Barcelona

On Wednesday we met at the train station parking lot at 8 in the morning to start our journey to Barcelona, or as they say there Barthelona. The bus ride was about 6 1/2 hours. I would go so far as to say it was among the lesser pleasant moments of my life riding in that lovely bus. Partway there we thankfully stopped at Zaragoza. Unfortunately it was really rainy outside.

We saw the Basilica there, which was cool.


There was a sweet fountain outside that resembled an iceberg melting. Very awesome.

We decided to go to an art museum to get out of the rain. It took us a bit to walk there though, but it was worth it. Here's me and Lara with a fountain we passed:

The museum turned out to be super awesome. It chronologically followed the life of goya displaying his work and other artists' work that either influenced him or was influenced by him. It had a Van Gogh and 2 by Edvard Munch, so I was happy.

Then we got back on the bus for a very long time and finally arrived in Barcelona around 7:30 or so. We checked into the hotel and put our stuff in our rooms. The rooms were quite interesting because for some reason the bathroom was placed in the middle of the room with walls of frosted greenish glass. Very odd.

After putting our stuff away, some of us headed out to find some dinner. Of course this means that we ended up getting kebabs. These ones were wrapped in a tortilla though, so different, but still good. When we were walking back we saw some stairs and thought it would be a good idea to run up them. This turned out to not be the greatest idea because the stairs just kept going and going forever. (I'm pretty sure it's the same stairs that the cheetah girls run up while singing). We were pretty happy when we made it to the top, which turned out to be where the National Art Gallery is.

The next day we went to the market. They sold some pretty interesting things there. All of the shrimp and crabs were still alive and twitching on the ice. Luckily, these were not still alive:

After the market, where I lost my appetite, we walked to the port where there was a monument for Columbus (which is in the background of this picture).


We met up with some other people here and headed over to the Picasso museum. This is probably one of the coolest art museums I have seen in Spain. It went chronologically through Picasso's life, separating the different periods into different rooms. It was awesome to see how he progressed from one stage to the next eventually ending in cubism. The last room was full of his renditions of "Las Meninas."

After the museum we walked around for a bit. The weather had warmed up a bit and was almost nice. As is typical of Spain, we saw lots of sweet graffiti.

We stopped in at a grocery store to get some snacks, and I got a chocolate ice cream bar because my friend Hunter had been raving about them ever since his family went to Spain.

The next day we went to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, which is a really famous building in Barcelona that is like a Cathedral, but not part of the Catholic church. Gaudi designed it, but then died before it was completed. The design was so complicated that it's still not finished (Gaudi died in the 1920's, so it's been under construction for a very long time). It was cool to see because Gaudi was such an influential architect. He was very focused on eliminating straight lines, so he used a lot of organic shapes based off of objects he found in nature.

The inside:

A group of us out front (Bryanne, Lauren, me, Tim, Kiley, and Courtney):

You can see the cranes in every shot.

Gaudi also designed a bunch of sweet buildings in this one neighborhood near la Sagrada Familia. This one is called the Casa Batllo. It was way cooler in person; the walls are covered in colorful mosaics.

Next we went to the Parque Guell, which was also designed by Gaudi. It is slightly disneyesque.

There are these sweet curvy benches that line the upper area and are covered in mosaics.

There is a big open area that the curvy benches surround. There were tons of people there because the weather was so nice.


We chilled on the grass for awhile just enjoying the sun (Me, Bryanne, Courtney, and Sandy).

After the park, we took the bus back to the main plaza from the day before. It turned out to be quite the drive and we were shocked at how much we had walked already that day. When we got there we were starving and so we went out for Asian fusian food. I got noodles with chicken and peanut sauce. It was super delicious, but also beyond filling. We decided to walk around more afterwards in order to feel better about ourselves, so we walked back over to where the port was and across the bridge to the mall. Lauren was really wanting to get a fake designer purse, but when we got there no one was selling any. She was rather fussy about this until we turned the corner and found a couple of guys with bags. She found one she loved and then we kept walking only to find lines and lines of people selling things. Mark and I now have matching sunglasses (in blue and green).

We kept walking until we came to the beach, which was lovely. By then it wasn't so warm anymore though, so we didn't stay long.


We hopped on the metro to get back to the National Art Museum, where there was a fountain show that night. It turned out to be the sweetest thing ever.

It was a lot like at the Belagio, water coordinated to music, but it had color and was in Barcelona, so it kind of wins.

We were lucky enough to be there for the Disney medly, which was made even better by the fact that it was in Spanish. It started out with "la vida sin fin" (the circle of life) and went through a number of my favs.

After the fountains we went back to the hotel, still full from lunch, and relaxed. A number of us had planned to go discoteca-ing, but after walking so much we decided to just hang out instead.

The night ended with Mark, Lara, and I watching an episode of wishbone online. We're all huge fans.

The next day we left Barcelona. We stopped in a town about 45 minutes away from Barcelona with a monastery set in the mountains. It was beautiful.

The church was really pretty on the inside and out.


Me and Kiley were pretty excited about it.

We took this little elevator/lift type thing up the mountain. It had an amazing view.

Me, Mark, Lara, and Courtney with the sweet view.

Mark decided to pick me up and then continued to make his way toward the edge of the cliff. Everyone else decided that this was a horrible idea and was screaming until he put me down. He keeps claiming that he had no intention of dropping me over the edge, but who really knows?

After making our way back down the mountain we had a delightful 6ish hour bus ride to look forward to. There is no comfortable way to sleep on a bus, even if you have both seats to yourself. Mark and I decided to watch the Lizzie McGuire Movie, because I had it with me, or so I thought. We put it in his computer and it said it was an audio cd. Yes, I had brought the soundtrack thinking it was the DVD. So uncool. We ended up having to watch When in Rome with Mary-Kate and Ashely instead.

We finally made it back to Alcala, where our family had a lovely dinner of chicken and beef waiting for us. I don't think I've ever slept as well as I slept that night.