barcelona!

Well, hello! Long time no....write? My internet is finally cooperating, so I can update you on the latest adventures of the ladies of The Palace!

I actually went to Barcelona 3 years ago when I did my mini-study abroad program the summer I graduated. We only got to spend about 36 hours in the city total, so it was a definite must for me to return.

We departed Thursday night at 8:20 PM from Pisa, headed for the Girona Airport. After landing, we took a bus into the city of Barcelona, where we had relatively little trouble finding our enormous hostel. It as a decent place to stay; definitely what I think of as a typical hostel, meaning less customer service, tiny rooms, and crappy food. Either way, we didn't see any bugs or mold or creepsters, so we were satisfied.

Entirely exhausted upon arrivel on Thursday night, we pretty much showered (with no hot water!) and collapsed into bed. We took advantage of a full night's rest by getting up fairly early on Friday morning to cover all of the basic touristy sights of Barcelona. Gillian's roommate from home, Monica, is studying there this semester, and graciously agreed to play tour guide for us.

We met her in the Plaza Catalunya before walking to...

La Rambla, a street famous for its street performers and beautiful shade-providing trees. We meandered down this way, where I encountered Starbucks, which I hadn't seen since London. Of course, we were obligated to stop quickly for an iced coffee.

There were also a lot of stands selling birds and other random pets on La Rambla...in this case, turtles! From Florida! I'm not going to lie, spending a weekend in Spain did a number on my Italian. I kept speaking a mixture of the two languages that my roommate dubbed "Spatalian" and since we have been back, I keep saying "Gracias!" instead of "Grazie!" *facepalm* I was surprised, though, how much Spanish I have retained after not speaking it for almost 2 years.

Me and the roommates on La Rambla.
Also on La Rambla is Barcelona's funnest food market, La Boqueria!

While I will always have a special place in my heart for il mercato centrale, I was definitely impresssed with the variety and COLOR in La Boqueria.

I didn't get many good shots, though. The lighting in there was pretty bad, and no matter how much I adjusted the settings on my camera, the pictures kept coming out too yellow or too light or blurry. Baahhh.

The tour continued through Plaza Real...

Tell me that does not remind you of Florida.

The letters spelled out "Barcelona" but there was construction blocking us from getting a really good angle on them :/ I made them try, though.

Barcelona is full of buildings and art made by Antoni Gaudi, including this church, La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi was a Catalan artist known for his unique designs and modern flair as well as his intense religious devotion. This church is STILL undergoing construction, and has remained unfinished since 1882. Nuts.

We found a little place by the harbor to eat lunch and enjoy our first pitcher of sangria...

Later in the afternoon, we headed to another Gaudi landmark, Park Guell. Gillian's roommate was telling us that originally, Gaudi had planned to make it a large neighborhood full of large and luxurious modern homes, but after the completion of his own, he decided to make it into a park, instead.

The view of the city was obscured a bit by fog, but it was still pretty awesome.

The whole thing is a giant mosiac made out of recycled materials, like coffee cups and scrap metal. A pretty awesome concept, in my opinion.

This building actually served as the guardhouse when Gaudi lived in his house in the Park. Now it's a shop.

I bought some earrings (!!) at the park, but LOST THEM that same night when we went out :[ Very sad day. Good thing they were only like 4 euro.

We went back to the hostel to rest for a bit before meeting up with Monica again at the Plaza Espanya to see a fountain show. They normally play classical music and the fountain's water spurts change shape and color to kind of match the music; when we went, however, it was an 80's theme, which we all thoroughly enjoyed singing along to (as did the rest of the crowd!)

[I also took a video of this which I will upload later; right now, YouTube is not being helpful.]

We at dinner that night at a restaurant close to the water, which someone on Monica's program had recommended as being cheap, but having decent paella. Four of us ordered the fisherman's paella, while Marissa (vegetarian) abstained. I thought the paella was good; not mind blowing, but good.

We didn't finish dinner until past 11 PM; the Spaniards eat even later than the Italians, which I didn't actually think was possible. After dinner, we went out to a large bar, which I don't know the name of. It was HUGE, reminding me of a warehouse with long cafeteria tables inside. The pitchers of sangria were only 5 euro, so we had...a few.

After the bar, we hit up Razzmatazz, which is Barcelona's largest club. It has five large rooms, which are often separated so that they are almost like five separate clubs, each with its own theme. On it's busiest nights, there can be over 5,000 people in there. Whoa.

We had a good time dancing and drinking and didn't end up going home until after 5 AM, so sleeping in the next morning was definitely necessary. We mostly spent the day lounging around, before going to lunch, where we spent more than two hours. Waiters in Europe are WAY different than in America. You practically have to tackle them to flag them down and get them to bring you a check. Repeat process to get change for your payment.

Us in the Plaza Catalunya on Saturday night.

