Hey guys! I’m finally back with another blog post. I haven’t traveled in a while, so it’s been a while since I posted. Last weekend I took another trip, this time to Barcelona. Let me just say – Barcelona is an absolutely beautiful city. Unfortunately, it rained almost all weekend, starting when we arrived on Friday and it didn’t stop until right as we left Monday morning. As a result, we didn’t get to do a whole lot, and I wasn’t able to take pictures most of the weekend. Even still, we made the best of the weekend and I still had a blast! Unfortunately, I was hoping I could use my Spanish knowledge from high school, but we quickly learned that Barcelona is in the Catalonian region and they speak Catalan more so than Spanish. Oh well!
The trip started Friday evening when we arrived. We got dropped off in the city center, Plaça de Catalunya, and instantly fell in love with the city. It actually wasn’t raining quite yet, and the square was packed with people, and surrounding the center were some massive, beautiful buildings and fountains and the like. We had to find our way to pick up the keys to our apartment, which took a while, but eventually found our way. We rented an apartment that was right across from the Sagrada Família, a massive cathedral in the city. It was one of the many buildings in the city designed by the famous architect, Antoni Gaudí, and considered his most famous and impressive work. Construction on the church began in 1882 but just passed the halfway point in 2010. Construction has hit many roadblocks in history, but even the part that is done is impressive. When completed (planned for 2026) it will contain 18 colorful towers of differing heights, symbolizing the 12 apostles, the Virgin Mary, the four evangelists, and finally, Jesus. However, only 8 of the spires are completed as of now. I never got a great picture from my phone of the whole church, so I’ll pull one of google to show you what it looks like.
After finding the apartment and spending a few minutes in shock at the church, we went to dinner at a restaurant right around the corner that served tacos and some of the best guacamole in town (per a Yelp review we read). The review was right, it was probably the best guacamole I’ve had thus far in my life. The traditional Spanish eating times are much later than what we were used to, so it was really weird to observe this. We got to dinner fairly late (by American standards) and the restaurant was empty except for one or two tables, but we had to sit outside as all the places in side were “reserved”. Sure enough, towards the end of our meal, around 21.00 or 22.00 the restaurant was packed full.
The next day, Saturday, was the primary day we had to enjoy the city. We ended up splitting up into two groups, as some people wanted to take a bus tour and some of us didn’t want to pay, instead choosing to explore the city on foot. I was in the latter group with Alex and Tim, and we had an awesome day. We started off by heading towards Park Güell, a famous park/architecture area on a hill in the north of town, also designed by Gaudí. However, we had no clue how to get there, so we ended up wandering around throughout the north area of town. We spent a few hours wandering through other parks, hills, and neighborhoods, before finally finding the park. Although it took us forever to find, we had a blast just walking around and seeing all sorts of sights. The park itself was cool, as it offered a view over the entire city, all the way out to the Mediterranean, although it was rainy and foggy, so the view wasn’t as good as it usually is.
After seeing the park, we wanted to go down to the beach, so we took a long metro ride down there. Unfortunately, it was really windy and rainy at this point, so we stayed there long enough to get a few pictures, and then we had to turn right around again. We headed back to the city center to sit in a Starbucks, relax, and plan out the rest of the evening. After taking a short break, we decided to go to the Picasso museum. The museum itself was really neat, as it is housed inside of multiple medieval palaces. It’s considered the largest collection of Picasso works, and it was really cool to see how his style changed over the years, especially because the museum was free for students!
By the time we finished at the museum, it was past 19.00, so we headed back to the apartment to meet up with the others. We went to a really nice, authentic Catalan cuisine restaurant. The restaurant had very cheap (2.5€ or 3€ for a full bottle) house wines, and we ended up staying for a few hours just chatting and laughing and having fun. The food was amazing as well – the most notable dish was the Paella that Alex and Whitnie got. Paella is very famous in the city and region, and it was extremely yummy as well.
Sunday was more of a relaxing day, as we spent most of the day sitting at our apartment doing homework, chatting, and watching a bit of Sunday football as well. For a few hours in the day, John and Tim and I took a nice walk from our apartment to the city center, and then down the famous street La Rambla, which is full of shops and restaurants and people. We ended up at the sea, and went into Maremàgnum, a mall at Port Vell.
All in all, the weekend wasn’t the best for sightseeing and being in the city, but we still made of the most of our time and explored and had a great time!
The Honorary Austrian 