Barcelona, Spain

DAY 1: Tourist Day

We got up and got breakfast at the hostel, then decided to do a bike tour of the city. We walked from Barceloneta (the beach- where we were staying) to the city center and met up with the Fat Tire Bike Tours group. All 21 of us JMU students that came to Barcelona decided to do the tour, so we were a pretty big group. While we were waiting, I talked to our guides (Australian & American) and pretty much decided it was my dream job. The bike tour was great! Our guide, Buddah, was hilarious, and we got to see a lot of the tourist-y things we intended to: Arch de Triumph, Sagrada Familia, etc.

After the tour, Leigh and I went to the Picasso museum to see some of his work. Museums here are always so impressive because I just can’t get over the fact that I’m seeing the ACTUAL work that I’ve studied in classes for so long. It’s really making me glad that I took GART 200 last spring.

That night a few of the girls went out to get Paella. It was absolutely delicious. Yummy rice and seafood all mixed together and brought out in the biggest skillet I’ve ever seen. So tasty! We kept it pretty low-key this night…hung out on the beach and in the hostel.

DAY 2: Beach Day!

Today was the day I knew I’d need to be around some internet to register for spring semester. It also turned out to be the warmest, prettiest day of the week, so it was a perfect day for the beach. Since our hostel was right on the water, we just leisurely woke up, got breakfast, and got ready to go lay out. The Mediterranean was cold, but not much colder than the Atlantic this summer. We laid out and relaxed and spent a lot of time warding off people soliciting everything from sunglasses to massages. We got a pitcher of sangria from a little bar right on the beach, and we got food from SPAR, the grocery right around the corner for lunch and dinner.

At night we went to Chupitos, the shots bar nearby. They had a wall of shots and each was only 2euro (very cheap!). We hung out there for a while, then headed to Opium, a nightclub on the beach. The lines were crazy, and we had free passes, but it turned out that we had missed the cutoff for the amount of free people they were letting it. It was 15euro otherwise, sooo we bailed on that plan and just called it a night.

DAY 3: Gaudi Day!

We got up and got ready to go the next morning and headed out to check out some of Gaudi’s houses and his park. We jumped on a city bus and got off at the first house. It was crazy! The front was completely covered in mosaics, and it had no straight lines. It was beautiful, and looked so funny stuck in the middle of the row of traditional Spanish architecture. The next house was even better, but best of all was the park.

We took another city bus up the mountain to Park Guell, where Gaudi originally intended to create a community for the rich and famous to live outside the inner city, but his houses were absolutely crazy, and they looked like gingerbread houses, so no one actually wanted to live there. Now it is just park that was packed with people trying to see all the beautiful mosaics and buildings. We saw the famous mosaic lizard fountain, and the tunnel where america’s next top model did a fashion shoot. It was probably one of my favorite places. It had a great view of the entire city.

After dinner (from the grocery, again) we went to the Dow Jones Bar. I felt like such a nerdy business student, but it was so fun! The prices on drinks change depending on what people are buying and selling. It was pretty much all American students (as was Chupitos), and we actually met up with JMU students from the study abroad program in Salamanca and the program in London. Everyone went to Barca for fall break! I also ran into Katie Der, from High School- She’s studying abroad in Barca for the semester. We had a lot of fun buying whatever was cheapest and getting something nice every time the prices “crashed” or went back to their starting price. After Dow Jones, we went to Shoko, another club on the beach, where we managed to get in for free and danced until 4:30 in the morning.

Saturday Morning we woke up and got our last hostel breakfast and checked out. We struggled to fit all of our 6 days worth of clothes back into our Ryanair approved carry-ons, and we we off to Madrid!

All in all, I think Barcelona has been one of my favorite places so far. It was beautiful, warm, and on a beach… how can you go wrong? I definitely will be back!