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Published: March 30th 2009
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This weekend was such a whirlwind of traveling! I travelling with Brittany, the same girl that I traveled with to Italy. We left Thursday evening on an over night train to Barcelona. We didn't reserve a couchette (sleeping car) like we did in the past. We sat in chairs that reclined in a pretty crowded train. We made sure to sleep with our bags close so they wouldn't get stollen. I had a horrible night sleep if you can imagine. It was kind of cold, and this creepy man that was diagonally in front of me was awake every time I woke up. He was just sitting there looking around...so weird. We had to switch trains at 4:30 am and waited at a cold train station until 6 for our next train. We switched again at 7 and that next train took us into Barcelona.
We took the metro from the station to our hostel and checked in. We were hopefully about the weather, so we put our suits on. It was definitely nice and sunny, but not warm enough to lay out. We walked to the beach and boardwalk area. There were lots of restaurants, but to our surprise there
weren't any breach shops. We settled some tapas and sangria and relaxed there enjoying the sun for once! It was probably mid 60s so we were loving it. After our lunch break we took a metro to Parc Guell which was designed by the artist Gaudi. His styles reminds me of Dr. Seuss" all curvey and colorful. The park was really cool! There were two main buildings and a few other sculptures that were mosaics. There was also this semicircular bench that was wavey and entirely mosaic designed by Gaudi that encirled a sandy area where a group of boys were playing rugby....a cool local experience.
Next we went to Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi. It was never finished being built, so they're finishing it now (which unfortunately made it not as beautiful to take pictures of). It, too, was Dr. Seuss with big colorful balls at the top of the towers. Its pillars were rounded outwards and there were words writen on the towers. The sculptures were so modern looking and reminded me of Picasso without the missing facial features etc... After we enjoyed more tapas (which are appetizers...lots of fried food, fish, and sea food) for
dinner. I tried olives stuffed with anchovies which were a little too salty for my taste. I also had mussels that were pretty good, though. We also went to a local bar and had even more tapas and sangria.
The next morning we walked to the Olympic Park (where the 1992 games were held). It was creepily empty and reminded me of this: the scene in Shrek where he goes with the donkey to the prince's palace and its like a cute little town (dulock?) but no ones there and the little welcome song is sang by those wooden doll things..this is what it was like! The area was beautiful with lots of green grass, trees, flowers etc. but it was dead! It seemed like no one stepped foot in the area since the Olympics! We saw the diving pool and the Olympic stadium and a really pretty park with lots of blooming flowers. We walked to this fountain that supposedly is top 10 in the world, but it wasn't on. That was disappointing, but I took a picture anyways haha. The next attraction we walked to was the football stadium. On the way Brittany and I enjoyed a churros
(like a long donut filled with chocolate or some other type of cream that the Spanish love). We couldn't get into the stadium to look at it, but of course I got a picture of the outside. Here I realized that the cream from the churro had gooped out onto my jacket and was on my elbow too. It was pretty discusting, but my jacket is water proof so it came off eventually. Also, it rained on and off all day (this was really disappointing b/c we get enough of this weather in luxembourg) but at least it helped get this stuff off my jacket!
On our way to the metro we stopped at an indoor market and bought some cheese and olives as a snack. This German guy we met in Italy said Spanish olives are really good. Since it was raining we took our snacks and sat in the underground metro station to eat them. It was funny because there was nice music playing and without knowing where we were you'd think we were in some nice restaurant...but nope, we were classily enjoying ourselves in the metro station. We wanted to see Sagrada Familia (the church by Gaudi)
during the day, so that was our next stop. We shopped around and bargained a little with the souvenir shop men. For lunch we had a nice meal at a place that seemed pretty non-touristy. I got paella, which I really wanted to try there. Its a seafood, meat, and rice dish that it known to be from Spain. It was pretty good, but a lot of food. We wanted to shop around a little more, so we went to an area suggested to us by the hostel with cute more local shops. It was really crowded despite the weather. There were tourists there, but the shops had more unique things. After walking around for a while we went back to the hostel to rest.
We later returned to the bar we went to the night before to enjoy more sangria. We really wanted to experience the Barcelona night life (something they're known for), so we went to a club suggested by someone from the hostel. It was pretty far away so we had to take the metro to it. The hostel guy said you'll know where to go because everyone will be getting off at this metro stop and
will be going to it...and he was definitely right. We followed the crowd to this club that was soo big and loud. It was really cool, though, because it was mainly Spanish people and fun dancing music. Because of the time change this night we lost an hour, so we decided to just stay out until we had to catch an early morning train to Madrid. We partially lost track of time and had trouble getting Brittany's jacket from coat check (which she never got back despite it being the only pick coat in the coat room b/c she lost her receipt and apparently the people were color blind). Because of this we had to run to the metro, to our hostel, throw our stuff in our bags, and run back to the metro to get to the train station. I thought everything was fine and dandy until there was security check (the ONLY security check I've ever seen at a train station). They then told my I had to reserve a seat, which I had asked twice if I needed a reservation the day before and they guy said no. I quickly bought one and ran through security. We
View of the city
while walking to Parc Guell barely made the train by maybe 3 minutes! I was soo stressed out by all this running and rushing and exhausted from the night, so I slept most of the way to Madrid. There we had to take a local train and then a metro to the airport. On our flight there I slept the whole time, which is so rare for me. Brittany tried to wake me up when the plane was about to land and she said she was shaking me and I wouldn't wake up...kind of scary but this just proves how beat I was b/c everyone knows how light of a sleeper I am! At the Frankfurt airport we had to take a bus from there to Lux city, and the train how. I felt so disgusting so I thoroughly enjoyed a shower at home and slept like a rock last night!
This week is going to be very busy. My mom is coming to Differdange today and the rest of my family comes Thursday. I'm going to post pictures of this weekend as soon as I can! I can't believe how fast this semester has gone by. After this week of school I have Easter
break, a field study tour with my class, and then only one week of classes and one week of exams! I miss home and all my friends and family and some American things (like skim milk!), but I'm not ready to come home yet!
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