A Weekend in Barcelona

After several things not going as planned/as I'd like leading up to Barcelona, it was a great trip and I am very glad that I still was able to take the opportunity to go. Although we only spent Friday and Saturday there, we made the most of our time and packed in as much as we could while also relaxing.Arriving to Barcelona was actually not as tricky as I had expected it to be, and I think that this experience was actually very helpful in making me more independent. I traveled alone to the airport in Sevilla and although my friends Dong and Mary had agreed to meet me at the airport, it became too confusing so we had to take separate buses into the city center anyways. (I also had separate plane rides there and back, therefore figuring out where to go for my flights and where to wait was a good experience, though annoying and tiring, for the future). The only stupid thing that I would like to comment on that I did while alone in either of the airports was that I told Mary and Dong that I was trying to find them and that I was at M4, which after a little while I realized I still didn't exit the gate area... so they wouldn't have been able to find me, even if they were at the same terminal as me (which they weren't... the two terminals in Barcelona are like 10 minutes away from eachother by shuttle)... haha oops.

View of Sevilla from the airplane.

Barcelona from the plane! Notice the mountains and gorgeous beach :)

When we all met up at the city center, we headed toward our hostel/hotel/apartment... whatever you'd like to call it. I think it is called a hostel, but it is more like a fully furnished shared apartment with separate locked bedrooms. It was SO nice. I will post all the pictures in another album (just because it is easier and you can see all of them!) On top of our place being so nice, it was also perfectly located right off La Rambla, a few minutes away from the port (also very beautiful) and right in the center of lots of shopping and dining (and bakeries.. yum!) and the old market (with lots of fruit and smoothies... and also REALLY expensive chocolate... like 30 euro/kilo chocolate!) and easily accessible to the bus to the airport and the two metro lines.

Although I had already eaten my bocadillo for lunch that Carmen Maria had packed for me, Brian and Scott hadn't eaten yet. There was a cute little cafe beneath our apartment that we went to (and Scott's cousin is friends with the man that runs it). Scott ended up trying a pre-fixed meal that included shark for the main course, so I tried a little bit... it was really good! The rest of us ordered smaller things just to hold us over; Dong had some tea, Maddy had a muffin, Mary had a huge strawberry smoothie that looked delicious and I had some coffee with liquor (which tasted like Bailey's but I'm not quite positive... but it WAS delicious of course). Afterward, we went to visit La Sagrada Familia, the huge cathedral in Barcelona that Gaudi designed (and it was closed, so we couldn't go in, although I kind of didn't feel like touring another cathedral anyways!). It was very beautiful though. After taking some pictures around, we headed back on the metro and browsed and shopped around the center of the city until dinner. For dinner, we decided to go to this decent (not cheap looking but not ultra expensive) restaurant that was offering a pre-fixed dinner for 10.95 euros, including soup, an appetizer, main course and dessert! The food was delicious, except for the fish eye that I was told I should eat since the fish skin, head and tail were still on the "monkfish" that we had for our main course. IT WAS GROSS. But, now I can tell Michael (my cousin's Jamaican dad for those that don't know him) that I have eaten a fish eye and maybe he will be proud since he always tried to get us to eat them when we were little! The one thing that was annoying about dinner, although it was reasonable considering the amount of food we got anyways, was that they did not have tap water (or just didn't give it to us when we asked) and also charged us a euro extra for bread (which we didn't even ask for)... it's apparently common that they charge you for the bread they serve but that is the first time I've experienced it. After dinner we just headed back to the apartment; we were all pretty tired and decided if we relaxed then maybe we could get a lot done the next day if we had a good night's sleep since we did not plan on sleeping the next night before our early morning flight. We played a few rounds of rummy (not the way that we've always played, Dad, but it was really fun) and then went to sleep.

Me in front of La Sagrada Familia

The back of La Sagrada Familia

The menu of our dinner

the soup.. it had an egg in it... still tasted good though!

my salad (with tuna too)... looks like a face!

monkfish and potatoes... still tasted good, but I had to try SO HARD not to scrape any of the skin off by mistake!

eww.. about to eat the fish eye

my dessert.. kinda like creme brulee!

The next day we had planned on all waking up at 10am to leave by 11am since we stayed up till about 2:30 playing cards, but I unfortunately woke up at 8:40, for some reason thinking I needed to be awake in 20 minutes anyways, and decided to have a quick shower before everyone else woke up.... after my shower when I was getting ready I realized that I would be waiting a long time and packed and read my book until they all woke up. We grabbed some pasteries at the bakery that was on our street and walked around La Rambla, taking pictures with soms street performers (and I also stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts for some iced coffee, of course.... who knew they had DD's in Spain too?! It was also much better than the U.S; much stronger and delicious!). We also walked to the port to check it out, which had an amazing view and it's funny because we passed this food stand twice while we were there, and Maddy and I passed it again a couple times when we walked there later on that night, and each time we all commented on how amazing the "gofres" (waffles) smelled that they were selling. We then headed back to the apartment for a few minutes and separated into two groups: Scott and Brian went to see the soccer stadium and Mary, Maddy, Dong and I went to El Parque Guell and the Chocolate Museum instead. The park had a very scenic view of the city, but let me tell you, it was a workout in itself to get up the hill to go! It also had some cool looking building and statues that Gaudi designed. The Chocolate Museum was so cool too! I thought that I simply would just want to eat the chocolate and leave, to be honest, but it was really interesting to read the history of cocoa and chocolate in ancient times. It was also amazing to see the pieces of art that were made out of the chocolate; there were several different types of scenes made out of chocolate, like the Sagrada Familia, Don Quijote and even SpongeBob and Patrick!! (I posed by them for you, Dad and Kim!!) After the museum, we went to Dia, one of the cheapest supermarkets I have been to in Spain, to buy food to make for dinner. We bought SO MUCH for the 6 of us... it ended up all being eaten, but I was in doubt that it would be finished. Our meal consisted of 3 big loaves (similar to baguettes but fatter) of bakery bread (that Maddy and I went and got after Dia when everyone else wanted to nap), 3 bags of tortellini, 2 frozen spinach packages, 2 big bags of frozen mixed veggies and chicken, garlic and olive oil... plus over a kilo of fresh strawberries and a huge bunch of bananas that we used to make smoothies (and I made some delicious drinks with some fresh fruit for Mary, Dong and I with some vodka and juice that we bought too) In total, it all came out to be only 3.33 euro per person! That was insane! The food was delicious and it was nice because everyone tried to help and we had a nice family style dinner.

One of the street performers.. haha

at the top of the ginormous hill we climbed to go to El Parque Guell

He was one of my favorites

Down by the port

We wish we could eat that! :) It's real though I believeeeee

Don Quijote Chocolate

Kim, Dad and Minnie haha

Our meal we cooked :)

After dinner, everyone made sure they were packed and ready to go the next morning (really only a few hours later that we were leaving, though) since our flights were at either 6 or 7am. We met some other people from API at this bar called Dow Jones and stayed there for most of the night. The bar was kind of interesting because they had their drink menu on computer screens, and every so often the "stock market" would crash, and the drink prices would drop lower than their normal prices. In reality, though the drinks and shots weren't even cheap when the market crashed... everything was CRAZY expensive in Barcelona. It was still a cool concept though. The entire night (and weekend) I had been bugging everyone to go to another bar called Chupitos, that so many people had told me that I needed to visit when I went to Barcelona because it was amazing. They have hundreds and hundreds of different shots, and each one is themed; you have to do something, wear something, etc to drink your shot... it's very entertaining to both do it and watch others at the bar order theirs. One of the shots tat had been recommended to us several times was called the Boy Scout Shot; first the bartender lit part of the bar on fire for us to roast marshmallows that she had given us, then we dipped the marshmallow in the shot she poured us (I have no idea what the shot was), ate the marshmallow and then took the shot. It was really fun, but it sucked that everyone was so annoying about going that we had no time to spend there since they wanted to be back by 4am to go get taxis to the airport (there really was no time at all considering that the clocks changed an hour ahead also).

 

Singing on our way to Dow Jones Bar... hahaha