Barcelona

     Sevilla and Barcelona have to be two of the prettiest cities I have ever seen.  Last weekend two friends and I headed up to Barcelona to explore the region of Cataluña.  It was gorgeous.  Very different from Sevilla because the city of Barcelona is very modern, if you will.  Sevilla has a lot of oooooold buildings from like the 800s that you can see all over the place.  Barcelona on the other hand still has old buildings as well but not as many.  They have some buildings from the early days as well, but since the modernism movement started in Barcelona in the 1800s, old buildings were replaced by newer, cooler buildings.  Barcelona reminds me more of a “city” than Sevilla.  I would compare Barcelona as a Chicago and Sevilla as oh I don’t know..New Orleans?  Not that Sevilla got hit by a massive hurricane or anything, but I do see some parallels.  New Orleans and Sevilla are both places rich in culture and tradition, but only at certain times, both in the spring too none the less.  They also attract a lot of tourists to see all their wonderful sights, but have just a small number of people that actually live in the city year round.  Therefore, my pick for Sevilla is New Orleans.  Hopefully no hurricane will come to Sevilla now that I said that..Anyways, Barcelona and Sevilla are both beautiful cities with very different vibes.  :)

     Our adventure begins on a Thursday afternoon.. My friend Cindy and I took the bus to the Sevilla airport and waited for our Ryan Air flight to begin.  We pass thorough security no problem and go to our gate.  We get to the gate and find out our plane has been delayed a little bit.  (Typical in Europe I’ve noticed, especially in Spain.  Nothing’s on time, even me..not that I was ever good at making it places on time, but I fear leaving here has just worsened my sense of time and distance.)  It was actually a good thing our plane was delayed a little because our friend Maria still hadn’t made it to the airport yet!  She had had some issues with her ticket and had to try and get it reprinted at the airport.  Finally we see Maria in the distance and breathe a sigh of relief.  We all made it.  Awesome!  Now all we have to do is wait for the delayed plane.  The gate next to us finished boarding and then we see the flight attendants…assistants? helpers?  I have no idea what you call the front desk people…anyways, we see them switch over to our side and begin the boarding process.  So much for a late plane.  The helper/assistant/attendant people took their sweet time with one plane and to make it seem like it wasn’t their fault they just decided to say the plane was delayed.  Nice.  Not really complaining because it was only about a 40 minute delay and it was a good delay as well otherwise Maria wouldn’t have made it.  Now the boarding process…

     Now as we all know, or at least frequent European fliers do :) , Ryan Air is VERY picky about the carryon luggage.  You get one piece of luggage and that’s it.  No purse, no jacket in your hand, no small little plastic bag with food…nope.  ONE.  And it has to fit in this little box that they use to measure the size of your luggage.  I know most airlines have carryon sizes, but they never actually check.  Not Ryan Air!  If it doesn’t fir it doesn’t fly.  Or you check it for like 40 euros…that’s like 55 dollars!  I think…..I had just a travel backpack, but when I saw that size of the box, I’m not gonna lie, I got a little worried.  That thing wouldn’t fit most carryons!!  They do allow you to shove and squish your bag in there if need be, so that’s nice.  At least they give you a small loop hole.  :)  Luckily all ours fit and we were able to board no problem.  No squishing needed.

     We finally arrive in Barcelona around 10:30 at night and now it’s off to find the hostel.  The directions had us take a train, to a metro, and then walk from the metro station to the hostel.  Simple…except we have no idea where this train is.  We ask around and finally find the station next to the airport.  We missed the 11 o’clock train by just a little so we had to wait for the 11:30.  We hop on the 11:30 and depart from the airport.  While on the train we over here some people talking about how the metro ends at midnight.  Say what?  Come again?  Now we don’t know how far this stop is on the train to the metro that we NEED to catch, but the little time that we have seems to be slipping through our fingers faster than the train is moving. 

Finally at like 11:50 we get to our stop and run to the metro stop.  Of course we get to the stop and have to buy a ticket, but none of the machines are on.  Cool?  We go to the entrance gate to see maybe if there is a way we can get through.  At this point we are all ready to hop over a gate, barrier, and or run from cops if need be.  Maybe not that desperate, but this metro is fricken important!  As we frantically look for anyway in we suddenly notice that the exit door is wide open.  A little help from above maybe?  (Thanks guys, you know who you are.  :)  Miss you!  Wish you could be here on this adventure with me.)  Anyways, we take this rare opportunity to rip off Barcelona’s transportation system and run through the exit doors.  We here the metro coming and sprint down what seems like an endless flight of stairs, drop a suitcase down the endless flight of stairs, and then climb aboard the metro at last.  Free ride on the metro.  :)  Doesn’t get better than that. 

