Barcelona

Sorry so late, but here’s another weekend travel post: this time Barcelona! (I wrote this two weeks ago after I got back and never posted it.) I finally wore myself out this weekend. Traveling the previous weekends and exploring Florence on the weekdays caught up to me and now, four days later, I’m still tired.

The trip started out a little stressful – I had class all morning, I didn’t pack until two hours before we needed to leave, and there was a train strike, so the first train we could catch to the airport was cutting it close. We ended up sitting on the train tracks once we got on the train, then running to the check-in counter just in time! We finally got to our hostel in Barcelona around 11:30. Luckily, everything in Barcelona, and I think all of Spain, starts really late, so we still had plenty of time to unpack and get ready to go out.

That night we went to Razzmatazz to see of Montreal and I met up with Jess, who was in Barcelona with her study abroad program. It was great to see her and I met all of her friends from her school. The club was a lot of fun and the show was great – of Montreal is known for their wild shows that include things like mini-skits, animal costumes, and body paint. We stayed until the band was finished, took a walk to see the beach, then finally rolled into bed at our hostel at 7:30 in the morning, almost delirious from lack of sleep.

We knew we would regret not waking up and doing things during the day, so we headed out around 11:30 to go to Las Ramblas, the main strip of Barcelona. Unfortunately it was drizzling and cloudy, but it was easy to see how beautiful the city was. It was also much more “cosmopolitan” than Florence, and we spent the morning doing things I still feel a little guilty about, but were almost like getting a taste of home. They have Dunkin Donuts in Spain! I don’t even have Dunkin Donuts in Washington, DC, so I obviously had to get an iced coffee. Allison went into Starbucks and got an iced tea, which they also don’t have in Florence, and we both spent some time looking around H&M.

After we got through with our American guilty pleasures, we met up with Allison’s friend from home who’s studying in Barcelona. She brought us around some of Gaudí’s apartment buildings and we went up to Parc Güell. I was surprised – I don’t really like Gaudís architecture at all. I love his tile work and I think his ideas were interesting, but I thought the overall structures of his buildings were ugly. I’m hoping one day someone will talk some sense into me and I can go back and appreciate his work.

Later that afternoon I met up with Jess and two of her friends to walk around and look for a place to grab some tapas. It was fun because they’ve all been living in Spain so they were able to translate the menus and talk to the waiters for me. We sat around drinking sangria and talking until they had to go back to their hotel and I met up with Allison and her friend. We wandered around the gothic quarter hopping into different bars and listening to the street musicians. Before this, I was a little disappointed by Barcelona, but strolling around the gothic area changed my opinion. The streets were narrow and dimly lit. The bars were all a little funky and really cute. I think I liked it because it was so anti- everything I had done that morning. Later that night we sat on a bench people watching on Las Ramblas, and of course, we ended up meeting some Italians!

Sunday was sunnier than Saturday and it made me wonder if my earlier disappointment in Barcelona was just because of the weather. Allison and I headed back to the gothic quarter to walk around and take pictures. We found a lot of cute shops and galleries and we stumbled upon a teeny, tiny bar in a little plaza that had murals and colored lights hanging around. The bar had nachos with cheese and jalapeños! I’ve been craving nachos since I’ve been in Europe and that was great. After walking around for a while we took the metro up to see La Sagrada Familia – Gaudí’s cathedral. Again, I wasn’t really impressed. I think if we had gone inside I may have liked I more, but I thought it was uglier than traditional cathedrals, and I didn’t see the point of most of the decorations. Before we left for the airport, we had a long lunch of tapas, paella, and sangria to complete our Spanish experience.

This trip made me realize that it’s impossible to do a city, especially one like Barcelona, in just two days. It also made me realize that when you only have two days, you need to try to find the flavor of the city or do the toursity things. Trying to do both is just too exhausting!