Second Week of School and Park Guell

Wow its already been a week since I last wrote a blog! Its been so busy here that I find that the only time I have to write is in the morning before my classes on Mondays and Wednesdays since I start school at 3:30 on these days.
Anyways, so much has happened since last week!

The school week was probably the beginning of me feeling like Barcelona is home. We all seem to have a routine down, coming home at lunch, making food, etc. On Monday, Lauren and I went to a cute little café halfway between our apartment and school. Going to little cafes and having coffee and a pastry is one of our favorite pastimes haha. We sat in a little outdoor patio, and since the weather was nice and sunny, it was a perfect afternoon.

On Tuesday during lunch, Lauren, Gooose and I decided to finally get some churros con chocolate. They are pretty famous here, and many times we have tried to get them, but it has been too late at night so we never succeeded. Monday night we found a churro stand, but it had just closed, so Tuesday during our lunch break we headed over to finally get them. There are so many types! There are normal churros, churros already dipped in chocolate, both cream and chocolate filled churros, and churros with chocolate to dip on the side. The last one is probably the most famous, so we got that. Once we got our churros we sat in the park nearby (there are tiny little parks everywhere) and ate them. It was another perfect afternoon. That night was the 21st birthday of a girl in GSE, named Hilary, so all of the people in Nacion went to meet some more GSE people in the gothic quarter for the birthday dinner. We went to a restaurant called Diez, and it was really fancy and tasted great. Me and Ashley split two dinners so we got to try more things. We got duck and gnocci. The duck was some of the best duck I have ever had. It was a great dinner. Afterwards, the other GSE people went out to the bars, but all the Nacion kids wanted to go home, so we walked around the gothic quarter on our way to the nightbus. On our way, we passed a gelato and geoffre place, so we all got dessert. I got another goeffre (the waffle desert with choclate sauce and whipped cream, so good!). Afterwards, nice and full, we went home.

Wednesday night, Lauren and I decided to roam the area around la Sagrada Familia, because there is a street full of cute little cafes and restaurants. We walked over there (about a 15 min walk) and found that most of the little cafes were closed, since most of them are only open during the day, but found a lot of cute restaurants that we want to go back to. We found one café that was open, and went in. We were both super hungry, so we each got a bocadillo (a sandwhich on a baquette) and a chocolate chip cookie. Since Emily and Hannah live just around the corner, we texted them to come meet up with us, so they came to the café and had a bocadillo as well. The café closed at 10, so afterwards we went to the Copa Café, which is the café/bar right across the street from Hannah and Emily’s apartment. Most of their local friends they have met there, and it is a super cute little place. We hung out there for about an hour or so, but it was having a quiet night there, so in a little while Lauren and I decided to walk home.

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and I wanted to go to one of the restaurants near la Sagrada Familia that we had seen the night before, so we walked down there and ate at this pizza place. It was only around 1, and most people eat lunch a little later, so it was sorta empty when we walked in, so we sat at the bar, where most everybody else was. We ordered patatas bravas (fried potatoes with spicy mayonnaise), and then split a pepperoni pizza. Both we amazing. Then afterwards we split an ice cream sundae. I’ve realized that splitting meals is the best way to go so you can try a lot of things without the price getting too expensive. After lunch, nice and full, I had to go back to school and finish my last class of the week.
Later that night, everybody was tired and wanted to have a night in, but Ashley really wanted to go to a club, so she convinced me to go with her. We went back to Club Sutton, and had a great time. Ive noticed that I get to practice my Spanish the most when we go out at night because you meet locals who cannot speak English. For that reason I love going out because sometimes I feel that I don’t speak enough Spanish here. Living with Americans makes it easy to speak English all the time, so I welcome the practice when I go out. Also, I ran into a girl I went to high school with, Sara Santana, in the bathroom of the club! Its funny what a small world it is. She is also studying abroad in Barcelona, so I’m not surprised I ran into her. A bunch of my friends and I had planned on going to park Guell on Friday morning, so Ashley and I left the club somewhat early, 3:30, (early for Barcelona!) and took a cab home.

Friday morning, I woke up bright and early at 9 to get ready to go to park Guell. Park Guell is a famous park done by Gaudi. It was supposed to be a housing development to attract richer people to live in Barcelona, but it ended up taking up so much time and money that it never got finished. Two houses were made, and an amazing park to go with it. The park has the longest bench in the world, and it has mosaics all along it.
Because it is such an amazing place, Lauren and I wanted to get there early to see it. The girls downstairs wanted to go, but we knew that they wouldn’t get up in time, so we agreed to meet them there. But Hannah and Emily wanted to go with us, so we met them at our café at 10. We had a café con leche and a chocolate croissant, and then we went off to the store. We had decided to take a picnic up there so we didn’t have to leave early to get lunch, or eat lunch at the expensive tourist restaurant there. We got two baguettes, cheese, salami, strawberries, orange juice and champagne.

Once we got off the metro, we had to walk about 20 minutes uphill to get to Park Guell, but it was totally worth it. The first trail we took at Park Guell took us to this amazing outlook over the city of Barcelona (Park Guell is on a mountain, so we got a birds eye view). It was absolutely gorgeous, and we took lots of pictures. There were also street vendors there who we made friends with. There was one older man who was making things out of aluminum wire. He made this gorgeous picture frame that looked like a flower, so Hannah, Lauren, and I all bought one. Once I get back to the US, I am going to print out a picture of us at Park Guell and put it in the frame! Emily made friends with the other street vendor who was making jewelry. This was another great opportunity to practice our Spanish. Also, these people are amazingly nice! The man we talked to told us about the city that he is from, near Granada, and told us that it was the most beautiful in all of Spain, and told us to visit. He gave us lots of tips, and overall was a very nice man. After a short talk to him, we decided to head down the road to get to the main attraction of Park Guell- the longest bench in the world.

It was breathtaking once we got there. I cant even explain how beautiful it was there. We then sat down on part of the bench and had our picnic. The food was amazing, and it only cost us about 3 euros each! Such a money saver, and it was actually better than something we could have ordered in a restaurant. As we were eating, these little 7 year old girls came up to us and started talking. They actually knew some English, which was really impressive, but we wanted to practice our Spanish. They kept asking us how old we were, and where our boyfriends were. They were adorable and followed us around for the next hour. After we finished our picnic, we cleaned up and then walked around. There were more street vendors, and Emily bought a bunch of jewelry. We then walked by one street vendor selling jewelry who had these earrings that were feathers. They are hard to explain, but Emily and I both fell in love with them, so we both bought them (look closely at pictures from my next blog on Tarragona, I am wearing them!). We walked around the rest of the bench, ran into the rest of the Nacion people, and then went off to explore the rest of the trails. Emily and I got separated from the rest of the group, so we walked the trails together. We were walking along one trail, and this 92 year old man without teeth walking with a cane stopped us to talk. He was sooo sweet and clearly just wanted to talk to someone (in Spanish of course). He then told us how to catch the bus, just in case we didn’t want to walk all the way down the hill. So many people are nice and friendly here! Afterwards, we went down to the bottom to see the other famous part of park guell- the mosaic statue of a lizard. It wasn’t intentionally anything famous, but so many people take pictures with it, that almost all travel books of Barcelona have a picture of it. Of course me and Emily both took a picture with it. We met up with the rest of the group, and then Lauren, Emily and I ran to see this archway that we hadn’t seen yet. It was actually shown on America’s Next Top Model a couple cycles ago, for any of you reality TV fans. After we took some pictures there, we headed off and decided to call it a day and go home. We were all exhausted and all took long naps once we got home.

That night, Lauren and I went over to Hannah and Emily’s apartment. Briar’s boyfriend, Abdul, had decided to cook a feast, so he was cooking couscous and told them to invite lots of friends. We got there around 9 and we all had some wine. Abdul invited over a lot of his friends, so many more locals came over. They live in Barcelona, but its funny because none of them actually are from spain. They were from Morocco, Argentina, France, and Poland. I loved hanging out with such a diverse group. It really showed how similar everybody really is. We spoke spanglish all night. Finally at midnight we ate (because apparently it taked at least 5 hours to make decent couscous). Once we ate it, I realized it was well worth the wait. It was amazing! Lauren and I ate and then decided to go home around 2 because we had to get up early on Saturday to go on our first daytrip, Tarragona!

---

---