Barcelona Weekend Trip! Part 1

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Before Departure...

This past weekend was my first weekend in Italy after starting classes, so of course, I traveled. I am only here for 12 weekends, which means that every single weekend must be planned in advance, in order to maximize the places I can go and things I must see before I leave.
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On a side note, many of you might be thinking, "why wouldn't he stay in Rome for the first weekend?" The reasoning behind my decision to travel was twofold: first of all, 4 of my new friends decided to go to Barcelona, so I pretty much decided to tag along, and my second reason is that I am enrolled in an Art of Rome class. The Art class is an on-site class, meaning that every single week (I have the class from 9-12 on Thursday mornings) we meet at a different location in Rome and tour a monument, artifact, ruin, etc. Therefore, I will definitely be seeing the best parts of Rome through this class, which makes things much easier on my travel plans.
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So, my friend Colin, who has been here for a semester already, and has been to Barcelona before, planned most of the trip; he booked the hostel, airplane, and most of the other things that needed to be done before we left. Boy am I fortunate to have someone that already knows how to travel! Hahah that was corny, but true. Anyway, we left on Friday morning, around 8:30am, to get to the airport and catch our plane, which was set to take off at 12:00 noon. We had no trouble getting to the airport, which is about an hour and a half outside of Rome, and just waited until boarding started. We used RyanAir to fly to Barcelona, which is a discount airline Colin and past travelers all recommend. The flight itself was only about an hour and 30 minutes, which certainly isn't bad. We got to Spain around 3ish, and then had to take a bus to get to Barcelona, since the airport we flew into was about an hour and a half outside of Barcelona. That's the only drawback of using RyanAir: it's prices are really cheap, but the airports it lands in are usually not that close to the final destination of many travelers. Anyway, once we got to Barcelona, we all decided to find our Hostel so that we could put our stuff down. We got to the hostel around 6ish, which was not that difficult to find, especially since it was located in the heart of Barcelona! It was a great location, and we were all really happy with where it was situated.

Quick side note on Spanish culture

I am no expert on different cultures, and I am certainly not trying to say I know Barcelonan culture, but I figured I could try explain some of the 'culture shock' items that I experienced while over there. To start off, even though Barcelona is in Spain, they are VERY different in terms of customs, language, and living styles. There are similarities, of course, but imagine Barcelona as Long Island or New York, and the rest of Spain as different states in the US, like Colorado or Wisconsin or California. The people have different ascents, lifestyles, and act dissimilar.
Here are the few things I noticed about Barcelona culture:
Almost everyone talks with a lisp! I don't know if you could consider it a lisp though, since it is just their dialect, but it certainly sounds like a lisp. I can't exactly tell you how they sound, but when they say things like "Gracias" they pronounce it like "Grathiath." They pronounce 'Barcelona' like 'Barthelona,' etc. It was pretty funny to hear at first, until I realized that almost everyone spoke like that!
I speak fairly decent Spanish (enough to get by), and I can read pretty well in Spanish, but the Spanish that the Barcelonan's spoke was much harder for me to grasp. I could understand some of what people were saying, but the majority of it sounded and looked like a different language completely.
One of the most amazing things I noticed with Spanish culture is their obsession with clubs and their desire to party until the morning. On almost any night of the week, Spanish natives don't get to a normal club until at least 2 or 3 in the morning, and then they stay out and party until around 6 or 7am. It is unreal! I don't know how they do it, but they all do. They have a 'siesta' which is a period of time between 12 noon and 3pm where they all close their shops and take a nap, which makes it more plausible that they can stay out so late.

Our time in Barcelona - First Night

The first night we got to Barcelona, some of us decided not to go out, since we wanted to wake up early and sight see/travel within Barcelona. There were five of us traveling altogether, Colin and myself, and three girls we both knew, all of whom go to John Cabot University (they are also studying abroad, just with a different program and a different school). So basically, on Friday night we went to find the best Spanish food we could find, which seems like it wouldn't be that difficult considering we were in Spain. Wow were we wrong! It might not sound true, but Spain's culture does not serve any Spanish food that we in America are all used to. There are barely any restaurants that serve burritos, tacos, nachos, etc. My friends and I of course just equated Spanish culture with eating burritos, tacos, etc., even though that is really Mexican food, not Spanish. In any case, we all wanted a burrito, so we set off to find a good Mexican restaurant in Spain! Fortunately we found a small little restaurant/bar that served exactly what we were in the mood for. I got a burrito, while the other four got either a taco, quesadilla, or a burrito also.
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Although European and American cultures are so drastically different, one thing that I do miss from America are it's huge portions. Every time we go out to eat, I feel like the food portion gets smaller and smaller. I am usually full after a small portion, which is a good thing (since I know I am not over-eating), but I get hungry again after only an hour. It is tough considering food is so expensive in Europe, and I feel like I have to eat 12 times a day just to survive. I'm glad the portions are smaller though, and I'm certainly not complaining.
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Once dinner rolled around, which of course was around 11:30pm, since people of Barcelona don't go out until like 2, 3, or 4am, we decided to eat at a Tapas, which is something very unique to Spain and Barcelona. It is a restaurant that basically serves only appetizers. When you sit down, you are given a menu with pictures of about 30 different appetizers, and you can pick and choose as many as you want. It was pretty freaking cool. Basically, to give you a visual, the appetizers were things like a small kebob of 2 shrimp and an octopus, a tiny hamburger, a cracker with tomato bruscetta on it, etc. There were about 30 of them, and they all costed about 1.5 euro for each, so we got to choose a bunch and eat them for dinner. It is a dinner restaurant in case I confused anyone. The only thing is that their 'meals' are whatever you want, in that you can mix and match as many choices as you want and get a portion as big or little as you want. You can even order more after you've ordered some if you're still hungry. Anyway, that dinner was so good. We got sangria with our meal, which is an authentic Spanish drink, and it was really good. I would definitely go back to eat there if I could. After that, 3 of us went back to the Hostel, while 2 of the girls went out to a club.

The Hostel

Since this was my first time in a Hostel, I thought it would be a good idea to describe what it was like. To start off, it was definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'm not exactly the most low maintenance traveler, but I had no problems. I am being a more seasoned traveler for sure, which will definitely help me out in the future. There were five of us in total, so we decided to book an 8 person room (we didn't have many other choices), and hope that the other three people we were going to be with wouldn't be obnoxious or disgusting. Fortunately, we ended up getting the entire room to ourselves! The hostel was pretty open that weekend, so no one was put in our room. There were all bunkbeds, which wasn't that big of a deal. The only gross parts of the Hostel were the bathrooms (which weren't even that bad), and the sheets/pillows. The disclaimer said to bring your own sheets, which we all did, but when we got there, there was hair, lint and stains on the sheets they provided (maybe it was just a mattress cover, I'm not really sure). That was pretty gross, but really didn't bother anyone that much. I also brought my own pillow, of course. Haha
Other than that, the hostel had good security, it was located in a pretty good spot, and we got free computer access and free breakfast, all for 15 Euro a night. I'd say altogether it was a very good experience.


Since this post is getting pretty long, I am going to publish it and post a second one, with my second and third days in Barcelona. Hopefully I'll get that one up pretty quick.

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Comments

[Gus]

About spanish & catalan languages & lisps
There's no more lisp in a spaniard saying 'Barthelona' than in an english/american saying 'Thank you', It's the same sound. However this 'th' is no longer used in latinamerican countries, where they changed it for an 's' sound. This guy explains it better than I do: http://dan.hersam.com/2006/08/01/the-spanish-lisp/. On the other hand, you probably had problems understanding the spanish in Barcelona because about 80% of the people there speak Catalan, not a dialect of spanish but a language in itself, close to both french and spanish. You probably noticed all signs are in both spanish and catalan since catalonia is a bilingual region. Other than that I hope you enjoyed your stay here and discovered that americans tend to use the word 'spanish' for everything latinamerican -countries which I love, by the way- while Spain is culturally closer to Italy or France, to say something.