Barcelona!

Woah, there is so much to write about and I haven't had ANY free time to do it. Ok, well here goes.

On Friday I was completely exhausted from the night before because Amanda, Kyle, and I went to L'umbracle, a discoteca, Thursday night. It was pretty fun, but we didn't get back til really late so I decided to sleep in. I only had to miss one class because we had 6 hours of class instead of 4 on Thursday, and we were allowed one skip, so I needless to say, I think it was a good decision. So Amanda got back from class and we headed to catch the bus to Barcelona!! The bus ride actually wasn't too long and we watched one movie on the way there, though apparently once we got to the province of Catalunya, the bus driver wasn't allowed to play any more movies because he didn't have a license for it. And I guess the police in the area are really strict...Catalunya seems to have a lot of really annoying laws. We were pretty shocked that they had such a ridiculous law about playing movies on a bus. Go figure. So I think we made it to Barcelona by around 6:30, where we stopped to visit La Sagrada Familia, which is a HUGE church that was started over 200 years ago by Gaudi and is still not finished. It was so beautiful! I took tons of pictures and they're predicting that it will be completed in 2040. But yeah, it was very cool.



After La Sagrada Familia, we checked into our hotel and hung out for awhile. I went with a few friends to a Chinese restaurant in town, haha. It was pretty good, and lucky for us, they had an English menu, ha. The bus took us to Las Ramblas, a section of town, around 11:30 and we went to a bar there for a little while. Everyone was just hanging out, dancing, getting some drinks. A little later we headed to a nearby club called The Boulevard, and hung out for awhile. It was fun, but most of us were pretty tired from the bus ride to Barcelona, so we left a little early, maybe around 1:30. It's funny how my definition of "early" has changed since I've been here. 2 am is not early, but in comparison to what it's been lately, it def is, ha.

Saturday was jam packed with stuff. We got up around 9, had breakfast in the hotel...muffins and orange juice and melon/watermelon! and then we had took a bus tour. We made one stop where we got to get out and take pictures. It had a beautiful view of the entire city. Barcelona is sooo HUGE. There are a minimum of 1.5 million people that live there. It was a gorgeous view and we got to check out some vendors that were selling recuerdos(souvenirs) nearby. After the tour, the bus dropped us off in the center of town and we found a place to get lunch. A few of us went into this really tiny little restaurant. Amanda and I got salmon on toast and a goat cheese salad and we shared both. It was pretty good. Then after lunch we walked around and tried to do some shopping, but the main road we were on had all of the big brand name stores, so most things were very expensive. The type of tourist/souvenir shopping that we were looking for was hard to find, so shopping overall was a little disappointing. We went back to the hotel via metro! haha, that was fun. My ticket didn't scan well when we had to go through the turn-stile so I ended up having to jump over it, ha. THAT was interesting. So at the hotel we took a mini nap and then went to dinner at some little Italian place nearby. Gina, Amanda, and I ate at one of the tables outside, but the waiter was really rude. We tried to talk in Spanish to him, but he kept mocking us and then charged us a lot of extra money simply because we were eating outside. Apparently that happens in most of the restaurants in Barcelona, which makes sense seeing as Barcelona is considered to be the most expensive city in Spain. Anyways, the waiter was not apologetic at all and we ended up talking to these two British ladies next to us because they were having similar problems with him. Oh well. Oh and another thing (Otra cosa) is that because Barcelona is such a big tourist location, most people there can speak English, so we didn't get to practice our spanish very much, which was a little disappointing. But yeah, most of the waiters and workers there spoke to us in English, so it was a little weird.

Later that night the bus dropped us off at the harbor/port area of the city and a big group of us hung out at various bars/dance clubs. We would dance/drink in one for awhile and then pop over in one next door. It was a blast! One of the first few bars we went into had a doctor/emergency room theme, ha, they were dressed up like nurses and had all sorts of props and hospital-related signs. It was pretty interesting. But yeah, hanging out there at the bars was a lot of fun, and then around 1 am we looked for our NC state friends from the program at the Casino across the street and ended up meeting up with them at a nearby discoteca called Catwalk. We found free tickets to get in, so that was awesome! Normally it costs anywhere between 10 and 20 euros to get into one of these clubs, so I'm glad we found passes. The atmosphere inside was actually really cool, but let's just say that there are a lot of creepers in Barcelona. I had fun dancing around with all of our friends, but around 3 am it just got really crowded and after dancing with a few random guys things just got weird and creepy so we bounced at around 3:30 with Graham, Mridula, and Amanda and caught a cab back to the hotel. I had a lot of fun though, except when I had to pay 6 euro for a bottle of water! That was RIDICULOUS! No wonder Barcelona is the most expensive city in Spain. Geeeez-oh-peak.

On Sunday morning, we packed all of our stuff, had breakfast, and then went on a 2.5 hour walking tour through the city. Unfortunately, it was very long and very boring. Not to mention most of us stayed out really late the night before and it was super hot outside, so that made the tour seem even more boring/annoying. Seeing some of the really old buildings and churches and architecture was cool, but 2.5 hours was WAY too long and it didn't give us enough time to do what we wanted to do.
The tour ended at 1ish at the Picasso Museum, which I really wanted to see, but we couldn't get in free until 3 pm, so we decided to do some shopping and come back. Luckily this time we managed to find some cool, fairly inexpensive shops so I bought some "Campeones del Mundo" t-shirts(we got the price down from 20 to 10 euro each, SCORE!) and a scarf and a few other cool things. When we got back to the Picasso museum, the line to get in was outrageous and we had to be back at the bus by 4 pm, so there was no time to see it. That was a bummer. And then as we were walking foreverrr to get to the bus, we passed all these other cool shops that we didn't even know existed. I wish they had told us more about where to go to find good tourist shops. I wanted to stop and buy a Spanish guitar cd from one of the musicians on the street but didn't have time. :( We got to the bus 5 min late and the chaperones were mad. Seriously? Geeez. And the bus ride back took over 6 hours instead of the predicted 4 hours due to an accident and traffic, bleh. It was not fun. We got back to our apartment in Valencia at around 10:30 and had dinner. MariCarmen was starting to wonder what had happened to us, ha. But then after dinner we had to do homework. Oh geez, the amount of homework we had to do was CRAZY, and we were already completely exhausted from the whole Barcelona excursion.

Anyways, overall, the Barcelona trip was not as much fun as the Granada one, but I am glad I got to see La Sagrada Familia and hang out with all the kids from the program more. I'm glad I got to see what I did of Barcelona.