We wanted to try another traditional Spanish dinner that night: tapas! To do a tapas style dinner, usually a group of people will each order between two and four small plates of food, and then the table generally shares, eating off each other's plates. It's kind of the Spanish version of aperitivo: a lighter dinner in which you sample multiple dishes. The place that Monica wanted to take us ended up being closed because Saturday was some sort of holiday, so we went to a place down the street. I enjoyed the tapas experience, but the food there was definitely not high quality.

Again, dinner wasn't over until around 10:30 PM, so we headed back to Monica's to touch up our makeup before heading out to the clubs again.

Our first stop was Ryan's Pub, which is one of Monica's favorite little hole-in-the-wall bars. We had a drink there, and just sat talking and watching rugby for awhile before we went to Chupito.

Chupito is a shot bar, known for it's crazy drinks. That is a list of all of the shots that they have, each with it's own crazy name like "vaca loca" ("mad cow"). Many of them were named after people, other foods, movies, characters, etc. and each one was only 2 euro! We had an amazing time here.

That's a picture of our "boy scout" shots. We each got a marshmallow on a stick, then the lit the bar on fire so that we could roast them. After roasting, we ate the marshmallow and washed it down with the shot. So fun!

Next up was the "Harry Potter" shot. They topped each shot with an orange which was covered in sugar and a bit of alcohol, so that they would light up. Then, once they were aflame, the bartender peppered them with cinnamon to make sparkles. Like magic! Ooooh.

Then we ordered this giant drink to share...

It was as big as my head!

We also did a "Florencia" shot in honor of Florence, a "Finding Nemo" shot in which you have to dig through whipped cream to find an M&M before you can take it, and Sam and I each did a "Willy Wonka" which was just chocolate alcohol with whipped cream. Yummmm.

After Chupito, we went to Apolo, another one of Barcelona's big clubs. It was pretty empty when we arrived, but we waited around and by 3 AM it had filled up. I was pretty bored by 4:30 AM or so, so when I couldn't find my friends, I just took the metro back to the hostel and passed out. Apparently the others didn't get back until past 6 AM! Nuts.

We had to get up early to check out on Sunday morning, so we headed to Starbucks on La Rambla to caffeinate and grab some breakfast.

La Torre Agbar. An...interesting building.

We had been talking about going to the beach all weekend, so when Sunday dawned sunny and warm, we decided to take advantage.

Me and Gillian on the bus on the way to the beach...

It was a little windy down by the water, but it warmed up a lot after about an hour.

In the meantime, Gillian taught us some yoga poses...

And we searched for sea glass and little ceramic tiles...

Me standing in the Mediterranean! Whoopsie, missed a button there.

After a couple of hours, we decided to get a late lunch. We searched for awhile but had a difficult time finding a restaurant, so we eventually just settled for the first one that looked decent. Again, the food wasn't the best quality, but when you're eating on the beach in Barcelona, it's hard to feel sad about that.

I'll spare you the long and painful story of our return home and just say that we finally rolled into Florence around 2:30 AM on Monday morning, our pockets lighter, our skin tanner, and our experience here in Europe richer. I personally think that this was my favorite weekend trip so far. There is just something about Barcelona that gets me every time; I felt it even three years ago when I was only there for a day and a half, knowing that I absolutely had to return. If you're ever in Spain, I definitely recommend it.

going retro: thursday top ten refigured.

I don't actually know if it's entirely possible to "go retro" on a blog that is less than three months old, but we're going to pretend that it is. In the spirit of going retro, I'm bringing back Thursday Top Ten in a whole new way...

Ten European Cities Have I Loved

We're going to look back at all the traveling I have done thus far in the semester, and then look ahead at what is still to come....ooooooh.

[These are in no particular order. Except maybe the order that they are stored in my Pictures folder.]

1. Verona. My roommates and I set off on a slightly impetuous overnight journey to the home of Shakespeare's starcrossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. We had an excellent dinner at a kitschy restaurant called Al Bracere before spending most of the next day walking around, eating crepes and gelato, before deciding we'd seen enough and heading home.

Verdict: The city itself is cute enough, and way more...developed than I had been expecting. I really enjoyed the sights of the city, including the above-pictured Roman amphitheater, Juliet's house, and the Piazza delle Erbe, where we of course stopped to sample some fruit from the local market, but I felt like the city itself was too small to warrant any long amount of time being spent there.

2. Roma! API took us to Rome the last weekend in February, where we spent 3 days touring ancient Roman ruins, drinking espresso, sampling the local cuisine, and 1 memorable night drinking at a bar appropriately named...Sloppy Sam's. How perfect.

Verdict: I liked Rome more than I thought I would. It was way more urban than I expected, but somehow still less dirty and toursity than I'd been led to believe. It did, however, solidify my certainty that studying in Florence was the right choice for me.

3. Amsterdam. I actually just blogged about this a few days ago, so I don't think you need much of a recap here. I mostly spent my days wandering the city and eating Vlamese french fries (no mayo, thanks), while trying to avoid being hit by bicycles. Oh, and I also ran into my childhood friend who I hadn't seen for probably 7 years here.

