Barcelonaaa

July 16-19, 2010

I took an overnight bus up to Barcelona on Thursday night (or Friday morning). We left a little after 1 a.m. and arrived in Barcelona around 10 a.m. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, and I thought that would help me sleep on the overnight ride there. Unfortunately, it didn’t help at all. I slept a little on the bus, but we made stops every couple hours and I was freezzziinngggg so it was a little difficult. The bus dropped us off at Nord Station—where allll of the pick-pocketers hang out. I was extra careful with my stuff, walked across the street to the metro, and took the metro to our hostel.

Our hostel was an interesting experience in itself. There was no sign for it at all, and it was an actual apartment building. We were lucky that someone was coming out when we were trying to get in. But even then, we had no idea where to go once we were inside. I asked someone on the elevator, and they told us where to go though. It was so strange. I rang the doorbell to the apartment on the second floor, and a little Spanish lady cracked the door to see who it was. She was expecting Dee and Sophie to be with us, so she was a little confused why we were there. I told her who we were, and she let us in. I guess she rents out an actual apartment to people traveling to Barcelona. It was a huge apartment though and pretty nice. She was just finishing cleaning the rooms, then she checked us in. The room was pretty big, had a twin and queen-sized bed inside, a shower that opened to the room (with pretty clear doors), and a bathroom. There was a little balcony that opened up to the street. Other than the shower and it being really noisy because of the street outside, it was perfect. Luckily, I had a couple hours to kill before Dee and Sophie got there. I fell down on the bed closest to the door and fell asleep.

Dee called when she thought she and Sophie were outside. They were! I was so excited to see Dee again and too meet Sophie! After putting our stuff away, we headed out for the day. We stopped to get some lunch first. We walked down the road and around the corner and found a cute restaurant that had a bunch of posters of famous American musicians/actors/actresses. They had a little bit of everything to choose from. I ended up getting noodles with veggies. It was kind of plain, but still okay.

After lunch, we walked to Placa de Catalunya—a circular plaza with fountains & sculptures that sits at the top end of Las Ramblas. Some of the most important streets and avenues meet at Placa de Catalunya: Passeig de Gracia, Rambla de Catalunya, Las Ramblas, in addition to Ronda de Sant Pere, Carrer de Vergara. It’s a really cute area—I liked it.

After Placa de Catalunya, we walked Las Ramblas. Las Ramblas is a gorgeous tree-lined pedestrian walkway and also the busiest and most lively street of the city. It connects Placa de Catalunya with Port Vell. Along this street, you can find Barcelona’s renowned opera house—Gran Teatre del Liceu. It is among one of the world’s finest. Centre d’Art Santa Monica, a public museum of contemporary art, is also on this street, as well as Mercat de la Boqueria (de Sant Josep), which is the city’s most iconic street market. Las Ramblas are always so busy! They take you from rich at Placa Catalunya to rough at thep ort. You can find almost anything on this street—elegant cafes, retread prostitutes, con artists, street mimes, an outdoor bird market, & lots of great shopping. We saw a guy getting a tattoo on the street—it was nuts! It definitely had to be illegal. They were standing behind a tent, and the guy giving the tattoo had papers in his back pocket with designs to choose from. After he was done, we saw him shove the needle in his pants to hide it—crazyyy!

We stopped at Port Vell at the end of Las Ramblas. There’s a monument of Christopher Columbus right at the end of Las Ramblas. There are a lot cool sculptures and statues down at the Port & close by, like a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture. There were millions of boats there, and the water was beautiful.

After sitting at the port for awhile, we walked to the Picasso Museum. There are more than 3,800 works of Picasso in that museum. It was so cool to see how his style changed over the years—from classic to his famous style. We saw everything from his learning sketches to his masterpieces. Some of my favorites were his versions of Velazquez’s Las Meninas. His versions are so different than Velazquez’s, but the colors and the moods that Picasso uses are consistent with those of Velazquez. They had a Picasso vs. Rusinol exhibition going on when we were there. Rusinol taught Picasso for many years.

After we walked through all 6 or 7 buildings of the Picasso Museum, we walked through Barri Gotic (the Gothic neighborhood). We saw the beautiful bridge above Carrer del Bisbe (a street in the Gothic neighborhood). There are courtyards, grand squares, schoolyards, little flea markets, antique shops, street musicians, balconies—gorgeous. It was dinnertime by the time we finished in the Gothic neighborhood, so we stopped at a Wok to Walk on the way home. I got spicy noodles and chicken that were yummyyy. We went back to our hostel to get ready to go out and ended up passing out at like 8:00. We woke up around 2 and decided it was a little too late to get ready and go out, so we just went back to bed. We had to get up early anyway, so I’m kind of glad we went to bed.

