BARCA BARCA BARCA

We got to Barcelona pretty late and had to take the metro from the main train station to the area our hostel was located in. This part of the traveling is never fun, since we have to lug around our overstuffed backpacks and take turns carrying our shared big suitcase up stairs, but this particular metro trip was made even worse when Ian realized his iPhone was missing. Turns out, that in the two minutes it took us to buy metro tickets, someone bumped into him and stole his phone. This was a huge eye opener for the group and we realized quickly that people weren’t kidding when they said pickpocketing was common in Barcelona. 

Walking up the steps out of the metro, the first thing I see is Gaudi’s Casa Batllo lit up in all of its glory. I couldn’t believe I was finally in a city that I have heard so much about and that the beauty left by Gaudi was so immediately evident. We couldn’t get the brand new St. Christopher’s hostel for all three nights, so we booked Equity Point Centric for the first night and St. Chris for the following two. I’m so glad we did this because St. Chris was a much better hostel overall. We spent the first night grabbing fast food for dinner and resting up.

When we woke up on Tuesday, we ate our free breakfast and then walked over to St. Chris to check in. Our room was basically a rock star tour bus, complete with beds with curtains and fedoras. We dropped off our bags in our rooms and headed back out to explore. 

     

We met up with Eric and Rachel who we hadn’t seen yet and walked down Las Ramblas, which is basically a street filled with shops and food stands. We walked through the market, which sold almost any fruit, vegetable or meat you could think of. My favorite thing in the market was the fresh fruit juice—they had every possible combination, from papaya orange to  mango coconut, available for 1 euro. I got the strawberry pineapple and ended up going back for more. 

After the market and Las Ramblas, we walked around in search of the other Gaudi houses. After viewing from the outside (tickets to go inside were expensive, but I bet the interiors are ridiculous), we went to a recommended Mexican restaurant for lunch, craving El Rods and praying that this place would compare. The food wasn’t bad, but I realized that Mexican food just isn’t the same in Europe. If you’re wondering what the first thing I will do when I get home is, the answer is simple-- La Herradura. (OK fine... the second. I’ll hug my family first… maybe). After lunch, we continued our Gaudi tour by spending the afternoon walking around Park Guell. Even despite nearby construction, the mosaics in the park and the surrounding palm trees made this place one of my new favorite places.

When it began getting cloudy, we decided to start walking back so that we could get ready for the big soccer game. (Half of our group had tickets for that night to the FC Barcelona vs. AC Milan game in Camp Nou and the other half planned on watching the game in a bar nearby). We stopped in shops along the walk home with a mission of getting Barcelona jerseys for a good price. Haggling the shop owners can be scary because it’s difficult to do without being disrespectful. It took stopping at about 10 different shops throughout the day, but I finally got the exact jersey I wanted (a neon coral Barcelona away jersey from two seasons ago that was therefore much less expensive and perfect for someone who didn’t care that much about getting the latest jersey) for $20! 

We got back to the hostel and everyone put on their Barcelona gear- hats, bandanas, real and fake jerseys, and suddenly we looked like locals! We crammed all 20-some of us into our room meant for 8 and drank wine until it was time to find a bar. Luckily, Chelsea’s friend from Kellam was studying in Barcelona and knew the perfect plce to watch the game, so we met up with him and he walked us to L'Ovella Negra. The bar was basically an old warehouse with loads of long wooden picnic tables and it was packed with students our age, most of whom study in Barcelona. We grabbed a table and ordered the standard: a 5 liter beer dispenser and glasses for each of us.

Soon after we arrived, the game started and we watched knowing in order for Barcelona to move on past this playoff game, they basically had to beat AC Milan by at least 3 goals. It wasn’t likely to happen, since AC Milan had already beat them and nobody expected them to win, let alone win by 3 goals. Therefore, you can imagine the celebration when the first... second… and THIRD goals were scored.  The atmosphere made this one of my favorite moments of the semester thus far.

The game ended around 10:30, leaving a whole night ahead of us! We walked back to our hostel to regroup and then went to a bar called Chupitos which is known for its hundreds of unique 2 euro shots. My favorites were the the boy scout shot and the willy wonka shot. We also ordered a Monica Lewinsky shot for Jack and died laughing when we saw what it entailed.

We realized it was time to go home when we ran out of money, so we went back to the hostel and Alex and I made easy mac and sat in the kitchen chatting before eventually going to bed.

The next morning we woke up to torrential downpour. Realizing that this ruined our sightseeing plan, we decided to spend the day at the Picasso museum. Michael, Jordan, Kelsey and I got to the museum and saw that everyone had the same rainy day idea that we did. Luckily, we found Kerry and Ian, who had been waiting a while and they let us jump in line with them. The Picasso museum included works from every period of his life and did a great job of explaining the eras with description boards in every room. I found the development of his style really interesting, as I had never realized before how different his early and late works were.

We stopped in shops on the way back and used Jordan’s TripAdvisor compass to find Wok to Walk (basically a Subway but with fried rice and noodles instead of subs). I told the manager that he should open one in Virginia and it got weird when he said that he just needed to marry me first… Regardless, my customized noodle creation was delicious and I feel bad for anyone who hasn’t had an opportunity to visit this place.

After Wok to Walk, we went back to the hostel and got ready for our last night out in Barcelona. We all met up again and with the help of cheap wine and iPod speakers, we had our own little party before heading downstairs to Belushi’s, the hostel bar. Once we had taken full advantage of our drink coupons, we walked to a nearby club called Club Sutton, hoping that it wouldn’t be too sketchy.

When we got there, we were welcomed with the sight of hundreds of people our age and an amazing psychic DJ that knew exactly what to play. We met people from other schools that were studying in Barcelona (there are TONS of them) and had a blast dancing around the massive club all night. At the end of the night, we climbed into one of the numerous chariots awaiting outside aka cabs and headed home.

We woke up Thursday depressed that we were leaving this playland they call Barcelona but excited to get to Florence. Megan, Maureen and I knew that we couldn’t leave without see La Sagrada Familia, so we jumped on the metro and made sure to fit it in. We might have spent a little too much time marveling at the massive cathedral because when we got back on the subway, we realized how close we were cutting it. We had to catch our RyanAir flight from Girona to Pisa, meaning that we first had to make sure we made our train to the Girona airport which was about an hour away.

When we got back to the hostel to grab our bags, the boys (who decided to sleep in and skip Sagrada) were already gone. We looked around at each other in slight panic and ran back to the metro station to get to the main train station. We got there with about 10 minutes to spare before our train to the airport left and rushed through the crowds to get to our platform. Not seeing our train on the timetable, we ran to an information desk and gave up when the old lady in front of us was taking too long. Luckily, Megan remembered some key Spanish vocab and we were able to get the platform number from another man. With two minutes to spare, we began sprinting to the platform, which was guarded by ticket counters (we didn’t have tickets to put in the machine because we have Eurail passes). We were about to buy tickets when I saw a lady with a silly hat on (meaning, of course, that she had to work for one of the trains) and flagged by Eurail at her, and she let us in the handicap entrance. We hear our train pulling up and of course we are stuck on a packed escalator helplessly having to wait for it to reach the bottom. When it finally did, I spot Jordan, who appropriately says “good timing!” and we jump on the train completely out of breath right before it pulls away. WOO!!!

Once we catch our breath from sprinting and laughing and tell Jordan and Michael about our morning, we sit in silence with our heads in our hands, struggling a little thanks to the long night before. I’ll preface what happened next by saying that unemployment in Spain is at a whopping 27% (we thought we had it bad…) and people come up with some very creative ways to make a buck. So of nowhere, a man comes into our car singing horribly, playing an accordion and shaking a maraca type instrument. We all bring our heads up and communicate with a look (what is going on, please someone make him stop) and I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. I am so glad I managed to capture this on video because although annoying at the time, it is pretty hilarious in retrospect.

We got to the airport with the standard 2 ½ hours of allotted time before our flight and we were at our gate 20 minutes later, making all of the chaos and sprinting that occurred back in the Barcelona train station even sillier. We chalked it up under “better safe than sorry!” and sat back waiting for our flight.