Verdict: I would love to go back to Amsterdam with some of my closer friends to hit all the sights that I missed the first time around. While the city is gorgeous, I don't think I met more than five legitimate Dutch people the whole time I was there. That's how touristy it is.


4. Bologna. Another recent adventure to the city historically known as Italy as la grassa, which literally means "The Fat." I think you can draw your own conclusions about the typical cuisine of Bologna from that nickname. I spent one day in one of Italy's gastronomic capitals, hopping from restaurant to restaurant, waiting to be wowed.



Verdict: I was a bit underwhelmed by Bologna, to be quite honest. I expected...more somehow, in all areas. More history. More cool buildings. More good food. I think that if we had asked API for some restaurant recommendations we might have done a little better. And a tour guide. That would have been nice.



5. Belfast. [Hey, these are kind of almost alphabetic!] The second stop in my spring break was Northern Ireland's teensy little capital city, where I enjoyed a homemade Irish breakfast and pints at what seemed like every pub in the city with my dear friend, Jenny (pictured above).



Verdict: The smaller-town feel of Belfast was exactly what I needed after a hectic three days in Dublin, but I definitely think that 2 days is all that you need for this city. If I'd stayed any longer, I might have gotten bored.



6. London! I spent three days with one of my best friends from high school, Jessica, while she showed me all of the things I missed on my first touristy whirlwind visit to the city last spring. We drank a ton of coffee, ate lots of cookies, met an army of swans, and then suffered the consequences of one pint too many in Kingston.



Verdict: This was the best part of my spring break. I think I could travel to London a million times and never be bored, and not just because the company is fantastic. There is just something about that cold, drizzly city that gets me every time. And after discovering both Ben's Cookies and Borough Market this past visit, it's a sure bet that I'll return eventually. Or at least have Jess ship me some cookies.


7. Innsbruck. Mary and I took an overnight train to this quaint Austrian town in early March, where we experienced some um...Austrian hospitality along with a lot of museum tours, thanks to the snow, which kept us mostly indoors.



Verdict: I loved this little town! The views of the Alps were absolutely stunning, and I found most of the museums to be incredibly interesting. Of course, being Floridian, I was impressed by the snow at first, but later regretted ever celebrating its presence.

8. Dublin. My spring break started with 3 crazy days in the Irish capital and let me tell you, they do not share the Italian stance on drinking. It is accepted, promoted, and expected that people will get drunk. At 5 PM. Every day of the week.

Verdict: I definitely didn't get to see as much of the cultural aspect of the city that I liked. This was probably due to the people who I was traveling with who had...shall we say...different interests and expectations of our trip. Nevertheless, I drank enough Guiness to make an Irishman proud, and enough Irish car bombs to make the politically correct blush.

9. Venice. Another API sponsored excursion. We were all thrilled for this trip, which took place during the famous Carnevale. However, upon arrival, it immediately became clear that partying in Venice for Carnevale is much better in theory than in actual practice. All of that quiet melancholy, the beautiful canals, the fantastic culture...it all disappeared in one giant, glittery and insanity-inducing weekend.

Verdict: The food was underwhelming (and horribly overpriced). To say that the streets were crowded would be a criminal understatement. We didn't get enough time in either Murano or Burano. Honestly, this weekend was kind of a disaster, saved only by the quiet Sunday afternoon I spent searching out espresso and gelato with my roommates, when we finally managed to escape the mad crowd.

10. San Gimignano. This quaint Tuscan town is situated south of Florence, in the hills associated with some of Italy's finest and most popular wines. We went for an afternoon of fun and to enjoy the medeival scenery, but mostly because we had heard that the world championship gelateria was located there...and we couldn't resist.

Verdict: The fact that the gelateria we specifically went for definitely put a dent in my assessment of this city. However, it was redeemed by some delicious and cheap wine, handpainted goods, and fabulous scenery. San Gimignano, we will be back for that gelato. Just you wait.

It's kind of nuts that we have only been to 10 cities so far (well, plus Pisa, but that hardly counts). Of course, it seems like this next month and a half is more travel-heavy than the previous two have been. Before May 25, I will be travelling to:

Lucca

Cinque Terre

Perugia

Siena

Livorno

Barcelona

Viareggio

Rome (again)

Pompei

The Amalfi Coast

And, as of today, Alicante (Spain)

Holy crap. This means that by the time I have left Europe, I will have been to at least 23 different cities in 6 different countries. I'd say my life is pretty freakin' awesome.

The Lucca trip is actually scheduled to take place this Saturday! The city iself is located only about an hour from Florence. We will travel there with API for an olive oil tasting (yummy) before being set free to explore the city ourselves for awhile. When we return, we will actually be heading almost straight to the Fiorentina soccer game. The next morning, two of my roommates and I will be going to Cinque Terre for the day with a local student travel agency called Florence for Fun. Cinque Terre is largely recognized as one of the most beautiful places in Italy (if not on Earth). It is a series of 5 towns, situated on what I believe are a few separate islands, and we will be hiking through all of time. Wish us luck.