Barcelona

Now its time for the second half of my latest vacation. Our flight out of Madrid left at six in the morning which was a problem since the metro stopped at 1 and a taxi was thirty euros. Our solution to this problem was to show up five hours early and then just sleep in the airport. I don't think marble floors ever felt as comfortable. With almost two hours of sleep, we arrived in Barcelona and had to wait another three hours for out hostel to open. We found a dunkin donuts and pigged out on donuts and coffee with all of our luggage at our feet.
Hours later our hostel opened and we were anxious to see how we did playing hostel roulette. We ended up scoring a clean and fun hostel right off the main street of the city. SWEET! Our roommates were from france, belgium, austria, germany, and turkey. Luckily they all spoke english.
In Barcelona there are so many sites to see that we never had a dull moment. On our first day we went to see the Cathedral Sagrada Familia which was designed by Gaudi. It was really interesting. We were too cheap to go inside but from the outside it was so impressive. Gaudi's style is love or hate. I tend to be on the hate side. He packs in so many different styles and decorations into each part that it gets to be a little too much. Even though I thought it was little on the ugly side, it was really cool to see. His other building are scattered around the city. Some of these were pretty interesting too.



My favorite Gaudi place that we went was the Park Guell. Gaudi designed this massive park on a hill which overlooks the whole city. There are caves, giant pillars, and almost everything is decorated with mosaic tiles. One of the coolest parts was the giant snakelike bench that winds its way around the park.




We also went to the olympic village where they had the olympics, I think it was in 1992. Not really sure. Even though it was empty when we were there, it was easy to imagine it full of people.

My favorite part was when went to see the giant fountain at night. They call it agua magica or the magic water show. The fountain lights up and music plays. It was incredible. Of course we walked almost three miles just to get there but it was definitely worth it. I don't think I have ever seen such an enormous fountain. We also bought bread, chease, and wine for dinner. I felt super european.


One night we went to see the mediteranean. I wish it had been warmer cause I wanted to jump in. Hopefully I can go back later and maybe lay out on a nude beach. Just kidding. Or am I?
Other random things we did was walk under the Arc de Triunf, not the french one, there is one in Barcelona as well. Who knew? We saw tons of awesome buildings, amazing fountains, and ate lots of amazing food. Paella and falafel are the bomb. One falafel place lets you put as much topping on it as you want. Lets just say that is a bad idea when you let a broke starving college kid help himself. I had to use a fork to eat my falafel pita.


Oh! I forgot one of my favorite parts. There was an open market near our hostel and it was huge. Fruit, bread, chocolate, seafood, meat, and everything else you can imagine were there. The weirdest part was walking through the seafood section and realizing that most of the food was still alive. Signs were waving as crabs or shrimp crawled under it, bubbles were appearing from clams and other shelled creatures, and huge squids were sprawled out on ice. It was so cool. I wanted to buy something just to say I did it but I have no idea how to cook squid.