Barcelona

My alarm woke me up at 415am on Friday morning to leave for the airport - yikes. Our flight was at 7am to Barcelona, where my friend Hannah and I were lucky enough to stay with Chris, my friend from Fordham who is studying there and has an apartment. We met him early Friday after our flight got in and headed straight out to explore. First we went to the National Art Gallery followed by the Olympic stadium - built in 1927 for the 1929 Summer Olympics and renovated in 1989 for the 1992 Summer Olympics. Both of these monuments are on a mountain on the edge of the city, so we continued up to Montjuic Castle which is on the top of the mountain where we saw the first of many great views of the city. (Unfortunately my internet has not been cooperating so I wasn't able to post photos from the hike up this mountain. Don't worry - there are much better ones that made it up!)

After our hike, we made our way down to La Rambla, which is the main drag in Barcelona. There are lots of shops, markets, restaurants and lots of street performers. We ate lunch outside since the weather was beautiful and headed to a food market after.

Then we were off to the beach, where Hannah, Chris and I put our feet in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time! Although the weather was great, the water was freezing..

After the beach, we headed back to Chris’s apartment and ate dinner close to his apartment. Since we were so tired from our early wake up call, we stayed in Friday night

On Saturday we explored many of Antoni Gaudi’s works that can be found throughout Barcelona. Guadi was a famous architect who lived and worked in Barcelona from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. He’s known for his funky architecture, and even designed and built an entire park – Park Guell. I loved everything I saw, and here are pictures to show.

Park Guell

La Sagrada Familia

Casa Mila

Casa Batllo

Dinner was at a restaurant called La Fonda, where we were able to eat a great meal really cheaply. Since we didn’t go out Friday night, we were determined to have a fun night Saturday. We ended up at a very cool club called Elephant, and I wish I had brought my camera. It was decorated very sophistically (white couches and palm trees inside) and the music was good – so our night was a success!

Sunday we trekked all the way up to Tibidabo, a mountain overlooking the city with a beautiful church at the top, as well as a mini-amusement park. Sort of a strange mix, but this was the best view we saw of Barcelona all weekend. We were able to climb to the top of the church – all the way to the feet of Jesus!

Unfortunately after this my contacts began to bother me and one of my eyes swelled up, so we weren’t able to do much else thanks to my lack of sight. Chris and Hannah basically had to hold my hand the whole way home (and we were pretty far away!) but we made it home all right. Since I wasn’t able to do much else, we decided to watch Vicky Christina Barcelona that night, and it was fun to be able to pick out sights in the city we had visited that weekend. I also watched In Bruges recently, a movie that takes place in Bruges, Belgium which was even more fun to watch since Bruges is not quite as well known. Although it was a sad movie, I’d recommend watching it because it was quite good!

I’ll leave Paris for my next blog!