Sunday: Marta's friend Laura, another spanish assistant who lives in Toulouse, kindly let us stay at her apartment to make it easier to get to the train station in the morning. We all drove to Toulouse together, had a fun night out, and got up early on
Monday: After a 6-ish hour bus ride, we arrive at the Sants bus station in Barcelona around 4pm. I thought our hostel was near said bus station, so we walked instead of getting on the metro at the station. and walked. and walked. At 5:45, we finally made it to the hostel, checked in, and were immediately informed that we would be taken out to bars and clubs every night by the hostel staff. Molly and I had dinner around the corner from the hostel and when we came back were greeted by free beer and sangria, to get ready to go out. We met up with people from a bunch of other hostels at the bar, had a great time meeting other travelers, and then went out dancing.
Tuesday: While deciding what to do, we met Matt, Colleen, and Theresa in the hostel's common room, some other Americans who are studying abroad in Florence and they invited us to come along with them to Parc Güell, the famous park that Gaudi designed. They warned us that Matt was in charge of getting us there, which would most likely be by the least direct route possible but I, usually the directions freak in any group, happily resigned to relaxing and letting someone else take over. We did indeed take the least direct route without heading into the Mediterranean, but we had a great time climbing up into the hills and stopping to play on playgrounds and stuff. The park itself was really cool. We mostly just saw the free parts, refusing to pay or wait in line to see the Gaudi museum, but everything was beautiful and interesting anyway. It was hilarious when all 5 of us would take our cameras out at the same time, to take the exact same photo, which happened pretty much ever 30 seconds because there were so many things to photograph, and a great view of the city. When we finally got back to the hostel, everyone was exhausted so we relaxed and some took naps, while I went the the grocery store with Hernán, who works at the hostel, to get things to make sangria and a tapas dinner. We made pitcher after pitcher of sangria for everyone at the hostel, and eventually went out again for another night of dancing.
Wednesday: Molly and I headed out on our own, first having coffee in front of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famous church which is still under construction and will supposedly be finished in 2020. We were once again unwilling to pay 12 euros and wait in a line around the block to see the inside, and admired all sides of it from the outside. After this, we took the metro to the Passeig de Gracia, one of the main streets in BCN, to see the two houses Gaudi designed, took a bunch of pictures, and muttered to ourselves about how embarrassing it was that we didn't actually know anything about Gaudi. Promised ourselves to Wikipedia him when we got back to the hostel, which we of course forgot to do. We had decided to have lunch in the Gothic quarter, the old part of the city, so we had to push ourselves to keep walking until we finally got to the Barcelona cathedral and found a nearby Italian restaurant full of tourists and had lunch at 4, a time when actual spaniards eat lunch. After fortifying ourselves, we walked around La Rambla, a kind of touristy shopping area, then to the old port, and finally to the Arc de Triomf and the park surrounding it. (isn't it cute? they have their own little arc de triomf just like paris!) We took the metro back to the hostel after a fruitless search for gelato, and I spent 3 hours having Hernán try to teach me how to make tortillas de papas (spanish omelet with potatoes). Became convinced that I could have made them much more efficiently, but they were delicious anyway. I went out with the group in spite of my oncoming cold which I knew would be terrible the next day... but when in Barcelona...
Thursday: absolute worst day of my cold. After sleeping in, Molly and I walked to a café with me sneezing the whole way. While sitting there I managed to get my jeans stuck in my chair AND nearly knocked the table over when a bug flew at my face. We discovered that we were both near our hostel and near the Arc de Triomf, making our metro ride the day before slightly silly and pointless. Nevertheless, we walked to the arc and lay down in the sun under the palm trees to relax. After that it was only a short walk to the Parc de Ciutadella, which was gorgeous (and coincidentally full of French people). There is a pond, a huge fountain with gilded sculptures of greek gods, and a giant woolly mammoth sculpture. After enjoying nature and stuff, we walked around the gothic quarter some more and then headed back to the hostel where we made dinner and I stayed in to recover while the others went out.
