Te quiero Barcelona

Para que sepan: this is a long post.

Barcelona, Barcelona, what to say about Barcelona?  I've wanted to go to Barcelona for some time now, even before I came to Spain, and by late March, I made it there.  My friend Susie from Beloit asked me if I had any interest in visiting Barcelona with her at the end of March. I told her I had every interest, found a cheap flight, booked it and had dreams with the song "Barcelona" by Giulia y Los Tellarini playing the background.

I had an evening flight from Sevilla on a Thursday and was nervous about making it on time. Everyone had told me that the airport was small and that I wouldn't have any problems, if the bus was on schedule. They were right, it took no time at all to check in and get through security, but the flight was delayed by an hour. This sucked because the flight only lasts for an hour and a half. So I arrived at the airport a little before midnight and had planned on taking the metro, but as soon as I got there I found out it wasn't an option as the metro stops running at midnight. On the plane, I sat by a nice Spanish woman who told me she was looking to take the aerobus (the shuttle to and from the city center to the airport) and asked me if I knew anything about it. I told her I was looking to take it as well, but knew nothing about it. We got to talking and it turns out the woman was from Badajoz, so she took a liking to me and wanted to help me get to where I was going. Win! We found out we had to take a night bus from Plaça de Catalunya. So she told me not to worry and asked around for me about which bus I needed. Less than 3 minutes later, the bus arrived.

The bus was quite full and after the first few stops, I felt like I was on the night bus from Harry Potter, because the bus driver was driving fast and making quick turns. There were interesting characters on the bus and people of all ages. I was the last person on the bus and the bus driver let me know when we had reached my destination. It was already past 1am at this point. Susie came to meet me near the bus stop as she had arrived to Barcelona in the afternoon.


We started early the next morning (Friday), picked up some pastries from a bakery and went to the metro. We explored La Rambla, which was really cool. There were lots of groups of school children out, which was a bit strange to see. I don't know if it was a big field trip day for all schools or just some. We saw lots of human statues and went to the famous market, La Boqueria or Mercat de Sant Josep, which is fantastic! There was so much fresh produce, meat, fish, spices, candies, dried fruit and nuts.

 We walked along the sea and then made our way to where the cathedral is. We stopped at a cafe and then took some sides streets and made our way into the Born neighborhood. One thing I really liked about Barcelona, was how there were small maps every block, so you could orient yourself and find where you would like to go. We stopped to look at a map so we could see how to get to La Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar and realized we had to take a left.

 While we were walking on this random street, we see another Beloiter! I had seen Katie a week before in Benalmadena and knew she was staying in Barcelona for a while, but did not think I'd run into her! Seriously, what are the odds. She was wandering around the city trying to find the chocolate museum. She joined us for about an hour. We found the church, took some photos, asked around about the chocolate museum, and finally found the museum after getting a bit lost. We didn't go inside though because there were a long line of students waiting. How fun would that be? To go with your class to the chocolate museum or Museu de la Xocolata, as it's called in Catalan.

After lunch, we parted ways. Susie and I were on a mission to see La Sagrada Familia and Parque Guell. We were waiting to get on the metro and when the door opened, a woman ran out of the metro car and threw down a newspaper. The next thing I saw were hands reaching for people's purses and trying to get into people's pockets. Luckily, all of the people quickly realized what was going on and slapped their hands firmly on their purses and wallets and nothing was stolen. I've heard so much about pickpockets and their tricks, so to actually witness them was nuts.

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia is amazing! We didn't enter because the line was long and it was getting late; we wanted to see Parque Guell before sunset. We were pretty close to the park from La Sagrada Familia on a map and didn't consult with anyone about the best metro stop for getting to the park. So we picked a stop that looked the closest and got off. Well we didn't really know where we were, so we asked a woman for directions who told us first in Spanish, then in English how to get there. She said to look out for the "mechanical stairs." Mechanical stairs, escalators, those are easy spot, right? Wrong.
We ended up walking up some stairs to walk across a pretty bridge and kept walking uphill for a good 20 minutes, before we realized we'd walked to far uphill and needed to go downhill to reach the park. Sure enough, as we started walking downhill we saw the dun dun dun, mechanical stairs! They only went up and there was a set of stairs besides the escalator to get down. We asked for directions one more time and found a look-out point where people were doing Tai Chi.

Picture from the cool look-out point.

The view was great and we could see the park was  just downhill from where we were. There were so many people at the park! We went in the back way, which is not what people normally do, but it worked for us. It was more calm the way we went in and we had a good adventure getting lost, finding the oh so known mechanical stairs and asking people for directions. Oh and I forgot to mention Susie wore flats this day. She's a real trooper for hiking in those shoes, Madre mia.

That evening we met up with a friend of a friend. Our friend Megan, who was also in Theta with us and is one of Susie's best friends, studied abroad in Barcelona a few years ago. She made friends with a really nice guy named Albert, they've kept in contact and Megan informed Albert of us visiting. Albert showed us around the bay area before and after eating dinner at a Syrian restaurant. We went out for some beers after dinner to a place called Barnabier, isn't that a great name? We sat outside and while we were enjoying our beers a massive group of people rollerblading passed by us. I had never seen anything like it, people of all ages, wearing neon colored vests and rollerblading around 11pm. It was fantastic.

Woman and Bird

Saturday (Susie had half a day left in Barcelona) we met up with Albert in the morning and he took us to a different part of the city so we could get another view and also see the Olympic Stadium from 1992, a Joan Miro Museum, and the Plaza de Espana. We took the Montjuïc funicular to get the top of the hill. The weather wasn't as good as it had been the day before, but it wasn't bad by any means.
We had a nice walk, were able to see Plaza de Espana in all it's glory with a brand new mall that was made in the old bullring. That was a crazy sight. We then walked around a park and sat for a while near the "Woman and Bird" Statue by Miro.

We got some lunch and then dipped our feet into the Mediterranean, NBD. By the time we were done, it was time to drop Susie off at the airport. Albert was kind enough to give me a ride back to my hostel which was on the other side of town. I slept because I had an early morning flight and was tired from all the walking we did. Also, the time was changing the morning I was flying, which made a little nervous that I'd get confused and get to the airport too late. It was silly, there was no reason to worry, but I checked out around 12:15am anyway, the guy working at the hostel told me I'd have plenty of time to have a little adventure in Plaza de Catalyuna before catching the bus. So I took the metro to Plaça de Catalunya and found Nitbus 17-the one that goes to the airport. I was the only person waiting for the bus around 1am. There were so many people walking around and going to various bars and getting food, it was a Saturday night, afterall. The bus driver stopped, got out of the bus and told me he was getting coffee and asked if I wanted some as well. I said, porque no? es una buena hora para tomar cafe. So we went inside the closest restaurant and had some cafe solo. While we were inside he told me in Spanish, It's much better to enjoy the coffee inside rather than getting it to go." I had to agree with him, it was nice to take a break. After coffee, we got on the bus and it was cool to see all the people bustling around the city at night.

The flight was fine, we landed in Sevilla just as the sun was rising. And as I got off the shuttle bus from the airport in Sevilla, I heard someone say my name. A friend of mine in Erasmus from France was saying goodbye to her parents that were just boarding the bus as I was getting off. What a nice surprise. We were riding the same bus back to Badajoz, so we walked and talked to the bus station. Sevilla is a beautiful city and seeing it with the sunrise was amazing. We also saw a few people who were still partying from the night before. 48 hours was not enough time in Barcelona, I hope to go back someday.