The Barcelona Saga

Thursday was the travel day. I left for Paris in the morning and then we got the bus to the airport in the evening. Once on the plane – only plane I’ve been on where seating was first come, first serve…I was amazed that Alex and I got seats next to each other! We found the plane entirely too amusing…they had the safety stuff posted on the seat in front of you…we somehow managed to keep ourselves amused for a good 20 minutes laughing at the pictures and making up our own explanations for what the pictures meant. I plead the fact that it was 11 at night…and the best part was a LOST moment. Alex and I were discussing what would happen if the plane split apart like in LOST…she said “Well, as long as we’re in the very front or the very back, we’ll be okay.” I look in front of me. I look behind me. I look at her and say “We’re smack dab in the middle.” “…crap!” It was really funny at the moment, anyway…

We got to the Girona Airport and had to get a shuttle to Barcelona…getting ON the damn bus was an experience in and of itself! Ever watched rugby? Ever seen a scrum? You know, where each team slams into each other to get the ball? Yeah, that’s what getting onto the bus felt like, though apparently the bus itself was the rugby ball. It was INSANE. There was one woman who was being pushed back and down so hard on my bag (which was slung across my chest) that it was putting insane amounts of stress onto a pressure point in my shoulder/neck…I couldn’t breathe at one point. Good times…but then I (literally) elbowed the guy next to me so that Alex and I could get onto the bus. She and I were both amazed that we had that kind of aggression in us! It was worth it, though, if for nothing but the view on the way to Barcelona. Not the view of the countryside, mind you. It was too dark to see any of that…but the stars were AMAZING. Whenever I leave my aparte before sunrise (which is thankfully less frequent thanks to daylight savings time) I look up to see Orion above my head. Not only did I see ALL of Orion from the bus window (head, body, belt, sword, even his bow!) but I also found Canus major/minor, the Gemini twins, and even the Pleiades! It might not mean anything to you all, but it was a fabulous way to start my sejour (stay) in Barcelone!

We finally made it to Barcelona…got in cab, since it was 2 in the morning, and gave the taxi driver the address of the Graffiti Hostel. He was a nice taxi driver…he not only waited to make sure we got inside safely, but he also got out of the cab to help us out when we couldn’t get into the hostel. We make our way upstairs to the reception desk…this half-asleep Spanish guy greets us and mumbles something (in so thick an accent that I wasn’t even sure it was English he was speaking) about being overbooked. He looks at us and informs us that, “we do have one bed left…[and this is said in the most pitiful half-asleep little-boy voice I’ve ever heard] but it’s my bed!” He disappears for about 10 minutes (Alex and I tell ourselves it’s to change the sheets…) and then takes us to his room. He apologizes profusely for the mess – it looks like the worst dorm room EVER! There’s stuff everywhere, but then again it’s technically where he lives. We look up at the top bunk (we’ll be sleeping on the bottom bunk) and realize there’s a random half-naked Spanish guy watching TV! We start giggling like middle school girls at the absolute awkwardness and sketchiness of the room, but we were beyond the point of caring, we were so exhausted. We collapsed into bed without even bothering to change into pjs (also there was the random male roommate…) and pass out. The funniest part was when we hear the door slam at 7 and another guy comes in and falls into the bed next to us and starts snoring in a way I didn’t think was humanly possible. Quite literally falls into bed, too–his legs were splayed out hanging off it! We decided he must have had to have been drunk to sleep like that! We ran into him later in the day and realized that he’s another employee at the hostel. He told us that Juan (the guy whose bed in which we slept) would “figure out where we were sleeping” when he got on duty later that night. He hardly sounded convincing, so we left to go explore Barcelona.

(Of course, being the mature young women that we are, we decided to make our already-sketchy story even sketchier – When in Barcelona, we slept in a random guy’s bed with a half-naked man on top of us! Sounds much worse than it really was, but we burst out laughing every time we said it!

Our first stop was Sagrada Familia, but the line was ridiculously long, so we went to Park Guell instead. It’s the famous park the artist/architect Gaudi designed…it was in one of the most fabulous French films, L’Auberge Espagnole! It was incredible…I’ve never seen anything like it! All of his work is modeled after the natural world, so everything looks like it’s growing out of the ground or something like that…and there was mosaic EVERYWHERE. I’ve decided I very much like mosaic designs! We headed next to Place d’Espanya to try to find some lunch. Unfortunately, all of the menus outside the restaurants were in Spanish. Duh, of course, we WERE in Spain after all – but I never realized how intimidating it is to be in a foreign country where I DON’T speak the language! We chickened out of trying to eat at a restaurant and finally found a boulangerie (bakery). We literally pointed at the sandwich we wanted and smiled. Iwas was PATHETIC. It makes me appreciate my French skills…and makes France seem SO easy in compairison! After our humiliating meal as Tourists (yes, with a Capital T) we walked to this castle/palace/bigfancybuilding and just laid in the grass next to a fountain for a while. It was so nice to just laze about and enjoy the Mediterranean sun and the laid-back lifestyle. I was only there two days, but I could tell day one that they take life at a slower, easier pace than France or the US. We then took the metro back to Sagrada Familia and got gelato (of course!) and then went into the cathedral. It was absolutely amazing…construction was started in 1882 and it’s STILL unfinished…designed again by Gaudi. It really is indescribable…a masterpiece not only of art but also of mathematics – there were all these signs describing the math behind the construction – I didn’t really understand it…but it was pretty to look at!! Afterwards we went to dinner with my Nantes girls (it seems like half of IES Nantes went to Barcelona!) and went to a bar to hang out for a while…the conversation turned morbid talking about death and funerals, but whatever! We headed back to the hostel shortly thereafter…Alex and I were absolutely exhausted. When we got to the hostel, we ran into none other than Erin – fellow Woosterite! We didn’t know that she was coming to Barcelona for her break, let alone that she and her friends were staying in the same hostel as us! …small world…

