Life on the Wrong Side of the Road : Hola Barcelona!

Hola Amigos... or something like that.

I wish I was still soaking up the sun in Barcelona but I am happily back in England preparing for my couple days of class before we are off to our last big adventure!

Spain was by no means on my "must go" list, and would have preferred to go to Greece, but the bank account said differently in the situation which is more important. ;) BUTTT I can happily say I loved Barcelona and would go back in a heart beat so hopefully we meet again Spain!

We arrived late in the evening Wednesday, and made our way to our Hostel via bus and metro, but were completely exhausted from traveling so we called it a night. In true hostel fashion we were in a 12 bed dorm, and met some interesting folks. Anywhere from the true whole hearted backpacker from Australia who has pretty rough looking dreads, looking for the next big thing (he found out while we were there the Swiss alps for a month? you go Andrew!) to the med student from NYC on spring break. Anyways the hostel life is always an interesting one and you because you are living so close you might just get the plague from the girl hacking up a lung in the back of the room (Anne Marie and I do not thank you lass ) but more importantly what did we do other than catch this sickness.

Thursday:

Walked our feet off

Hit up the beach

Went to a cool market

had some traditional meals paella and tapas

Sangria of course

walked up and down Las Ramblas

Had churros con chocolat

Went out for tapas night with our hostel

Friday:

Went to La Sagrada Familia

Met some fellow people from Angola

Went to Parc Guell

Had a burger for lunch

Found the Picasso Museum

Had gelato

Visited Park Cituadella

The Magic Fountain at night

And many more things...

So here it goes.

Who took spanish growing up?

Who remembers the spanish?

Well now that we have that settled we can put my weekend in to context a bit.

Although quite touristy most of the locals we ran into did not speak any english and so I was forced to think back to my spanish days (last semester) which surprisingly came much easier than I thought. By no means am I fluent but I was able to order and ask just about everything we needed to and if I couldn't my friends usually remembered or had an idea. The main issue with the language barrier was the fact that when you take spanish in high school and college you learn the Spanish that is spoke in Mexico and spend very little time learning the Spanish spoke in Spain, and to make matters a little more difficult the dialect is Catalan so there are quite a few words that are different, or said differently. But hey I had no problem ordering my chocolate muffin and coffee with milk for breakfast and thats all that matters! :)

As for how we got around Barcelona, we bought a public transportation pass called the T10 which was valid for 10 trips and that just about worked perfectly. The Bus and Metro systems were quite easy to figure out, which was nice because Barcelona is so big. Also A LOT OF WALKING!

How about meals?

As for meals there are three traditional dishes Paella, Tapas, and Churros con chocolate for dessert! (well they eat them for any and every meal but you know)

Paella a rice based dish with generally seafood or chicken in it. Sounds good right? Well it was, but we w,ere in for a shock when our sea food dish came out with whole sea creatures... heads and all. Us Indiana and Nebraska girls weren't prepared but we managed!

Tapas! My personal favorite! Tapas are appetizer sized dishes that are meant to be ordered and shared as a meal. My favorite were patatas bravas (potatoes with spicy tomato sauce) best potatoes I've ever had.

Churros Con Chocolate! Deep friend dough, which I'm sure many of had the cinnamon sugar version, and served with hot chocolate to dip them in!! The best!

We hit an off week with the weather so it was around 65 all weekend which was still nice for us, just not quite swim suite weather. This resulted in jeans and light weight tops for us and heavy winter coats, thick knitted scarves, and Ugg boots for the locals :)

As for the end of our trip we decided to leave Saturday for the sole reason we could have Sunday for resting and school work. Come to find out it was probably for the best because not only had all of us become sick from the girl in our room, but riots broke out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Demonstrators-riot-Spain.html

Fortunately everyone traveling was fine just a little concerned as to why people were packed in the streets by their hostels with the police trying to keep them under control.

As for other things I'll post pictures, we visited many beautiful parks and areas just to enjoy the scenery.