Friday: Checked my french bank account as soon as I woke up (which I had been doing every day) and found out that we had finally been paid. Molly and I decided to celebrate our newfound status of being rich and fabulous by taking Hernán out for brunch. We ate in a tiny spanish restaurant and ordered one of everything to try all different kinds of spanish food. Took a nap, then Molly and I went to the biggest mall in Barcelona to blow a large chunk of our paycheck on clothes. After dinner, I got dressed up and went out while Molly stayed in with the cold I had given her. We went to a club on the beach (!!!) which was awesome and it was the Florence group's last night in Barcelona.
Saturday: After lunch, I went to the Parc del Labirint with Hernán, which he had told me about before and I decided we HAD to go because it had a hedge maze. Molly doesn't think hedge mazes are as exciting as I do so she stayed at the hostel. It was hilarious and fun and I beat Hernán out of the maze, then we walked around the park a bit and came back because he had to work. Molly and I then went to the chocolate museum and due to our apparent confusion, somehow got in for free. The museum is not very large and consists mostly of chocolate sculptures of really silly things, and some stuff about the history of chocolate, and most importantly, the café/shop. We made up for the free admission in the shop, and drank the richest hot chocolate I have ever eaten. Molly bough honey-cheese flavored chocolate (don't ask) and I got salted chocolate. We then decided to walk to the beach, as we hadn't really been yet, and stopped in a pretty cool church on the way, making it to the beach just after the sun set. We stayed long enough to get sand in our shoes and accidentally get caught in a wave, then set off to find dinner. After Chinese dinner, we finally found gelato, and ate it sitting on a bench looking at the Sagrada Familia. We came back to get ready to go out, the group consisted only of the two of us, Hernán, and a nice Finnish guy. The club we went to was pretty but super lame and full of super lame Americans that made us embarrassed to be American.
Sunday (last day!): Hernán had told me Saturday that he was taking another hostel guest to a park on a hill that supposedly had the best view of Barcelona, so I went along with Molly, a French guy, and an awesome girl from Quebec who had just arrived. We hiked up and up and up, complaining the whole way of course (but in my witty and hilarious way of complaining that isn't annoying at all). When we got to the village at the top of the hill, there was a sign saying "construction site - do not enter" which I read out loud to Hernán in case he couldn't read Catalan, but of course he didn't believe me and kept going anyway. We had to climb under a fence and pass the construction workers who stared at us like "look at those idiots, can't they read the signs?" but eventually came to a big concrete platform which did indeed offer a 360º view of Barcelona. It was pretty awesome and definitely worth the hike. We stared at the city and ocean for a few minutes, then proceeded to take hundreds of stupid and hilarious photos, including "jumping photos" where you capture 3 people jumping in mid-air which is impressive enough when you're not on the edge of a cliff with a panoramic view of Barcelona behind you. On the walk home, I told Flo (french guy) and Marie-Julie (quebecoise girl) that I was in fact serious about needing an ice cold beer upon our return to sea level, so we went into a xureria (Catalan for "churro shop") where we got churros and 70-cent beers! These two were so cool. I can't believe I almost missed meeting Marie-Julie--our week-long trips in BCN only overlapped by one day so although it was sad that we only got to spend a day together it was better than not having met at all. Basically the whole trip was full of meeting really awesome people who I'll probably never see again, which is kind of bittersweet. Each day, someone would leave and someone else would arrive, which results in making a lot of really cool friends and saying a lot of good-byes.
All in all, I had probably the best week I've had since leaving home, mostly thanks to the excellent people I was with. I hope every trip is like this although I have a feeling this one will be pretty hard to top.
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PS--As soon as I got back to Tarbes, I realized that I'm going to Cologne in a week to visit Katrin for a long weekend. Do they really ever expect us to work??? We STILL haven't even started classes again (tomorrow is the first day back after break) so I even got to spend a day in Toulouse with the girls on Tuesday, and Sam and I rented bikes for 1 euro and rode around seeing parks and things all afternoon.
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