April 16: Spring break began on a very early Saturday with our train leaving at 6am from Dijon. Luckily my host dad was nice enough to bring me to the train station so I didn’t have to walk for over 20 minutes at 5am with my heavy bag. At the train station, I met up with the other three girls in my program - Justine, Helen, and Emily - who I was traveling with for the first part of spring break to Barcelona! We got on our train without any problems and we then sat on 3 different trains for a total of 7-8 hours before arriving in beautiful, sunny Barcelona! We then made our way from the train station to our hostel, which was pretty easy thanks to the amazing metro system in Barcelona. The metro was also SO clean (much, much cleaner than the Paris metro which we were thankful for)! We then arrived at our hostel which was a brand new hostel, I think made in 2010, and it was SOOO nice! Most hostels have lockers, but you have to have a lock in order to use them, but at this hostel they had lockers that locked by just swiping a card, which was assigned by the bed you were in. This card also got you into the rooms and into the building. 
We were so happy about the lockers since we had our passports with us and didn’t want to take them around Barcelona with us after we heard it is the #1 city for pickpockets in Europe. So after making sure our passports were safe and unpacking a little bit we went to discover the beach that was supposedly a 5 minute walk..that 5 minute walk turned into an over 20 minute walk because our beach was under construction, which seems to be typical of everything in Europe right now because everyone is getting ready for summer tourist season which is when it's actually important for everything to look perfect. This was however 
the first beach I’ve ever seen under construction – it seemed a bit weird especially since the beach has no buildings on it or anything, so I’m not really sure what they were doing. Nevertheless, we had to walk to another beach further down! It was really nice and was full of locals since it wasn’t right in the middle of downtown Barcelona. It also had a nice strip of shops and restaurants right by it, but it wasn’t really warm enough that day to sit on the beach so after seeing it we made our way back to the hostel. We were all exhausted from traveling so we took a quick siesta at our hostel and then made our way back into the city around 8pm for dinner. In Spain they eat dinner even later than in France. In France most people eat dinner by 8:30pm, but in Spain they don’t usually start dinner till after 9pm which we learned was due to the heat, because during the day it’s too hot to cook particularly in the summer. We went to pretty much the first restaurant we could find in Barcelona because we were so hungry, so that night we just ate at an Italian place which was pretty good and not too expensive. It was a pretty funny dinner because they kept speaking to us in Spanish but 3 of us knew no Spanish so the first language our brains would go to when they spoke Spanish was French which I'm sure was not very helpful at all. I kept saying little phrases in French and then I would realize I was speaking French and stop. Justine did teach us all a little bit of Spanish though, so I started using it, but I would still mix in a little bit of French with my phrases anyway. I'm sure at the very least, we were amusing all of our waiters. After dinner we went back to the hostel and went to sleep probably as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
April 17: This was the first day of our actual exploring in Barcelona. We began our day at noon with a free walking tour of Barcelona. There were two free walking tours, one was a Gothic Tour and one was a Gaudi Tour. We decided to do the Gothic Tour first and then did a Gaudi tour later on in the week. The walking tour was INCREDIBLE!!! We got to see the old parts of Barcelona where the Roman walls were and we learned that when the Romans took over Barcelona is was about 1/3 of the size it is today and they called it Barcino. We also saw where Picasso went to art school (picture on the right) 
after he and his family moved to Barcelona in 1895. This school was very prestigious at the time and it usually took students a month to get accepted but it only took Picasso one week! We also learned on our tour a lot about Catalan culture and the Catalan language which is a mix of French and Spanish – although that does not mean I could understand it at all. Our tour guide did say that if someone spoke in Catalan slow enough a French person could probably understand what they were saying. I did not know before going that most people in Catalonia (which is the region Barcelona is in) don’t speak Spanish, but instead they all speak Catalan which is part of the reason why it is so culturally different than the rest of Spain. We also learned about how much the Catalan people were persecuted for their culture and language by both the French and Franco (the dictator in Spain from 1939-1973). They tried to force the Catalan people to speak French and then to speak Spanish, but as our tour guide said, “When something is forbidden, people partake in whatever is forbidden even more.” So the Catalan people still kept their culture and language in secret which is why it still exists today. There is now a monument in Barcelona dedicated to the people who 
died for continuing to practice the Catalan culture - the picture is to your left. This monument has an eternal flame at the top which we couldn't see during the day but apparently it is quite beautiful at night. It's also an impossible monument to take a picture of, so that is only one part of the monument in the picture, there is another part with words on it as well. The last thing we learned about on the tour was that Columbus was the one who brought chocolate to Europe – so there is at least one thing to thank him for because who can imagine our world or Europe for that matter without chocolate! The end of our tour was at a square where the locals were all together dancing the traditional Catalan dance. After the tour we went to Place Espanya which is where the National Museum of Catalan
