This entry could also be called: "How to be lost in a city and spend 5 hours looking for your hostel"
Note to self, or anyone reading this; If you are ever going on a trip, ALWAYS write down the address for a place you are staying at on vacation. You will see why this is a very important tip later on...
For our 3 week Easter break, Andrew, John, and I decided that we would go to mainland Europe for about 10 days. While there, we would visit Barcelona, Rome, and Paris. We caught a train to Liverpool early Sunday morning to catch our Ryanair flight to Barcelona.
The flight was very interesting. The thing about Ryanair is that it is incredibly cheap to catch a flight anywhere (when we looked at the flights online, it was 22 pounds for a flight to Barcelona). The thing is, they make a profit from all of the fees that are put in place. You are only allowed a certain sized bag, and if you exceed the weight or break any of the other regulations, you have to pay an additional 40-60 pounds (anywhere from 80-120 dollars). Rumor is that at one point, the company was trying to make people pay to use the bathroom on the flight. Along with all of the rules they have to make money, they also try to sell additional stuff on the plane, including anything from cologne, food, and suitcases. It was kind of crazy.
Anyway, we finally arrived to Barcelona at 4:30 that afternoon. I would say that the culture shock didn't fully hit me until I realized that I couldn't read any of the advertisements in the airport. Overall though, this trip made me realize how much Spanish I was surprisingly able to remember after all these years, thankfully.We then jumped on a train that would take us to the area where our hostel was. As soon as we got off the train, we stumbled upon the Casa Batllo, a famous building that was created in 1888 by the architect, Antonio Gaudi. After that, we proceeded to look for our hostel, a trip that would eventually last 5 1/2 hours. We knew the relative ballpark of where it was, and basically worked off of that. We asked several different people who either never heard of the place, or would contradict the directions of someone else. Just as were about to give up, we finally came across it at 10:30 that night.
After wearyingly dropping off our stuff, me and the others decided to walk the beach and explore Soho, which is one of the big nightlife places of Barcelona. While there, we had one of the most authentic Spanish meals we could think of, Burger King. Afterwards, we made our way back to the hostel and called it a night.
The next morning, we decided to go on a walk through the entire city. We visited the statue/ roundabout of Christopher Columbus, along with seeing the Basilica de Santa Maria, another massive cathedral in the middle of town. After grabbing some food and listening to street performers playing guitar, we met up with Raven, who was going to join us for the rest of the trip.
The four of us then headed to my favorite part of Barcelona, the beautiful Sagrada de Familia Basilica (the Unfinished Cathedral). The cathedral was also built by Gaudi. The cathedral began construction in 1883, and is estimated to be completely done by 2028, or so. The reason for its slow construction is due to all of the intricate detail that Gaudi put into it. Each spire of the cathedral seemed to have its own theme, along with different gargoyles and figures on each one. It was hands down one of my favorite things I've seen while abroad. Unfortunately due to the massive line that would have taken an hour to go through, we didn't go in.
We then made our way back to the main city center to visit La Boqueria, one of the main markets in the city that had what looked like an endless amount of different kinds of food. You name it, they probably had it. They had everything from fresh vegetables, fresh fish, lollipops that were as big as my head, and every kind of fruit I could think of. After seeing everything in the market, we met with James, a student from Machester, who joined us for another night on the beach, and showed us some more of the Barcelona nightlife, including on taking us on a wild goose chase for tapas ( a spanish snack dish that can be anything from pigs in a blanket, chicken wings, fresh olives, etc).
On our last day, Raven, John, and I literally spent the whole day on the beach. Andrew went to climb the huge mountain in town where you can get a good view of a local castle, the Olympic stadium, along with the other half of Barcelona. Back at the beach, we napped, swam, and built sandcastles. Needless to say, it was a pretty great day. After Andrew got back, we went back to the City Center where we finally found paellas and tapas. Paellas are basically giant pans of yellow rice that come with everything from seafood to chicken on it. After eating ourselves into a food coma, we walked around the city some more, and made our way back to the beach one last time. We said goodbye to James, then caught our bus to the airport so we could catch our red eye flight to Rome.
No comments:
Post a Comment