     We get off the metro, walk around for a little bit looking for this hostel and finally find it after some circles and back tracks.  We check in and then went to sleep ready to start the next day early at 9 AM.  We ate breakfast in the hostel and head out around 10 to take some pictures and then a Gaudí walking tour at 11.  The walking tour was really good!!  I have discovered yet another Spanish artist who I have just fallen in love with.  Se llama, Antoni Gaudí.  Best architect I think I have ever encountered.  Usually I don’t pay attention to buildings, but these were just simply amazing pieces of artwork.  The shapes and way he played with angles is amazing.  Some say he was crazy, and he just might have been after learning about his whole life while on the tour, but I say genius.  No one can ever recreate the things he built and the way he looked at everything so differently was really inspiring.  Perhaps not everything has to be exactly what it seems.  He gives me hope.  :)  My favorite building was the Casa Batlló.  It’s a house with an amazing design.  GO LOOK AT THE PHOTOS!  Lol  Facebook does wonders.  :)  Some say it’s the representation of Mardi Gras with masks and confetti, while others say it’s the story of St. George.  The scales on top represent the dragon, balconies are the bones of its victims, and the chimney with the cross represents the sword St.  George used to kill the dragon.  Obviously I vote for the latter story.  We also saw a church that he designed back in the olden days.  La Sagrada Familia, AND IT’S STILL NOT DONE!!! THEY ARE STILL BUILDING IT!!  40 years is the estimated finish date.  18 million euros a year too.  DAMN.  Might just have to come back to Barcelona in 40 years.  :)

     We then visited a park also designed by Guadí.  So pretty.  Obviously, Gaudí designed it!  After walking around all day we went out to get dinner, and then back to the hostel to change and explore Barcelona at night.  We were about to go out when our other roommates came back.  They were from Serbia.  We ended up talking to them the whole night and didn’t make it out of the room.  They were absolutely hilarious.  Good memories.  :)  We talked from 11 PM until 7AM.  The only reason we stopped talking was because they had to leave for the airport to catch their plane back to Serbia!  But before they left they gave us gifts from Serbia.  Shirts to be exact.  Now don’t worry, no one stripped, they just gave us shirts from Serbia to remember our Barcelona trip.  I got a soccer shirt and Cindy got a Serbian Air force shirt.  We have shirts from Serbia now and we didn’t even have to go there to get them.  :)

     After they left, Cindy and I looked at each other and then the ever passing minutes on our clocks.  Well looks like a 2 hour nap and then gotta get up again for the second walking tour!  SWEET.  So needless to say after only 2 hours of sleep, we were zombies in the morning, but we made it to the second walking tour!  And to be honest I wasn’t very tired in the morning or at least not yet.  This time we went on the old gothic neighborhood tour.  Also a very impressive tour!  Saw old buildings from the Romans and other amazing sites that cannot be described in 100908 words.  The two coolest things that I saw there were the ancient Roman entrance way into Barcelona and the exact sight of where the Spanish Inquisition started (if you don’t know what that is go look it up, that’s what Google is for.  Too complicated to explain in this lil bloggy).

     Next we headed off the ocean to stick our feet in the Mediterranean Sea.  Not many people can say that they’ve done that. :)  I feel special.  :)  Mind you now we are all going off of like 2 hours of sleep here.  Now it’s like 6:30 at night.  As we were walking towards the beach I did something I don’t think I’ve ever done in my life…I don’t know if I’ll ever do it again either…ready??  I fell asleep while walking.  No joke.  As we were walking my head kept doing that bobbing thing that everyone does when they just CAN’T stay up anymore.  I closed my eyes for what seemed like just a second and when I opened them back up again I was like 100 feet away then where I remember being.  How I didn’t run into anything or walk off the sidewalk into a bus I’ll never know, but it was definitely an experience.  It gave us a good laugh too when I finally figured out what the hell had just happened.  We finally make it to the beach and guess what, IT WAS FRICKEN COLD!!!!  My feet were frozen for an hour after that.  After some time on the beach, we make our way back to the hostel, and stop for Chinese food on the way.  Yuuummm…It was a nice change from Spanish food. Lol  

     We get ready in the hostel to go out for a night on the town.  Since we missed that opportunity last night, we had to go out Saturday.  Still running on only two hours of sleep and what seems like adrenaline, we head out with some people from the hostel.  We had a great time and got to see Barcelona’s night life.  At about 3:30 AM we decide we should start to head back to the hostel to grab our bags for our flight at 7:00 AM.  4 hours away.  Yeeeeppp…we get out things leave, get a cab, and take off for the airport.

     We arrive around 5:30 or so to the airport and go to check in.  It’s then that I realize that I don’t have my boarding pass…somehow during the cab ride, the boarding pass fell out of my bag and I didn’t realize it.  Thinking it can’t cost that much to print a boarding pass I go up to the Ryan Air counter and ask what the charge is to print a new one.  40 euros the man tells me.  40 FRICKEN EUROS!!  HELL NO!!  I’ll just pay the cabby a tip to come back and give me my pass back.  SO we call the hostel, to call the cab, to come back to the airport with my lovely pass.  I wait about 20 minutes and then finally retrieve my MIA pass.  I tip the driver for being so nice and then walk into the airport.  We get to our gate again, and sit in the line forming for the plane ride.  It’s a bit like southwest airlines.  First come first serve seat basis.  After being up for almost 47 hours, I once again begin to dose.  This time I’m sitting however, and take a nap on the floor of the Barcelona airport with my bag as a pillow.  Cindy and Maria do the same till it’s time to board. 

     I don’t even remember taking off.  I was so tired; I sat down, and passed out.  I remember landing just not take off.  I was out cold.  We get to Sevilla around 10 and start the bus ride and walk back home.  Overall such a fun weekend.  I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

     Barcelona was a really cool city and I’m glad I got to see it.  Hopefully I will get to see it again sometime in the near future.  Don’t worry Spain…I’m definitely comin back.  :)