Art(MNAC)is. We also thought it was where the cable car was that would take us up to the top of Montjuïc for a beautiful view of the city, but that turned out to be wrong. So instead of riding a cable car we hiked up a lot of steps to the MNAC which also provided a beautiful view of Barcelona. The museum was already closed so we went back another day, but there were some great musicians playing outside of the museum so we listened to them for a little bit and then explored further up the hill. We ended up stumbling upon the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona completely by accident and it turned out to be free to go in so we went in and saw it. There was a whole 
park around it which was built for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona. Place Espanya and the area around MNAC was probably my favorite part of Barcelona because it was SO beautiful! We then went back down the stairs and back onto the metro into the center of town and got some wonderful gelato from a place where the line was outside the door, but the wait was definitely worth it! After gelato, we went to the Park of the Citadel which had an open market with lots of beautiful and surprisingly inexpensive handmade things. We spent some time there before going to meet
up with a Tapas & Flamenco Tour which was through the hostel. The Tapas didn’t really work out so well because they didn’t explain the rules to the other half of our group so they ended up eating the majority of our food and so we were able to eat maybe one or two tapas which was a tiny piece of bread with different things on top. Needless to say, it was not a very filling dinner. We then went to the Flamenco show which was much better than the Tapas. The dancers were amazing and it was so great to get to see a show for only $10, because they are usually over $40. After Flamenco we were so exhausted we didn’t even go buy ourselves a more legitimate dinner, we just went home and went to sleep. 
April 18: This was our beach day which turned out to be a really good thing because after this we did not have as warm of weather. We went to Mar Bella Beach which is in the city but not right near the buildings because you walk through a path of palm trees and bamboo to get to the beach. We had some trouble finding it because when you get off the metro you can’t see the beach and so we had no idea what direction we were supposed to go in, but after Justine asked two different people directions we finally arrived and it was BEAUTIFUL. The Mediterranean water is just as pretty as it looks in pictures, it’s this greenish-blue color and it’s just perfect! We stayed on the beach for over 4 hours and we all got a little bit tanner! We also had the perfect weather because it was probably in the mid-70s so it wasn’t boiling hot which meant it was easier to lay out for awhile but it was still
warm enough so we were warm the whole time - however not warm enough to stay in the water for more than a few minutes. We brought sandwich stuff along with us to the beach to make lunch which was so good – we tried our first avocado from Spain and some other vegetables and they were all delicious! This was the start of our discovery of EXTREMELY cheap groceries. We would buy groceries for a meal and pay about 2 Euros each, so after this lunch we decided to cook a lot more on our own in order to save money. It was also extremely easy to cook on our own because the hostel had a really nice kitchen that all of the people staying there were able to use. So that night for dinner we made ravioli and a salad with avocadoes, cucumber, peppers, and feta! It was delicious!!
April 19: Tuesday turned into our museum day because it wasn’t a very nice day and so we decided it would be best to stay inside. We got up pretty early in order to get a good place in line for the Picasso Museum before it opened at 10am. We got there around 9:30am and the line was still really long, but surprisingly at 10 it moved very quickly. The Picasso museum is one of the most celebrated museums in Barcelona and it was incredible! I wasn’t sure if I would like it because I don’t like a lot of Picasso’s later cubist paintings. By the end of this museum though I began to appreciate
them because the whole museum was like a timeline of Picasso’s life which showed the paintings from when he was in school all the way to the end of his life when he did paintings in the cubist style. Once you see the sketches of how the cubist paintings developed it’s much easier to understand them. Also I was surprised to see that Picasso had done many paintings that wouldn’t be considered modern art and were more like impressionist paintings. He also did a lot of sketches of people and even pottery! It was an incredible museum and I learned SO much and after going I appreciate Picasso as a painter so much more because I realized that he did do all the “normal” art first and then decided to push the boundaries and that he didn’t just pull the cubism ideas out of nowhere but that it was all a part of 
trying to deconstruct a painting. After the Picasso museum we went to the National Museum of Catalan Art (picture at the top of the blog) to actually go inside and see the art. This museum was quite incredible as well because it went from Gothic Art all the way to Modern Art. I also liked it because it wasn’t too overwhelming; it was possible to see all the exhibits in a few hours. We were also allowed to take photos as long as there was no flash, unlike at the Picasso Museum where they were forbidden, so I put a few of my favorites throughout this part of the post. 
