Barcelona: The Land of Pickpocketers and Tourists

My oh my, where to start with our adventures to Barcelona.. So my friend Brittney and I decided that we were going to go to Barcelona.  We didn't have any plans, except that we were going to stay with my friend, Kassie, in her flat for free and that we knew when our flights were.. or so we thought we knew.

We met up and took a 30 minute bus to the Granada airport.  We waited in the airport for around 2 hours.. we played Phase 10 and hung out for the whole time.

FINALLY BOARDING THE PLANE!!! We had to walk out onto the pavement to get on the plane.. very interesting, but kinda fun!

I don't have any pictures from the first day because it was pretty uneventful.  Once we got to Barcelona on Friday night, we met up with my friend Kassie at the Irish Pub that she works at.  After that bar closed, we went to a discoteca with her.  This turned out to be quite an interesting experience.  There was an extremely famous DJ that was featured that night and everything.  We had fun, but we went to bed at around 7am, so Brittney and I decided that we couldn't do that the rest of our time in Barcelona since we wanted to site-see and tour Barcelona.  We walked around the city for a long time and eventually decided that we were going to get a hostel for the remainder of our trip.  We found a nice little hostel that cost 55 euros per night for both of us put together, it included free breakfast, free unlimited wifi, and our own private room (but we shared a bathroom with the rest of our floor).  We had to do it!  The next day we woke up and got on the "hop-on" tour bus to take us around Barcelona.  Kassie told me that the weather in Barcelona is warm, I wouldn't need a heavy coat.  I also looked on weather.com to see what the weather would be like.. highs of mid-60s.. lows of mid to upper 40s.. and all sunny for the weekend.. So I didn't take my winter coat.. Boy was that a bad idea!!! The weather was FREEZING COLD and cloudy, I think we literally went on the worst weather weekend of the whole year!

This is the port.  The huge statue is one of Christopher Columbus pointing to the Americas.. very cool!

More of the port

These little tents are set up everywhere with vendors selling random things, like purses, jewelry, clothing, and basically anything else you can imagine.

A pretty little side street.  You can see how close together all the buildings are!

La playa.. very beautiful!  Unfortunately it was wayyyyyyy too cold for us to go to the beach.  And since I didn't have my coat, and Brittney is a "weather weeny", we definitely couldn't go hang out at the beach!

I'm not exactly sure what this is called, but I thought it looked really cool.  I'm sure this is absolutely amazing when they put all the flags on the flag poles.  Too bad the weather was too bad for that this weekend.  :(

This tall over-like building lights up at night.  We never saw it, but we saw post cards of what it looks like, and it is amazing.  I wish we would've been able to see this at night.

A view of the buildings on the street.  There are sooooo many little souvenir shops.  You can see the dumpsters.. Spaniards recycle everything, they have different ones for different types of materials.. Way to GO GREEN, Spain!!! 

Next stop: La Sagrada Familia, by far my favorite thing.  Here's a little history for you:  Antoni Gaudí was born in 1852.  He studied architecture at the School of Architecture of Barcelona and graduated with his diploma in 1878.  In 1887, Gaudí was given the task of completing the church of the Sagrada Familia.  He completely altered the plans to make it his own and to make it known throughout the world.  He devoted his whole life to this project in 1915, until he died.  His death was a total freak accident.  He was walking to church, the same route he took everyday.  While passing through the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, he was hit by a tram and left unconscious.  Since he didn't keep up with his appearance, people thought he was a begger, finally a policeman stopped a taxi to take him to the hospital.  He died on June 10, 1926, at the age of 74.  He was in the prime of his career.  Since he had devoted his whole life to La Sagrada Familia, they have continued on with his dream of finishing it.  It is thought to be finished in 2025.  Just another reason to come back to Spain!!!

These pictures don't do justice to the size of this building.  It's absolutely phenomenal!!!

This is what it will look like when it's finished in 2025.  They still have a lot of work to do on it, but once it's finished it'll be amazing!

After La Sagrada Familia, we went to Park Guell, a park that was completely inspired by Antoni Gaudí.  It was so awesome to see with all the ceramic tiles and different things made out of the tiles.

The beginning of Park Guell, right when you walk in the front gates.

The famous lizard, I can't believe I got this picture.  There were tons of people around and right at this moment there was no one.  Perfect photo op!

Leading up to the top of the park.

A house inspired by Gaudí .. absolutely amazing!

