Birthday in Barcelona!

I got to experience something that not many people do, a birthday celebrated in a foreign country! I went to Barcelona, Spain this past weekend, and it was amazing! Despite the rain the first day, and getting lost trying to find the hostel, it was a beautiful and fun place to visit!

Callista and I left Thursday afternoon. Our flight was in the evening, but we were flying out of Dublin, so we had to take a two hour bus ride to the airport. We got through security and on the plane with no problems. The problem came when we landed in Spain, though. We had directions to our hostel, given to us by our tour guide for the weekend (this was another WSA organized trip, the same program as my Budapest trip). The directions apparently came directly from our hostel's website, but they were really terrible. We got to the city center with no problems, but then we had to find the street it was on. We got on the next bus they told us to, and from there we were utterly lost. It ended up taking two hours to find the hostel, along with many forms of transportation and a lot of walking around. The street signs weren't very visible, and it was dark, so everything seemed to be sketchy and confusing. The worst part came when we got to see the true side of Barcelona, or of any city really: we were walking down a side street (the next day, we found out it was right around the corner from our hostel...) and a tall guy with a light jacket and hood walked by. We continued going, and about ten feet later there was a man sitting in a doorway injecting himself with drugs. First time I have ever seen that...it was...interesting. We just kept walking, at a slightly brusquer rate. The next day when we were telling our tour guide all of this, he got this strange look of recognition on his face and he exclaimed, "I saw you girls last night! I saw the junkie first, then noticed you two and was going to say something, but I thought you would be even more freaked out if I randomly started speaking to you, so I walked by and turned to watch your reactions!" I was SO mad when I heard this, because our tour guide was from Bristol: he would have spoken to us in English and we would have been able to ask for directions, subsequently finding out that he was out tour guide for the weekend...but it was an adventure, so there is nothing I can do about it now.

La Boqueria 

Beautiful park in the middle of the city!

We eventually made it to the hostel, at about midnight, and found our room. We had a private room with our tour group, which was way smaller than usual: including Callista and I, there were only five of us! It made for a more personal tour, and we got to know everyone a lot better. It was also faster to navigate around the city and decide what we wanted to do during free time. On Friday, we headed out to see the city, the more historic aspects of it. It was raining all day, just our luck, but we still got some great pictures! We went to La Boqueria, the local market, and got to wander around. There was amazing fresh fruit and hot food that was inexpensive yet delicious. It didn't hurt that there was a roof over the market area, and we got out of the rain for a bit. We also got to enjoy a bike tour around the whole city. The bikes made the city seem much smaller. We biked along the beach front of the Mediterranean, and biked to one of the most beautiful city parks I have ever seen. There was an enormous fountain, along with a little pond, and palm trees and green grass all around. We stayed there for a while, and then headed back to the hostel for a traditional Spanish siesta (a nap: they really are real! All the businesses close for two hours in the afternoon, then reopen in the evenings and stay open pretty late!). That night, we headed over to a restaurant to learn how to make seafood paella (which I didn't eat, not a big fan of seafood, but it can be made with whatever kind of meat you want!) and sangria! The sangria was delicious, and Callista and I got chicken instead of eating the paella.

