Barcelona

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Since we had a holiday on Monday and Tuesday, I took a trip to Barcelona with Cat and Malissa. We left on Saturday morning from the bus station to Malaga airport. Traveling by bus and plane has become so normal to me now. I’ve logged more hours in a plane this semester than the rest of my life combined. We got to the Barcelona airport and took a bus into the city center. We walked to our hostel, which was very close, and checked in. Well, Cat and Malissa checked in. I was not in the computer. What happened was, Cat found the hostel, so I told her to book it. She wanted us to meet to do it, but I couldn’t so I just told her to go ahead and do it. And it’s not like she would have to pay for me because you pay at the hostel. Well, they ended up booking their own beds separately. Now this makes no sense to me. When you travel with someone, you book a room under one name for however many people there are. This guarantees that you’ll be together. Well this logic escaped her, they booked separately and didn’t notify me so I was left standing in the lobby of the hostel with no reservation. I asked if there were any more beds available; there weren’t. The hostel was completely full. I didn’t panic; I could just find another of the hundred hostels in Barcelona. But after 30 minutes of searching online, I still hadn’t found a hostel for that night. I found one for Sunday and Monday nights, but everything in the city was completely full for Saturday! That was when I started to panic. I was in a strange city and had no where to stay.

It was only 4:00, so we decided to just start walking around. I couldn’t do anything about the hostel situation now, so we might as well get started seeing the city. We did stop in several hostels that we passed to see if there was room, but everything was still full. I just gave up looking after awhile and tried to enjoy the time. We didn’t have a specific plan for that night; it was just our first exploratory walk. We walked down by Port Vell, and ended up seeing Casa Milá and Casa Batlló, two art nouveau buildings and works of art designed by Antoni Gaudi.

By the time it got dark, we had walked pretty far up the main shopping road. We decided to turn back when it started to rain, and of course we didn’t bring our umbrellas. We stopped a few times under a doorway when the rain was heavy, but after 45 minutes, we made it back to their hostel all wet. It was after ten, and I was entertaining the hope that someone had cancelled and a bed had opened up, but luck wasn’t with me. I decided to take the bus back to the airport before, and it wasn’t a fun experience. Saturday night wasn’t any better. I had to sleep in some corner on the cold, hard floor, but one happy coincidence was that I ran into two other girls from the program who had spent the last two days in Barcelona and were catching a flight the next morning at six. It was a miserable place to sleep, but at least I had company. I had one scare that night when a security guard walked up to us and asked to see our boarding passes. I was scared that she would make me leave since my flight was in two days, but she just looked it over, handed it back, and walked away. The weird thing was that there were ten other people laying near us and we were the only ones she came up to. The rest of the night passed slowly. I barely got two hours of sleep before four when the girls had to check in and security made everyone get off the floor because more people were coming. I found a café and a table to lay my head on and for the next four hours, I got another two hours of sleep. By eight, I had given up on sleeping, so I ate my bocadillo, read my book, and waited for nine to roll around so I could catch the bus back into the city.

I met Cat and Malissa at their hostel and we went to my hostel to drop off my bags. We had decided the night before to go to Parc Guell first because it was the farthest away and work our way back. We were walking for a good hour before we made it. There were so many people there, I couldn’t believe it, not at all what I was expecting from a park, but this park was designed by Gaudi, so it merits the number of people there. We were getting hungry so we walked in the direction of the Sagrada Familia, our next stop, looking for food. We found a Subway in front of the cathedral and enjoyed the delicious subs. There were also a lot of people at the Sagrada Familia and we had to wait in line for fifteen minutes. The building was started in 1882, and by the time Gaudi died, it was only a quarter of the way done. It’s still not finished, and it’s estimated to be finished in 2026. I definitely need to go back when it is finished because it is the most amazing cathedral I’ve ever seen. We went up in the lift in one of the towers and had a great view of the city. We also got to see a lot more of the detail of the building.

I had read that the Picasso Museum was free after three on Sunday, and since it was almost four, we left the Sagrada Familia. The line was ridiculously long for the museum, even longer than for the Sagrada Familia, but it moved fast. The museum was pretty cool. There were a lot of paintings that looked normal, not his cubism style and there were very good. Then it started moving into the different stuff. After we walked through the museum we went to our respective hostels for a break to rest. Later we met up to eat a quick dinner, then walked to the Agbar Tower.

We saw an ad with a picture of this building that had cool lights on it at night. It was a lot farther away than it looked at first, and we had left too early, so we ended up sitting on a bench next to the building for an hour and a half waiting for the sun to set. It got pretty cold, and when the lights finally came on, it was just one set of lights. They didn’t change or anything. Kind of a long walk for not much, but it still did look cool. We didn’t want to walk all the way back so we took the metro and went back to our hostels.

The next day, Cat and Malissa wanted to go see the FC Barcelona futbol stadium. I didn’t really feel like seeing it and decided to sleep in instead. I went to bed at ten and slept until one the next day. It was a much needed catch up from the night before. I woke up for lunch and met them to go to the Boqueria. This is a huge covered market place that sells every kind of fresh food. We bought fresh squeezed juice from one of the many stands and it was wonderful. We walked by the meat section and saw a bunch of gross cow brains, and whole skinned rabbits, the fish section, more fruit, vegetables, and chocolates.

After the market, we walked down one of the main roads next to the sea to the Parc Ciutadella where we picked a spot on the grass to take a little nap. One lady walked by us asking if we wanted weed brownies. We said no thanks. Some clouds rolled in making it too cold to lay there, so we got up and walked to Barceloneta Beach. The sun came out again, so it was a nice hour looking out at the water. We headed back to our hostels for a couple hours, then met up again for dinner and walked to the Magic Fountain of Montjuic. Apparently they have a light and water show at night that we wanted to see. We got there at eight, too early again for a night show, so we sat for an hour and a half waiting for the sun to go down. The guy at the hostel told us the shows start at 8:30 and run every half hour. We saw 8:30 go with no show. 9:00 with no show. By 9:30, we decided to leave. Just to make sure, we asked some guys that were also waiting at the fountain. They were from Canada and Australia backpacking across Europe. We ended up standing at the fountain for several hours just chatting with them. We were hanging out for a lot longer than I had wanted since we had to be up at 3 am to get to the airport, so by the time I got back to my hostel, I only slept for two hours before I had to wake up again. It was a rough night and day of traveling but Barcelona was definitely worth all the stress.

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Comments

[Jas]

Cathedral
The architecture of the cathedral is amazing! I would love to see that in person when it is finally completed.