Barcelona

We started off our spring break by heading to Barcelona. Ben, Chris, Shayna and Robert all left for the Canary’s early while we went to Barcelona and Steph went to Madrid to stay with some foreign exchange students she use to host. We were all to meet up in the Canary Islands that following Tuesday. Paige, Caitlin and I left for Barcelona on the Saturday after midterms. We flew straight from Granada to Barcelona. Once we got to Barcelona we had to buy a 22 euro round trip bus ticket to even get into the city. Once we got into the city we had to figure out the metro system on our own this time!!! We got to the ticket machine to purchase a ticket and we read the screen, it wasn’t in English or Spanish… it was in Catalan. This is a mixture of Spanish and some other village language together…very hard to understand. But we made some guestemations and got tickets. We somehow got on this train thing instead of the metro because its what the directions from the hostel said to do but we got all mumble jumbled and we were going the wrong way not to mention-we figured this out because some guy reading a book looked up at us and asked what we were looking for “in English not to mention” and we told him and he’s like…you need to be going the opposite direction. So we hopped off and got on a new one and somehow with a little bit of luck we finally reached our hostel. We got settled in and then went to go tour the city. We started off our adventure by going to the market, which is an outdoor market for fresh fruit, meats, candy, all sorts of good stuff! We continued down las ramblas and got to a plaza and decided to go to the grocery store, get some food for lunch, and then sit in the sun and have a picnic. While we were sitting in the plaza relaxing with the sun beating harshly through our jeans, we got lost in the moment and we were not aware of what was going on around us. Paige had bought a pack of diet Pepsis at the grocery store and they were sitting next to her- while there are beggers all around in Spain, one in particular caught our eye. Out of nowhere Paige looks up and there is an older lady reaching down, picks up one of Paige’s diet Pepsis, takes the cap off and starts to drink it. We are all in such shock we couldn’t say anything, then the begger proceeds to try and give the pop back to Paige thinking she would still want it. Paige was still speechless so I just told her “tomalo” which means take it. When she left all we could do was laugh! After basking in the sun for a very long time, we decided to go back and take naps so that we were well rested to see the light show that night. Later that night we went to go find the light show- we owned the metro station and got there without any problems! The light show was sweet, it was a huge water fountain that had water moving in different directions and designs and changed different colors! There was also music that it went along with it. We sat around once it was over hoping for another show later but there wasn’t one. But we did meet a nice man from Miami, Ohio who was there on business so we chatted it up with him for a while. He was talking about how he had wished he studied abroad when he was in college, and Paige turned to him and goes, “Well I wouldn’t study abroad either if I lived in Miami!” Caitlin turned to her and whispered Miami, Ohio not Florida. The man just smiled and let out a giggle because knew that she had clearly missed that memo. On our way back to the metro we were in between crosswalks and Paige felt something tug on her purse so she whipped it around and looked- someone had unzipped her purse pocket with her ipod and passport. She turned around to see who it was and the guy had taken off the other way. Paige had a rough day. To finish off our first day in Barcelona we had an interesting incident on the metro as well-nothing like finishing up the day with a little action. We had just gotten on the metro when we saw a group of like 6 guys get into a tussle with a couple people on the metro, we didn’t realize right away what was going on but what had happened was a couple of the guys grabbed a womans purse and were yanking it from her- her husband was trying to fight them off but more gang members joined in and successfully they stole her purse and jumped off the metro right as the doors were closing. The woman’s little girl next to her was bawling and everyone was sort of just in shock. Not to mention there was another gang member right behind us that making sure everything went well and then he jumped off when they did, we didn’t realize this until later. From then on we did not carry purses anymore and we also did not go out once it got dark out. We didn’t have boys with us so we just felt safer going out in the day and then going back and reading or going on the computers once it got dark. Day 2 in Barcelona was much more successful. Palm Sunday! No one is going to rob us on Palm Sunday right??? That’s like asking for an invitation straight to hell. Just kidding… But really. We went to see the Sagrada familia on Palm Sunday and got to sit in on an outdoor service. The Sagrada familia is a huge church designed by Gaudi as well and is very famous in Spain. Everyone was waving different types of palms and singing songs in Catalan. After the church service we just walked around the city some more and then ate a delicious lunch at Hard Rock Café- Paige didn’t get to eat it in Madrid. So we all took one for the team and “forced” ourselves to eat the food and even went as far as getting ranch with it. We are such team players. (Jk) It was delicious, we also saw the tallest men ever at Hard Rock and Paige was convinced they were famous so as they were leaving I asked if they were basketball players… and they were! They played for a team in Spain or they were playing Spain, we weren’t quite sure but they were from America. That night we went to go see Gaudi’s work. He has like crazy abstract buildings and different art works around Barcelona. So we went and saw some of it lit in the street, took pics, got ice cream and then went back to the hostel. That Monday was our last day so we went up to Park Guell which is all uphill to get to and all designed by Gaudi once again. We walked around took pics and then got these 10 min massages that were free and then you put a tip in at the end. I don’t know who enjoyed it more, us getting the massages or the guys that got to give us the massage- o well it was free haha. And there was a long line so that meant they were legit…? The last thing we did was go through a chocolate factory which was really cool, they had tons of different art made out of chocolate! Then we went back packed up all of our stuff and headed to the bus station to take us to the airport. We flew into the Madrid airport that night and prepared our beds because we once again got to spend the night at the airport! We made beds and then had heart to hearts before we fell asleep. At one point Caitlin got laughing so hard that a lady like 40 feet away from us shushed her haha. The next morning we were on our way to the Canaries! Canaries are to be continued...