Grace à (thanks to) the overbooking, we once again got no beds – instead we had slept slumber-party style in the TV room on a fold out couch. Well…the cushions folded out into a sort of pseudo bed…even MY shins were dangling off the edge, it was that small! One of Erin’s friends slept on a beanbag, and the other on another too-small cushionbedthing. It wasn’t the most comfortable things by any stretch of the imagination, but by this point I was starting to get a headcold…I was so exhausted I slept like a rock anyway. Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the Graffiti Hostel, but the overbooking wasn’t their fault. But at any rate, it was a safe place to sleep and it wasn’t terribly expensive – and it makes a great story!

Saturday, we started our day off by heading to the Gothic Quarter…the original Barcelona, if you will. The roads were more like alleys, they were so narrow, and the buildings were so old…it was beautiful. Alex and I found our future home - the Viceroy Palace. When you walk in, you find yourself in this huge, beautiful atrium. There are no windows, so it’s so airy and the walls are yellow, which makes it even brighter. It was so lovely…there were plants climbing around the ceilings which gave it such a fresh feeling. I’m ready to move in! Inside, there was an exhibit from the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, (sorry, Gerald, I couldn’t find your name. I blame the fact that they were all in Spanish and Catalonian!) Being the bibliophile that I am, I loved looking at these centuries-old books…they were SO pretty. There were all these intricate covers of leather, some of wood, others covered in jewels or precious stones…it really was amazing. After wandering around the Gothic Quarter for a bit longer, we went to find la plage –the beach! After all, we were on the Mediterranean –we couldn’t NOT go to the beach! We walked in the surf for a bit…and got SOAKED by one particularly sneaky wave. I tend to forget that je suis un peu plus petite que mes amies (I’m a little smaller than my friends) so the waves that get them wet just above their knees gets me up to my butt! It was COLD, but it was fun to play in the Mediterranean. We went to the mall for a while and then just sat on the boardwalk/dock for a bit, relaxing and enjoying the sun.

After a while, we headed to Las Ramblas, which is essentially the tourist road of Barcelona – tons of pavilion tents with knickknacks for sale and these REALLY neat statue people…you know, the ones that stand still as stone and actually look like statues! Well, some of the people were better than others, but there were some really creative ones. There was a demon/zombie that was entirely TOO good – he looked dead, except that his eyes would follow you as you walked by him…SI creepy. We then went to my FAVORITE part of Barcelona –the Magic Fountain of Montjuic. It’s a relatively unimpressive fountain by day (well, it’s dry, so that’s part of it) but at night…it really is magical. They play music and have lights on the fountain and it’s just…beautiful. I kind of felt like I was in the middle of the (first) Disney Fantasia…it was incredible. The mist from the fountain gave it an incredibly ephemeral look…add to that colored lights and it was even more amazing. I highly enjoyed it! Afterwards we went to dinner with Erin and her friends and got pizza and sangria – such a refined palate, I know – and chatted en francais. We figured in the middle of Las Ramblas it’d be better to speak en francais so as to not be *too* obviously American. The sangria, by the way, was quite good - Alex and I split one, since the "cups" they came in were huge - they were more like bowls!

We went back to the hostel and ended up in the TV room again. They only charged us a grand total of 22 euros for the three nights– we should have paid 66! Needless to say, I’m okay with the deal we got! Since Alex and I had to leave at 2.30ish in the morning to get our 3.45 shuttle back to Girona (6.50 in the morning flight = very bad idea) so we just sat around watching tv and dozing on and off for a couple hours. We ended up sleeping (well, I can’t speak for Alex, but I did!) on the bus…and then again on the plane…and then again on the bus back to Paris…and then I slept some more on the train back to Nantes…and yet I was STILL exhausted by the end of Sunday.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic trip! I could have done without the sketchy sleeping arrangements, the getting sick thing, and the early-morning departures, but I’m so happy we went! And considering we did the whole thing (travel wise, not food/souvenir wise) for less than 200 euros, it was SO worth it.

Back in Nantes this past week…I’ve been SO tired. Trying to recover from the weekend in Spain, trying to recover from being sick, and trying to do work all at once – and all in French – is NOT so easy. But Alex is coming to Nantes tomorrow!! And I’m gonna take her to the Havana Café Saturday night, so that’ll be a good stress-reliever for me =D

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(your reward for reading the whole post...A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words and miscellaneous people photos!)