooo last Friday morning we woke up at 4:30 again and headed to Campino to catch our 8 am flight to BARCELONA!!!! We made it to the airport rather smoothly but we weren’t allowed to board the plane until about 9…a good hour after the plane was supposed to take off. And that was still considered on time. God I love this country, nothing is ever on time in Italy. The whole flight was like being at a zoo, people kept getting up and walking around and downing dozens of little bottles of wine. Take-off and landing were the only times people sat down and even then the stewardesses had trouble getting people to sit. When the plane landed everyone of course applauded…twice actually, once when we landed and then again when the plane had stopped moving. Europe is hilarious.

When we arrived in Barcelona we had to figure out the public transportation system in order to get to our hostel. Once you get used to it, it’s very easy and it’s much better (and by that I mean much more reliable) than Italy’s PT. So we arrived at our hostel around noon and the place is great. Since there were 8 of us we had a room to ourselves and everything was surprisingly very clean. We locked our stuff up in the little lockers they gave us and went to look for some lunch. We stopped at this little café near the hostel and immediately spotted the differences between Spain and Italy. When we walked into the restaurant the owners weren’t immediately put off by our group size but very accommodating. They pulled three little tables together and even though they could tell we were English speakers the little Spanish woman talked to us in Spanish (with a Cataluña dialect of course) and we could actually understand her! It was great. I ordered a tuna sandwich which tasted extremely fresh, it was probably canned but I psyched myself into believing that the tuna was straight out of the sea (hey we’re in SPAIN!!). So after a nice pick-me-up we went shopping around town. Barcelona has a lot more American companies than Rome, they have Starbucks, KFC, and DUNKIN DONUTS. I love it.

We went to a ton of little boutiques with very cute clothes, some were extremely expensive and others not so bad so we didn’t feel too guilty looking around. On our way back to our hostel we ran into some very drunk English boys who said they were having a “stag-do” (bachelor party) or something and asked us to join them in their celebration. We thought that could be fun so we gave them one of our numbers so we could keep in contact.  We had decided to get Paella that night for dinner and so we went on a hunt (odyssey is probably a better word) for a good restaurant. The seafood was amazing. Complete with mussels, clams and HUGE prawns, absolutely delicious.

The next day we got up early and began our self-guided tour of Barcelona. First, we headed to the Gaudi Casa which was very cool; it’s a building with mosaics build into the façade and very curvy architecture like most of Gaudi’s designs. The colors around Barcelona are unbelievable; everything is filled with color, from the buildings to the food and all the markets, everything here is stunning. The people are great too. On the train we saw a woman get pick-pocketed (it’s very common here so you have to be really careful), the thief was trying to jump into our car just as the doors were closing but a man standing near the door literally shoved her back onto the platform where a security guard grabbed her. It was amazing, everyone applauded the man, it was quite a show!

After we saw the amazing Gaudi casa we went in search for hot chocolate and churros for breakfast, we went to this little café and I swear have never eaten anything so good for breakfast before. The churros were so fresh they were glistening with oil, it was beautiful J .We dipped them into the hot chocolate…please just go and get it, it’s heavenly.

After breakfast we went to the Sagrada Familia Basilica, which, to me, looks like dripping wax but it’s very cool and very famous. After we got our fill and plenty of pictures of the church we split up and Christina, Catlin and I went shopping while everyone else headed for the Picasso museum (we didn’t want to spend the money). I bought a very cute dress and belt and Cait got a very cute top. It was a very successful day! We went back to the hostel for a bit of rest and a few minutes later everyone came to re-group. Emily, Sienna, Cait and I decided to go out that night so we met up with the Brits at a place called the Joker Bar on the pier. The bar was playing a great collection of Beach Boys, Michael Jackson and Rihanna and we all had a great time. We got back to the hostel at about 2 and had to leave at 3:45 to make it to the airport for our 6 am flight. I love Barcelona.

Da Roma, con amore.