We woke up early on Saturday morning. We got breakfast at a little place right down the road from our hostel and on the way to the metro. I got a huge pastry covereddd in chocolate :) After we got done eating and I finished cleaning all the chocolate off of me, we took the metro to Barceloneta beach! It was packed the whole time we were there, but the water was incredible—I could have stayed in it all day. The sand was dark brown and the water almost a navy blue with huge stones at the bottom. It wasn’t as relaxing as beaches usually are because there were so many vendors coming around bugging us, but I still loved it. There were either Asian women coming up to us saying “Masaje, massage, 5 euros, muy bien”, or other vendors coming up to us selling “Cerveza, coca-cola, agua”. There were people selling towels, scarves, everything. There were a few people topless or with speedos & thongs, but other than that, most people were pretty covered. I wish we would have time to stay there for awhile—they were setting up a skate ramp and a stage for some event.

We went back to the hostel to shower & get all of the sand off of us before we went out to dinner at a cute Italian restaurant down the road. I had some really good spaghetti. It was nice to sit in the restaurant for a little while to cool off. Afterward, we took the metro out toward Castell de Montjuic (Montjuic Castle). We took the lift (Funicular de Montjuic) up to the top of the mountain where the castle is. Of course, I loved seeing the whole city from up on the lift. The Sagrada Familia stood out in the skyline higher than anything else, and the water was beautiful. I think Dee and Sophie started feeling their sunburns by this point. I felt so bad for them. We loved when the lift took off because it went so fast and got a breeze going. We got to the castle and started exploring. The outside of it was sooo gorgeous. There wasn’t a whole lot to the inside of it, but it was fun to go on top of the castle to enjoy the view. Montjuic means hill of the Jews. The fortress served as a prison and was also the site of many executions. We had a photo shoot all around the castle then took the lift back down the mountain.

We walked to the Olympic Park after we got off the lift. It was really cool to see where the 1992 Olympics were held—the first Olympic Games I was alive for :) The stadium was enormous! We walked around for a little while, then decided to head down to Museu Nacinoal d'Art de Catalunya (National Art Museum of Catalunya), which is hugeee and looks like a palace. We rode our first outdoor escalator on the way! We could see Placa d’Espanya from the steps of the museum. There are fountains and waterfalls running from the very top of the steps all the way to the street (& even lining the street). It was a beautiful area. There was some kind of dance class going on in front of the museum. There were probably fifty or sixty people dancing around. We almost jumped in with them, but decided not to interrupt.

We walked around Placa d’Espanya for awhile and then decided to look for gelato. We saw it everywhereee the whole trip, and when we actually wanted some, we couldn’t find it anywhere. We decided to go back to the Magic Fountain of Montjuic to see the light show. We got there when it first started, which was too early because it wasn’t dark enough to see the lights. We went to get dinner down the road so that it would be dark by the time we finished eating. I got a couple croquettes and a huge sandwich. After dinner, it was pitch black so we headed back to the fountain. It was gorgeous! The lights and the water and the music…it was one of my favorite things about Barcelona. I took a bajillion pictures of it, we sat and watched it for awhile, then decided to go back to the hostel. We were going to go to Scobie’s Irish Pub down the road from our hostel, but we passed out early again.

We dedicated Sunday to Gaudi. We woke up early again and got breakfast at this little 24/7 place down the street. I got a cranberry muffin with some kind of berry yogurt on the inside—it was sooo good! The yogurt inside was delicious :) We walked to Gaudi’s Casa Batllo—my other favorite thing about Barcelona. I definitely felt like I was in a fairy tale when I was standing in front of the house. The house was amazing! I want to live there. We walked a little further to La Pedrera, another one of Gaudi’s works that he built for a married couple—Rosario Segimon and Pere Mila. Gaudi wanted the people living in the flats to all know each other so he only put lifts on every second floor so people had to communicate with one another on different floors. I love Gaudi!

We took the metro to La Sagrada Familia afterward—Gaudi’s masterpiece! It is a massive, Roman-Catholic church. It has been under construction since 1882 and is expected to be completed in around 2050. I loved everything about the church—especially the doors and the ceiling. It was breath-taking. We sat inside for awhile and looked at all of the details. We went downstairs and saw where the construction workers make plans and models. We saw the exhibit that showed how nature affected Gaudi’s work.

We took the metro to Park Guell after we explored La Sagrada Familia. We had no idea what a hike it was going to be to get there though. It is basically on top of a mountain. It got to the point that we were walking up such a steep hill that we were leaning forward so much that we could basically kiss the sidewalk. We luckily chose the right side of the mountain to go up though. They had a bunch of outside escalators to help us up. We walked up the back side of the park—to the highest peak, where a giant wooden cross stood tall. We had an amazing view of Barcelona from there. We started hiking down the mountain to see Gaudi’s buildings in the park. The park reminded me a little of the movie Tropical Thunder and a lot of Candyland. We saw a guy playing music on a metal plate thing, and it sounded amazing! The entrance to the park was so neat too, with the lizard statue and buildings that looked like they were topped with icing. We were kind of running out of time, so we headed back down the mountain to find the metro. That took forever. We took the metro back toward Las Ramblas to pick up a few souvenirs and to get lunch. We sat down at a nice restaurant and got some sangria, pizza, and paella. We headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags, and went to the bus station. I was so sad to say bye to Dee and Sophie! I felt like we had just gotten there and were already leaving. I had so much fun, and I really loved Barcelona :)