After the MNAC we tried to go to Sagrada Familia which is a famous cathedral designed by Gaudi, a very famous architect from Barcelona. Unfortunately though it was closed so we couldn’t go inside and just had to see it from the outside. We found out later that it was closed due to someone trying to set fire to something inside of it. We at least got to see it from the outside and I bought a postcard of the inside so I at least could see what it looked like from a picture. After that we decided to go home and make dinner – this time we made a pasta salad with avocados, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and feta which was also delicious! Then after dinner we took a siesta before going out and exploring Barcelona some more.
April 20: Wednesday was our last day in Barcelona before the other 3 left for Cinque Terre in Italy and before I left for Athens. We started off our day with the Gaudi walking tour which was part of the free walking tours I mentioned earlier. This was an amazing tour as well and we visited buildings we probably never would have seen without the walking tour. The first architecture we saw were the lamp posts in Place Reial which is where the walking tours all started. This was the first and only project that Gaudi did for the government because after he finished these lamp posts the government tried to only pay him half of the money they owed him. He ended up taking them to court and getting the money but after this he decided he would never work for the government again and he would only work privately. After the lamp posts we went to Palau Güell (Palace Güell) which was for a very rich man
named Eusebi Güell. Güell wanted a big house but something different than what the other rich people had around the city so he asked Gaudi to design it for him. Gaudi made the Palace so that it would be able to easily ventilate and stay cool on the hot summer days, and he designed both the inside and outside of the house which is very typical of his work. We then went to another building called Casa Battló which was for another very wealthy man. Gaudi designed this house as a tribute to Sant Jordi (Saint George). The story of Saint George is all over Barcelona in different 
buildings. He is a saint because he saved a Princess from being eaten by a dragon. In a small town they had decided to send a virgin each day to be eaten by a dragon as an offering so they could get their water that the dragon was protecting. One day the Princess was picked as the virgin, the King begged and pleaded for his daughter to not be sent to the dragon but the village still sent her. So as the Princess was walking towards the dragon she was crying and Saint George saw her and asked her what was wrong and she said that she was going to be eaten by the dragon. After hearing this Saint George went and killed the dragon and then after he married the Princess. It symbolizes both the killing of people by the dragon with bones and skulls for the balconies; however the balconies can also be seen as Venetian masks that were worn in the celebration after Saint George killed the dragon. The different colored tiles on the outside of the building represent confetti which emphasizes the celebration aspect of the building. The next house we saw was called Casa Milà, this was the house whose roof inspired
George Lucas’ idea for the storm troopers in Star Wars. The little golden figures on the roof look like the helmets of the storm troopers if you look closely - it's a little bit hard to see because the picture is so small, but the resemblance is almost identical. This house also has three interpretations, it could be a wedding cake, a stone mine (which is the official Spanish interpretation), or waves with the windows being seaweed. The Gaudi tour was over after this because we had already seen Sagrada Familia before and didn’t want to go up to it again. So we headed over to Las Ramblas 
instead. Las Ramblas is a connection of five streets all with the word “Rambla” in them that takes you through different areas of Barcelona. We didn’t walk the whole thing but we saw the part of it where there was a huge market and lots of little flower markets. We then went to Parc Güell which was a park designed by Gaudi for Eusebi Güell. The park was amazing and HUGE! It’s almost hard to describe it because it was something unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You start at one point and hike up to the tallest point of the park, at this point you think it is over until you see that
there is still a huge portion of the park left. So we kept walking and saw some Gaudi houses in the park, and then we met a very funny street performer. Once we finally got to the end we saw the famous part of the park which is the statue of the lizard which is in almost every Barcelona postcard! It was an amazing park and brought Gaudi’s vision all together because he really designed as a whole and he designed buildings or even parks with an atmosphere in mind and that really came through in this park. This was the last thing we saw in Barcelona and it was a perfect way to end our time there, but it also made it that much more disappointing to leave!! After having seen everything I have now decided that Barcelona is by far my favorite city in Europe!April 21: Thursday was the day where the four of us parted ways! I had to get to Barcelona National Airport by myself to fly to Athens and the other three went to Girona National Airport to fly to Italy. I was a little nervous having to travel all by myself to the airport because it involved the metro and trying to find the bus that would take me to Terminal 1. If I got on the wrong bus I would have ended up at Terminal 2, a good half an hour or more away from Terminal 1. However even though I was worried it all worked out fine, it was all extremely easy and I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare! I checked in and then checked my bag which was free which basically felt like magic since I can’t remember the last time I was able to check a bag for free on an airline. Also on the plane I even got a full meal which was so surprising!!! They served us lunch of grape leaves, hummus, bread and this pasta dish! After having this amazing experience I have now decided I’m in love with European airlines!! I got to Athens 3 hours after my flight left Barcelona and I met Danielle, my friend from University of Washington studying abroad in Greece, and we hopped on the metro and traveled to our hostel!
More news from Athens and Santorini coming to you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment