hello friends!
i'm back from a weekend in spain! i went with two other californian girls from the uc education abroad program - karesa and justina. we flew out of gatwick at 3:25 and after a brief two hour flight, we were in girona! we had to take a coach from girona to barcelona, and justina and i sat in the back next to seven very drunk, very loud, and
very irish women. they seriously yelled and sang the whole hour and a half we were on that coach. well, we got to barcelona and decided to walk around and find a nice little restaurant to grab dinner and maybe some wine, but restaurants don't open til 8:30, and 90% of the eateries we saw were donor kebabs and fried mystery meats. *shiver* we are too hungry and poor to wait for an overpriced spanish restaurant, so we found a market and bought bread, cheese, and fruit to get us through the rest of the night. with slight difficulty, we finally stumbled upon our hostel, sant jordi sagrada familia, named after gaudi's church. it was such a nice place! the people at the front desk were so friendly and helpful, they had computers with free internet access, our room had two bunk beds, and our apartment had its own kitchen, bathroom, and living room. our hostel-mates were friendly and we chatted with them until we had to pass out in our room from exhaustion. unfortunately, the others stayed up till who knows when (i'll estimate 4) talking and laughing loudly, right on the other side of the wall. i slept little, and then we got up at 7:30 to make the most of our saturday.
we got on a train to figueras, a town two hours by train northeast of barcelona. figueras was all my idea, and i decided we had to go because that's where the dali museum is. outside the train station in figueras, we marvelled how quiet and laid back the town was. it was so warm and bright outside, quite the opposite of canterbury in winter. we walked through a street market where vendors sold sausages, loaves of bread, jewelry, and other oddities. we even saw a pan pipe band, and i immediately recalled an episode of south park and laughed heartily.
eventually we made it up to the top of the town where the dali museum is, and went through the entire thing. i must have taken around 300 photos inside, of his various artworks. he is one of my favorite painters and i aspire to create work like his. the museum was wonderful, and i couldn't believe what prolific an artist he was, and he was so multi-talented. paintings, drawings,
sculptures, jewelry...
anyway, we left the museum and grabbed a quick lunch at a local restaurant that wasn't too special, hopped back on the train and got back to barcelona late afternoon. justina suggested we check out the gothic quarter, which sounded super cool, and i don't know if that's where we went, but we ended up on a main street with vendors and street performers dressed up in crazy costumes. we saw a lady dressed as a fruit stand, several people painted to look like bronze statues, and creepiest of all there was a person dressed as satan holding an infant. wtf? all this time i'm vigilantly guarding my purse because i'm terrified of pickpocketers. also, practically everyone in barcelona has a dog. there were people walking their dogs everywhere, and i wanted to adopt all of them.
with dusk approaching, i suggested we go to park güell, a famous park designed by gaudi. we started the trek up to the park - i had read that it takes a dedicated tourist to make the climb... we ended up hiking uphill for about 40 minutes and never found the park. it closed at 7, so we ended our search when we realized that even if we found it, we couldn't enter. i was pretty bummed out about that, since i had intended the weekend to be full of art and architecture.
we headed back to the hostel, our feet sore and our legs tired. justina and karesa had originally wanted to go out
on a pub crawl that cost 15 pounds and included several bars and drinks, but i was exhausted and nearly broke, so that idea didn't sound too good to me. thankfully, our hostel had organized a hostel bar night with some other hostels, and if we went with them to a specific bar, we got free entry and one free drink. score! i wanted to see the barcelona night life even though i was half-dead from lack of sleep. we went to a bar called the roxy, with blue lighting inside, jewelled walls, and disco balls. we had free champagne (too bad it wasn't good) and danced a bit. the bar was nearly dead, i was tired, and the champagne was not tasty, so quickly i decided to call it a night. we headed home at 1:30 to sleep and then rose the next morning at 8.
sunday morning we visited la sagrada familia, the church i mentioned earlier. it was spectacular. it's been under construction since 1882 and there are huge cranes and scaffolding surrounding it. i found it just beautiful, and wonder when it will finally open and be used as a church. while walking around the building, i was approached by two women holding flowers. one came up to me, started talking in spanish about some festival, and handed me a flower. i declined and tried to move away, but she was insistent, putting the flower through the loop of my bag strap. at first i thought she was just giving me a flower to be festive.... then a man walking nearby called out to me, shook his head and came over, he handed the flower back to the lady and she scurried off. he told me, in spanish, that she was lying - there was no festival - the flower was meant as a distraction while she pickpocketed me. thank god nothing was taken and that man was there to help me out. i was very shaken up by the incident and felt so violated. pickpocketers are horrible people. after that incident, i decided it was a good idea to leave spain before any of us got robbed.
i didn't get to the picasso museum or park güell, so i've decided i just have to return to barcelona someday.
until next time!
how can it be so warm, sunny, and beautiful outside one day and the next be windy, cold, gray, and miserable?? i don't get it. yesterday i would have said "spring has arrived!" but i guess that would have been premature. there are definitely more warm days than there were a few weeks ago, though. the daffodils and tulips are popping up everywhere, the flowering trees are starting to bloom, and everything looks greener. spring is coming soon.
