Apologies first of all on my part: turns out you need free time to write a blog, and I've been at a lack of that this past week trying to study/cram everything I hadn't done in Valencia in one week. So here I am sitting in my room with my suitcase packed about to tell you about LAST weekend, which was the Barcelona trip.
After class we got on our tour bus at one and headed for Cataluña. Slept most of the way there because we were all exhausted from whatever we did the night before... don't remember, maybe we went back to L'umbracle. Actually, that is what we did last Thursday night. We had befriended the public relations guy named Ahmad at this one bar, and he is a big shot at the discoteca, so he gave us all free entry passes and bought us a bunch of drinks when we got there. Crazy night; someone fell down some stairs (not hurt, but it was funny since it was this person's third time falling on stairs in Spain). Anyway, back to the bus trip. Everyone was exhausted from the night before. To pass the time, they put in Avatar with Spanish subtitles... gotta love it. Funny thing is that even on a 4 hour bus trip we weren't able to finish the movie because the region of Cataluña has a law that makes it illegal for buses to show movies while driving within the borders of the region. Yeah...
When we got to Barcelona, we went immediate to La Sagrada Familia, which is the GIANT church designed by Antoni Gaudi. The corner stone was laid in 1882 and the church will not be finished until 2030. As you can surmise, it is absolutely incredible. The entire exterior is full of sculpture of everything imaginable, but it all forms a unified theme. Interesting fact: the two main columns on the facade of the church are supported by two turtles: one a land tortoise and one a sea turtle. La Sagrada Familia is located equidistant from the coast and the mountains, thus each turtle represents the two natural land forms that the church is centered between. It really is remarkable: personally I have been waiting to see this church for years, so you can imagine how pumped I was. We took a lift up to the top of one of the central towers: it is the highest point in the Barcelona skyline and it isn't even finished yet. Some of the spiral staircases were a little terrifying on the way down though. I definitely made a new life goal to return to see it when it is completed.
After the temple, we took the bus to the hotel to unload our stuff. The hotel was really nice: black marble bathrooms, big beds (two people to a room and the beds were pushed together... Europe for ya), and modern decor. Clearly the reason why the trip was so expensive. We had to shower and get ready pretty much immediately because we needed to grab some dinner. The concierge recommended a place to us, so we all went there since it was just around the corner. We sat outside, and were soon waited on by a... how shall I put this: flamboyant, bitter, impatient Indian guy. We tried ordering our drinks in Spanish, but he refused to respond to us (since they use the vernacular Catalan language in Barcelona), so instead of communicating with our decent Spanish, he insisted on talking to us in some of the worst broken English I've ever heard. He was really arrogant about it too. I was getting a really bad vibe from Barcelona at this point. We were super American and decided to get hamburguesas. However, the ones in Spain are SO much better. They make them with lamb and herbs, and top them with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and a fried egg. That put me in a little better mood, but then we had to fight the guy to get our check.
We finally made our way back to the hotel to catch the tour bus that was dropping us all of on Las Ramblas for the night. Las Ramblas is the main road of Barcelona; it's kind of equivalent to New Orleans' Bourbon Street: drinking, prostitutes, fireworks, street vendors, and pick-pockets. Barcelona has expert pick-pockets, so we all guarded our belongings like crazy. We pretty much went bar hopping from there: drank goblets (yes, goblets) of beer at one place, went to the basement of another club for free shots, and then made our way to the port in a taxi to go to a discoteca that we had gotten free passes to. There was a much larger young-person population at the place we went to, but other than that everything was pretty much the same, just more expensive. We hung out there for a while, and then grabbed some cabs home around... 5? haha
Now here is where things got interesting. Tid-bit of information: we all had roommates (I was rooming with this guy Albert from our program), but the hotel only gave us one room key, which of course, my roommate had. We had been in the same group the whole night, but got separated at the discoteca. No big deal... he could just call me when he got in to let me in the room. Wrong: his phone ran out of money so he couldn't make calls. Anyway, I ended up staying in Sam and Lauren's room. Basically I slept in the crack of the two beds in jeans and a button down. Classy I know. I was freezing though, so around 7AM I got up and found this HUGE wool blanket in the closet. Best find of the day. I didn't mind not sleeping in my own bed since we all had to be up and moving by around 8AM so... more of a nap. Funny story though.
Since this is already a long entry, and I have a lot of pictures from the trip, I'll stop this one here. Pictures are from La Sagrada Familia mostly.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario