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Published: December 2nd 2008
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TIBIDABO!
Big block letters! Sorry for the belated update. I’ve been really busy with school (who thought that would ever happen). I spent this past weekend in London, basically doing nothing but homework and went to a movie. Nothing exciting.
But I spent November 20-23 visiting my friend Lauren in Barcelona where she is studying. It is very different from London.
1.)They don’t speak English. That was harder to deal with than I expected, especially because Lorena really knows conversational Spanish and I just stood at her side and basically said nothing.
2.)I GOT TO GO TO THE BEACH IN NOVEMBER! And it was warm and sunny and beautiful. Much better than London’s rainy days.
3.)The nightlife is very different. The pubs in London close between 10:30-midnight because Happy Hour starts much earlier. But in Barcelona, I wasn’t going out until midnight! I felt like such an old lady telling Lorena I was too tired to stay out any longer.
4.)I’ve been disappointed in the London men but 80% of Spanish men are beautiful!
So I guess those are the keys differences. It was great having a “local” to show me around the city so I didn’t have to follow along with a
tourist brochure.
On Friday we went to Tibidabo, which is a mountain-ish hill with a great view of the city from above. It was one of the first things we did so Lorena was able to point things out in the city before we went there ourselves.
We then went to Parc Güell which was designed by the famous architect Antoni Gaudí and is essentially a garden full of mosaic artwork. There’s a main terrace with mosaic benches lining it. I just got on Wikipedia so I could give you some facts and this is what I got: “The focal point of the park is the main terrace, surrounded by a long bench in the form of a sea serpent. To design the curvature of the bench surface Gaudí used the shape of buttocks left by a naked workman sitting in wet clay.” That describes it better than I ever could!
We went to another Gaudí piece of art: La Pedrera. It’s an apartment complex built around 1910. It’s crazy! The apartment looks like a regular apartment but the attic and the terrace are unbelievable. Just like Parc Güell, La Pedrera is very unique with twist and
turns and stairs that don’t make sense. And the rooftop is…a lot. It’s doughnut shaped with stairs that up and down and around these large pillars. It was actually kind of scary to walk around, but the view was great. With feet safely back on the ground, I had a blonde moment. Lorena and I were looking at jewelry in the gift shop and I pointed to this big ring and mentioned that it’s really gaudí and then said “Oh, like the guy!” I was a little slow to catch on. So to sum it up, everything in La Pedrera is very gaudí.
Lorena also took me to La Sagrada Familia. It is a huge Catholic church that was first constructed in 1882 and is still incomplete. Shockingly, this too was designed by Gaudí. If you haven’t caught on, he’s kind of a big deal. La Sagrada Familia is only funded by private patrons and tourists. The church is schedule to be completed by 2026.
We also took a stroll down Las Ramblas, a busy street market. Except this wasn’t your regular market. People were selling fruits and flowers and food, but you could also buy pet fish,
birds, chickens, squirrels, snakes, cats and dogs and everything in between. There were also really fun street performers and some of the mimes were a little weird - like the guy who was pretending to be going to the bathroom and reading the morning paper…
So that’s a quick overview of my time in Barcelona.
I thought I would tell everyone a little bit about my Thanksgiving. I went to a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral Thursday morning. It was completely filled with London-based Americans and actually people from London who wished they were American. The US Ambassador gave a speech and read some of President Bush’s Thanksgiving speech as well.
The rest of the day was just ok. I went to a place called Wagamama for dinner. I ate Japanese food for Thanksgiving. I was thinking about turkey and stuffing but eating chicken curry and drinking some kind of herbal tea. I was definitely missing home then. But I’ve done some researching and I’ve decided I’m going to make eggnog here in the dorm (with some help of course). None of my English friends have had it before so it will be quite the experience.
I’m going on my last European trip to Geneva, Switzerland this weekend so wish me luck with the cold!
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