BARCA.

This past weekend, I took a mini trip to Barcelona. We left Friday morning and took a one hour flight and were in Barcelona by 11 am. It was kind of a last minute trip as we planned it four days before we left. Our plan was to stay in a hostel, but we ended up finding a hotel that was cheaper per person and in the main area of the city as well so we decided to go for it. There were eight of us girls so we just got two rooms of four and it all worked out perfectly.





We decided to be hardcore tourists for the rest of the afternoon and went to the Picasso Museum. I’ve never been a huge art freak but this semester I am taking a class on modern painters so it’s actually cool to see what my teacher has been talking about in class in an actual museum. We saw everything from Picasso’s earliest art to his latest works (and there was, for some odd reason, an erotic art display there as well…definitely very different). We also walked around the city and down by the ocean.

That night we went to a bar called Chupitos (in Spanish, it literally means shots). This place had over 500 different shots to choose from. Some of them were normal but most were hilarious. For instance, there is a shot called Pop Rocks. You literally put pop rocks in your mouth, take the shot of whatever it is, swish it around in your mouth then swallow it. But there were literally hundreds of people crammed into this tiny place and it was basically impossible to move.

The next day we decided to hit up some more of the tourist spots: we started out the day by going to the local market where I literally had the best chocolate pastry ever and strawberry –banana juice ever. They sold everything there it was crazy- fish, candy, bread, seafood, peppers…everrrrrything. We walked around and saw some more of Gaudi’s random houses (Casa Battlo and a museum). Then we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia…this was by far one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It wasn’t even finished yet but it was insane. Parque Guell was next on the list…it is the made that Gaudi had been in charge of constructing. It is basically a huge park on the hills with lots of hiking and biking and then a center in the middle where there were some bands playing and people selling things.

That night we also decided to go to the IceBar. It is literally a bar made of ice- the temperature was literally at 5 degrees and they gave you these big puffy grey coats to wear. It was so much fun..but the downside was that you really couldn’t stay long inside because it was so cold. But after that we walked around the beach and met some other SMU students at a place called Black Sheep for the rest of the night.

Sadly, the next day the market was closed because it was Sunday and we just walked around the city until we had to head back to the airport around two. It’s funny because Barcelona is really different from Madrid. They are both huge cities, but to me, Barcelona felt a lot more touristy. Pretty much every time I tried to speak Spanish they would say to me “oo I speak English.” But there is a lot more color and craziness in Barca than in Madrid where everything is darker. The shops are more vibrant and the city is full of a lot more color.

Next stop: Andalucía for the next four days with the school. :)