My 145 Day Journey: Weekend Warrior Trip Numero 3: Barcelona

Barcelona's pretty awesome, but let's rewind for a minute to see how I got to this conclusion.

My weekend travel buddy, Erin, and I left for Barcelona Thursday night after classes and being nagged by my madre (Spanish, not American) about if I had enough warm layers, if I wanted a bocadillo (sandwich) for the airport, if I wanted chocolate to snack on, etc. (It made me smile actually, because Isabel is filling my real Mom's shoes pretty well while she can't directly nag me face to face. Isn't that what Mom's are for? To make sure you packed enough layers, and make sure you have your own packed meal?) Unlike Granada and Madrid, we had to take a plane to get to Barcelona, which we had purchased our flights through Ryan Air a few weeks before the trip. We took a bus to the airport, made it through security, and onto our flight just fine.

After an hour and a half of flying (and organizing my music on my iPod), we made it to Barcelona. At this point in time it was about 10:30pm, and raining, but we waited for a while to take the bus/metro combination to our hostel. While walking around the airport, I had a bit of Deja Vu, and I realized I had been in this airport before! About 9 years ago my Mom had the intentions of flying to France to visit my Aunt and cousins who were living there at the time, but the French air traffic controllers decided to go on strike that day, so we had the pleasure of flying into Barcelona, and having my aunt pick us up at a very very early hour. But anyway, when all was said and done with the current travel to Barcelona, we got to our hostel around 1am. (It ended up being a longer bus ride than we were expecting, but we went with the flow.) The hostel wasn't like anything either one of us had ever stayed in before, but it was an international student hostel, and got the job done. We had a room to ourselves, and had to make our own beds, and I used my sweatshirt as a pillow the whole weekend, but I didn't really mind.

Neither one of us shot out of bed in the morning. Breakfast was free in the hostel, so we woke up to eat some cereal and toast, and then we ended up just going back to bed for a couple hours. You can be jealous, or disgusted, but it was so great to sleep in! Once we had both woken up, we started talking about how we wanted to go about seeing the sights around town, and the only place that we both agreed that we had to go to was La Sagrada Familia. I mentioned that I wanted to go see the F.C. Barcelona stadium (largest soccer stadium in the world), and Erin agreed that would be fun. However, the conversation took a turn and we ended up agreeing that it would be awesome if we went to Barça soccer game the following night. As a huge soccer fan, obviously I was all in for this. So, our first act of the weekend was going to the stadium to buy our tickets for the following night.

After standing in line for a half hour, and having a spanglish conversation with the kind man at the ticket sales, we got our tickets and went off to see the rest of Barcelona. We ate lunch, and I dragged Erin to the City History Museum that Rick had recommended. Erin isn't a big fan of history, but she came anyway. I wanted to go because there were Roman ruins under the city that this museum allowed you to see. I found it all very interesting, and now we are both better educated on the history of Barcelona! Around 5pm, when we were finished at the museum, we decided to get some helado (ice cream) and go on a walk around town, down by the shore. One shop we walked into was a pet store, which my family knows can be a dangerous place for me to go. But there were puppies in the window, so we couldn't resist. The whole time in the store, I was trying to figure out how to tell my parents, both Spanish and American, that as a souvenir from Barcelona, I got a puppy. As soon as a golden retriever puppy ran up to me and I felt how soft his fur was, I decided that we had to leave the store before I made any rash decisions. We walked near the docks, and a couple piers, and eventually found our way to the beach. On a day that was 10 degrees warmer, our path would have been packed with many more people, but at that point in the day and with the temperature there weren't too many people out and about.

Once we got to the beach, I went and touched the Mediterranean (although I had been in it in France), and we enjoyed the sound and smell of the sea for a few minutes. Afterwards, we decided to pick up dinner and a grocery store and make it at the kitchen in our hostel. So we picked up a cold (not frozen) pizza, fruit, some juice, and chocolate for Erin's sugar craving. The night ended pretty calmly, after our baking of the pizza and watching an old movie that I had on my iPod touch.

The next day, we woke up, had breakfast, and got dressed for our day of sightseeing. Our first act was to walk down Las Ramblas, which is a popular street where local artists and vendors come out to sell their art, jewelry, flowers, birds, gerbils... Anyways. There were many beautiful pieces of art that wouldn't fit into my carry-on, so I managed to make it off of Las Ramblas with a full wallet. For lunch, Erin and I went into a local market that was off of the street, and picked up some ham, plenty of strawberries, Spanish olives, and a smoothie. While in the market, we were reminded that it was Carnaval in Spain (the equivalent of Spanish Mardi Gras) because many of the vendors were dressed up in costumes with masks and beads to fit. (Many of our friends from the program had gone to Cádiz for Carnaval because it is supposedly the second largest party in the world. We thought it would be better to spend Carnaval in a large city where we had more options than just getting very very drunk with a million or so of our closest friends.) But I digress...

After lunch, we headed back to our hostel for a little to take a quick siesta. After our siesta we left for La Sagrada Familia, and ended up needing to wait in line for a little while. By the time we got our tickets, the tickets for the lift to the top were all sold out, but we were still able to see the inside of the temple (which has also recently been dubbed a basilica... I don't know what the requirements are to become a basilica, but it made it!). For those of you who don't know, La Sagrada Familia is the great unfinished project by Gaudi. It has been under construction for about 180 years, and still has at least 30 left, if the money flow can keep coming (see, basilica's have the same problem as normal people too!) The inside of La Sagrada Familia is very beautiful and impressive in size. The inside was only finished just last year, and the architecture is all very impressive. My pictures don't do it justice, but I'm going to let them try, because I'm almost without words trying to describe it.

We left La Sagrada Familia, and went to dinner at a local diner, where we were able to watch a local Carnaval parade pass. Once we were finished, we headed for the Barça stadium, ready to enjoy some great soccer. F.C. Barcelona as currently the best soccer team in the world, with the largest soccer stadium in the world, and when the two are combined it's awesome! One side note: Many people have a habit of calling Barcelona, Barça, but this is incorrect. Barça is only in reference to the soccer team, so it would be like saying "I'm going to go visit Lakers," instead of saying "I'm going to go visit L.A." Now you all know better. Although I don't really consider myself a Barça fan (instead I'm a combination fan of Sevilla F.C., and Real Madrid), I figured why not... "Root, root, root for the home team, if they don't win it's a shame." The experience was amazing, and the atmosphere of the stadium was fun and exciting. There were plenty of great "keeper saves" too. My favorite :)

After an unbelievably packed metro ride back to our part of town, we enjoyed churros con chocolate to end our day and our trip. Traveling back to Sevilla was painless, and we both enjoyed our time in Barcelona. I'd have to say Barcelona is my favorite city that I've visited for a whole weekend so far. I don't know if that is because Barcelona is truly that amazing (I mean, it is), or if it is because it's the first city that I've gone to where it's all been new and exciting. Regardless, I need to go back to visit the rest of the city that we didn't have time to get to! Now to find the time to do that...