After a long day of touring, Brittney and I decided that we wanted some AMERICAN food!  What better place to go than Hard Rock Cafe!  We didn't even care how much it cost!!  We went inside and put our name on the wait, once we got to our table we were looking at the menu and noticing that pop and water are basically the same price.  I ordered a "Coca-cola light" and he brought it out in a glass with ice, which appeared to be from a soda fountain.  I asked the waiter if there were free refills, he said YES! I was like ARE YOU SURE THERE ARE FREE REFILLS!? Again, he said yes.  In Spain there are no free refills, usually your beverage is brought to you in a can or bottle.  So I ordered a BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger with fries, and Brittney ordered Macaroni and Cheese.  Brittney, knowing she is allergic to gluten, knew she would be sick later from all this delicious food she ate.  On the other hand, I didn't realize that the grease and everything from the burger would upset my stomach.  Let's just say the next few hours were the greatest time we've ever had!! haha

This is our nice, little hostel room.  It was clean and cozy, that's all the mattered to us!!

The view from our balcony.

On Monday, we took another bus tour throughout the city, however, this bus tour was definitely NOT as good as the first one.  There weren't really that many great things to see.  I got really excited about the Olympic pool, but that's about it!

This huge arch thingy was really awesome.. and you can see the Christopher Columbus statue in the background.  Very neat.

"Cristobal Colon"

Barcelona!

The pool from the 1992 Olympics that were held in Barcelona.  I wish it hadn't have cost to get in to be able to see it, but that's just the way it goes.

Barcelona fútbol stadium.  Pretty sweet.

For lunch, we went to this nice little restaurant, where everything was a great price.  We sat down and started to look at the menu, we didn't know what hardly ANYTHING on the menu was!  So this is our mystery meal that turned out to be one of the best meals we've had in Spain.  At restaurants when you order off the menu of the day, it's a better price than normal menu items, you get a few things to choose from, and it's usually a 2 or 3 course meal.  Apparelty guisantes means peas.. so I started off with peas with ham.  This was veryyyy delicious.

The next course was some kind of meat with a delicious sauce and patatas.  Again, amazing.

And we shared our desserts, flan and ice cream. 

After all our adventures in Barcelona, we went back to our hostel to pick up our bags and head to the hotel.  We met a lady named Elizabeth from France.  She had traveled around basically everywhere, and told us of her stories to different countries and basically all about her life.  Brittney and I were so tired that we were falling asleep as she's telling us all this on the bus back to the airport.  At that time, meeting this nice lady named Elizabeth was not a very high priority.  We parted ways with Elizabeth and went to find our flight.  We stood in line for a long time to get our tickets.  Once we got to the front of the line, we gave our passports to the airport worker to find our flight.  He told us there was nothing in the database for our passports.  Our hearts sunk.  Brittney got out the confirmation and flight numbers, when the man looked them up, we were told that we had a flight booked for MARCH 28, not FEBRUARY 28.  We both started crying and tried to figure out what we need to do.  We called ISA to let them know what happened, so they could tell our host moms that we wouldn't be getting in at the time we thought.  Brittney called her intercambio named Hector to help us figure all this out.  We eventually got tickets, after a night of tension and stress.  We were to fly out of Barcelona at 6:40am, arrive in Malaga, and take a bus back to Granada.  PERFECT!  So we set up camp in the airport and woke up around 5:30.  Granted, neither of us slept well because it was freezingg and noisy.  We got on the plane and both immediately fell asleep.  Once we got to Malaga, we had to find the bus station.  We got on a bus to take us there.

We got to the bus station at around 9:45, in hopes of getting on the 10:00am bus to Granada.  We stood in line just to find out the next available bus to Granada left at 12:00pm.  Talk about bad news!!!  So we went to the mall and a little supermercado (grocery store), and camped out for a while until we could get on the bus..  Again on the bus we both immediately fell asleep.  Once I got home, Encarna was soooo happy to see me and to know that I was ok!!  Unfortuntely, we missed class on Tuesday, but we knew we had to make it back before Wednesday because we both had very important exams! (Monday we didn't have school because it was El Día de Andalucía!)

Wednesday I took my exam.  I thought everything went very well!!  Thursday we didn't have class because it was like a teacher work day, and I found out that I moved up a level!!! I'm now in Level 6: Advanced!!!  Which is very exciting.  I have the same teachers and basically all the same classmates (except we've added 3 students).  By the time I come back to the states I'll be at a Level 7, which is high advanced (I think).

All in all, the weekend was disastrous, but still very fun.  I'll write soon about my adventures this weekend in Cadíz.