Seafood Paella

Casa Batlló

On Saturday, we were pleasantly surprised to find the sun shining when we head out! It significantly changed the temperature of the day, and I ended up carrying my jacket on my purse (the jacket was much heavier than I thought, my shoulder really hurt by the end of the day). We were going that day to see all of the Gaudi architecture in the city! This is what I was most excited about: I had learned about Gaudi in spanish classes in high school, and I had seen pictures, but it was absolutely amazing to see them in person. The first stop was on the Passeig de Gracia (in Barcelona, they speak Spanish, but everyone also speaks Catalan: a mixture between French and Spanish influences, so all of their streets and signs are in Catalan, not Spanish), the street with two of Gaudi's famous buildings. The first was his building called "Casa Batlló": also called the House of Bones, this is one of Gaudi's most famous architectural pieces. Not far down the street was Casa Milá, another apartment building, this one themed to look like it was under the sea. I personally like Casa Batlló better, as there were beautiful mosaic tiles all over the outside, along with stained glass windows and fun balconies. After the Passeig de Gracia, we went over to Park Guell, the Gaudi designed park, with the famous mosaic bench (the longest bench in Europe). We wandered around there for a while, taking lots of pictures. I ended up asking our guide to take my picture for me on the bench, and as he was taking it, a couple behind us asked, "Do you want us to take it with you both in it?" It was an awkward yet funny moment. I was flattered that they thought we were together, as he was cute and older, but uncomfortable because we didn't have time to explain why we didn't need our picture taken. It sounded like we didn't trust them to take it, or thought they would make away with my camera (they have a big problem with pick pockets in Barcelona, a fact we heard frequently throughout the weekend).

Casa Milá

Park Guell

La Sagrada Familia!

After the park, we headed over for the 'big event': La Sagrada Familia. The famous church has been under construction since 1882, and they are hoping (though I don't see it happening) to finish it by 2026. It was designed by Gaudi, of course, and it is incredible. Normally, people wait in line (a line that is a few city blocks long) to get inside the church, but with our tour, we got to skip the line and head right in! We got audio guides, but I didn't really pay attention to it. I was way to busy taking about one hundred pictures of the place, inside and out. It was unbelievable. The outside is so complex and detailed, with themes with great meaning depicted. The inside is meant to look like an enchanted forest: the stained glass windows were enormous and beautiful, and the pillars and ceiling branched to look like trees. We spent over an hour wandering around, and then headed out. We had the entire afternoon until we had to meet our tour guide that evening, so we decided to walk down to the beach. The beach ended up being a lot further away than we thought. It took about an hour to get there, and by the time we did, the clouds had unfortunately beat us there. I touched the Mediterranean for the first time though, and we walked along the beach until it started to rain. We made it back to our hostel, completely starved by that point, and went into an Irish pub for dinner (just like when I first arrived here in Ireland and wanted to find "American" food, I find myself searching out "Irish" food when in other places now...). We met some crazy people, already drunk when they go there, from Holland. It was fun talking to one of the guys (the others were beyond conversational...haha): he was a big fan of the NBA (he knew Minnesota because he knows all the basketball teams, crazy) as well as baseball, two very uncommon sports that Europeans are into it. We got invited to go to the clubs that evening with them, but we already had plans to go out.

Inside the Sagrada Familia

First time in the Mediterranean!

We went to the "Magic Fountain" that night. It was really cool actually: cheesy, but cool. It was a fountain show set to music that runs in the evenings. What I liked most about it was not the actually show, though; it was the location of the show. The fountain was at the foot of an enormous hill (Olympic hill, where all the locations from the 1992 Olympics were), with other fountains leading up the rest of the way. At the top of the hill was an old-looking, huge building, that was a museum of some sort. We sat at the top and watched the whole city, drinking champagne and just enjoying the beautiful evening.

The next day was departure day, but Callista and I didn't fly out until 10 pm (I have no idea why we booked our flight so late...). It was the best weather we had seen all weekend, so we went down and laid on the beach for a few hours. Once we got tired of that (and annoyed by the people trying to sell us beer, massages, and pieces of coconut), we walked back to the hostel. We ended up just sitting in the hostel for a few hours before heading back to the airport. We flew back into Dublin and ran into another problem: our flight was running late, so we missed the last bus that goes from the airport to UL. We slept (or tried to sleep) in the airport (it was much better than when I tried to sleep in the London airport, but it still wasn't fun). We got the first bus back in the morning, and arrived 'home' around 10 am. What an adventure. I am now officially in my 20s. It feels strange to say that...

I have started making travel videos so you all can see more pictures of my adventures. Here is the one from this past weekend: Birthday in Barcelona 2013 video!

(P.S. I also made some for Mom and Dad's Visit and St. Paddy's Day!