University trip to Barcelona

---

---

Hi everyone 😊

In April 2010 I went to Barcelona for three days. It was great and I had a brilliant time with my friends from University. Although it was supposed to be educational, neither the lecturers, nor us students were pretending that it was educational. We all knew it was a little holiday trip and everyone enjoyed it 😊.

Day 1:

Oh, I remember this because the first thing I did was yawn. It was 3:00 o'clock and I had to get up. Not even the prospect of going to Barcelona got me excited. Once I arrived at Uni, I met my friends, taking the bus ride down to Liverpool Airport. Can I just say, I do not recommend that airport for people who are not English... I consider my English to be alright (for a foreign person) but I seriously struggled to understand the Liverpool accent 😊 Anyway, so we got to the airport, completely exhausted, but then we checked in and we slowly realized that we really were off to Spain for a few days. In our eyes that meant = sun sun beach... A major change to the usually gray UK. A few of my friends haven't flown before, and their excitement was extremely contagious. By the time we arrived in Barcelona airport everyone was hyped up and we couldn't get to the hotel fast enough.
Once the rooms were sorted (took a while) everyone got changed out we were. Since this wasn't a Prep-school trip we were able to wander off in our little groups and me my friends strolled down the main street. I remember that being pretty hilarious because of all the people in their funny costumes standing still. A follow-up to that was of course a tour with those tourism buses. I'm usually not too keen about them, I get bored quite easily if I can't do my own thing. Having said that, the tours in Barcelona are actually quite recommendable. Apart from the usual stuff (different languages etc.) they are quite funny and most importantly, they are comfortable 😱
After a typical touristic bus trip, we went back to the hotel, for a little break. We had a great time but we were getting tired, early morning a busy day. Before we went off to get ourselves some dinner we had a look at the map. Thank heavens that Barcelona is a city where things are easy to find. We had so many choices, regarding food. I seriously took us forever to decide on something. Funnily enough, we ended up having a freshly-made baguette which was exceptionally delicious, yummy yum! The last experience of my first day in Barcelona is something I will never forget; Shell, Karina and I just got back from dinner, about to go to bed after a small chit-chat when we heard guitar playing. Of course at first we thought it was something for tourists, like a small entertainment thing. Turns out, we were wrong. When we looked out the window, we saw a tiny courtyard with a Spanish guy, presumably in his twenties, leaning out his window and playing the guitar, singing along - just to himself. Now, that's what I call an experience!

Day 2

A new day, we couldn't wait! We got up at a decent time, knowing that we'd get a full day of whatever we wanted to do. That sounded promising to us 😱 So after letting out tutors know that we were leaving we looked for some breakfast. Ironically, we had breakfast, where we had dinner the night before. They made such good baguettes! I got well excited because the night before we decided that we want to, which was visiting the FC Barcelona football stadium. Now for a football fan (I consider myself to be one, however I support FC Bayern Munich) that is a dream come true. It was a pretty impressive place. Due to the bus tickets we got the day before for the tourist tours, we were able to get around Barcelona very easily. We paid something like 25,00 € per person and we could use it throughout three days without limit. It was fantastic. From the stadium, which is a little outside town, we went back into town, looking at some of the major attractions and enjoying the beautiful view from the bus.
After that we did something extremely predictable; going to the beach, eat ice cream and relax... Oh it was brilliant 😱 There was a bus stop right in front of the harbor which, by the way, is a must-see. It's so nice and having this sea breeze, smell of salt water... Just fantastic. But back to the bus stop, from there it's basically just walking along the beach, on the seafront. We had a chat with this ice cream man who was very nice but did not speak English at all. I think that may be a Spanish thing. All the people are wonderfully polite and friendly, welcoming, just great people. But when it comes to communication, they want to stick with their own language. So we used sign language quite a lot, came in handy but we had some funny misunderstandings as well 😊 Anyway, we had this brilliant sign-conversation with the ice cream man and with each of us holding one with the ocean and sand background... I think we looked so touristy, we could have easily been part of a photo in a magazine!
A couple of hours later, we decided that we should do something else, however we didn't plan "something else" to be "being extremely lost"... So, there we were, wandering around trying to find our way back to main street. After another funny, but absolutely useless conversation with a local, we found this lift and decided to get on top of that mountain/hill. It was slightly overpriced (7,00 €) but we paid it anyway and it paid off. The view was great and had something small to eat and just enjoyed ourselves up there.
However, it was a major operation to get back to the main street. We found out, that tourist buses were stopping by that hill, so we got on one and figured it would stop at the main street. Well, we were wrong. Believe it or not, we realized that we driven the entire tour and ended at that very bus station next to the beach. So basically, we were just as lost as we were before. Eventually, with the help of some tourists we made it back. But that were a couple of hours I will remember, simply because most of the time we were laughing, not believing the situation we got ourselves into 😱 To finish off this brilliant day, we went back to the hotel, got changed and went for a dinner with the people from our course & our tutors. Now that... That was funny, apart from the dinner, which was tasty, a restaurant next to the hotel, many of us were drinking something alcoholic and that includes our tutors. by the end of the night everyone was laughing their heads off because we had two fairly drunk tutors, pretty hilarious 😊
After dinner, very exhausted, we went to bed. Talking a little about the day, going through some pictures and we were ready for a good night sleep!

Day 3

Our departure day... We had all our things packed and left it next to the reception. We were allowed out for a few hours but we had to meet up early afternoon to get to the airport, check in etc. But we still got out quite a lot from these hours. In the streets of Barcelona you find about 5 dozen opportunities of people wanting to paint you - for money of course. But if you can get the price down a little then it's actually quite funny. We got like a comic version of ourselves and did a couple of other fun stuff, like taking pictures of us on lions... Once we met up with the rest, the reality hit us. We had to go back to Uni... But it was very worth it, unfortunately this time, none of us were able to sleep on the plane since it was an afternoon flight. But everyone had lots to talk about, so it didn't really matter. By the time we got on the coach from Liverpool back to Campus we were actually quite tired. Me, personally, went to bed early that day but shared my experiences and memories on the phone, straight the day after, with my family. And of course, I had to put my pictures up on facebook 😱

The End

So, I can honestly say that this was a great trip. I have been to Spain before but Barcelona is quite something. Although it has lots of touristic activities to offer, it has its unique flair and and 'Barcelonians' are unbelievable. I advise people to stay in decently priced accommodations because the price doesn't always equal quality. Hostels and cheap hotels can be very nice. Food is great and the time of year was well chosen. May I add, if you're visiting Barcelona, wear comfortable shoes, you will be walking quite a bit :-)

---

Hope you enjoyed reading through this, bye bye 😊

---