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.

mish mosh.

So it's not that I have been remiss in my blogging so much as...these past days have been pretty chill. We have mostly been hanging in the apartment, avoiding the sudden onslaught of cold. Apparently Florence was merely teasing us with the hints of warm weather these past couple of weeks, but more on that later.


Last Thursday, my history class, The Rise and Fall of the House of the Medici, took a little field trip to the Medici Palace. This class is growing on me; I was really frustrated with it at first, but as it has gone on, I'm liking it more and more. We rarely have class in the actual classroom. More often than not, we are getting lectures on historical grounds, which is probably the best part about taking classes in Florence. It is one thing to learn about a historical event or family, but it is quite another to learn about them while standing in their magnificent palace.

Just to give you a little history lesson (and review for the quiz I have on Thursday!), the Medici were a family that actually originated in the hill town of Mugello, just outside of Florence. The patriarch of the family, Giovanni di Bicci, came to the city sometime in the early 15th century when he established the Florentine branch of the bank that would originally became one of the largest and most powerful in not only Italy, but all of Europe. His descendants gained political power through a combination of arranged marriages and the growth of the bank's power. Though never official rulers of the city, it was understood throughout the entire region that they wielded a significant amount of power, and were seen as many by tyrants.





Cosimo the Elder, the son of Giovanni, commissioned the building of this palace in the mid 15th century to the architect Michelozzo. The palace itself is three stories high. The immediate, important family members lived on the first floor (second floor, to Americans) while guests and lesser family members stayed on the second floor (third floor). It is also home to a private chapel on the first floor, where Benozzo Gozzoli, a relatively small-time artist, decorated the walls with a large fresco known as The Procession of the Magi.





The Medici were all well-known sponsors and patrons of the arts, and were close friends with important artists and architects such as Michaelangelo and Brunelleschi, who completed many works for them over time. They also funded small-time artists like Gozzoli and Beati Angelico, who became one of Florence's most important Renaissance artists.

There, now don't you feel educated?

On Sunday, Gillian, Marissa and I decided to attempt to make ribollita, a typical Tuscan soup made with a cabbage and white bean base. We followed a recipe sent to us by Monica, one of the API advisors. We had to improvise a bit because the market is closed on Sundays, and we were restricted to what our local supermarket offers in produce.

Don't we look like real chefs, with all of our pots going at once?

Turns out we aren't much of chefs. Or the recipe was a dud. Either way, the soup was edible, but I wasn't all that impressed. To me, it just needed...MORE. More vegetable and spice variety, more bread, more time to cook, just...yeah. Worry not, however; the ribollita will not defeat us! And if it does, we will just get it at Sergio Gozzi's, our new favorite lunch place. I'm actually going to meet Mary and Bethany there for lunch tomorrow afternoon, and I'm already craving me some soup!

[Subject change] This morning, I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and very seriously started considering skipping class. It is already almost midterms, and I've yet to skip one yet! (Good job, Alaina!) But I hauled my cookies out of bed and went to go make breakfast, knowing that I am likely to want to skip a class again later in the semester, and I only get two absences without penalty. But in the middle of breakfast-fixin', I managed to smash a glass all over the kitchen floor. By the time I got it all swept up (and spent a good 5 minutes trying to dig a shard out of my foot), I was running late...and then I noticed it was snowing! It just seemed like a sign from God that I should skip Italian class this morning.

I reasoned that this was likely the last time it would snow in Florence while I am here, and that I should enjoy it. So I took my sweet time getting ready, watching my new episode of House before grabbing my book and heading to Nabucco to get a cappuccino.

Ahhh, coffee and literature. My favorite combo.

I finished my book, then spent the hour before my second class just walking around. I checked my mail, and received a postcard from ONALEE, who was in Boston a couple of weeks ago. Thanks! I enjoyed the snow during my walk, but I was feeling it less when my writing teacher dragged us out of class to the Piazza della Signoria to "observe" people and be inspired for an in-class exercise. I almost froze to death, so I hurried back to the class as soon as she was out of sight (don't worry! I still managed to observe enough to write a little something).

Also of note, I ripped my jeans today. Not just "Oh, look, a little tear"...I ANNIHLATED them. Apparently there was a little like...pre-made tear in them up by the pocket, you know, to make them look old or something, and when I went to adjust them before I sat down in my writing class.....RRRRRRRIIIIIPPPP! Almost all the way across the top of my leg. Fabulous. So now tomorrow, I really have to go shopping to find a new pair, since I only brought two pairs of jeans wth me.

This weekend, me and the roomz are headed to fair Verona, where we will spend one night in the city of Romeo and Juliet. We booked an adorable little B&B and will catch the train back on Saturday night, in time to attend some sort of gastronomic festival going on here in Firenze all weekend! [Pssst, Gillian, you got plans for this yet?]

Well, this was quite a random post. But that's what's been going on here this week. With midterms coming up, I expect to be doing quite a bit of reading/writing. I'm also working on another piece for my travel writing class, entitled Portrait of a Place. We get to choose any city, place within a city, or country, if we are feeling ambitious and we have to portray it as though it were having its portrait painted (metaphorically, of course). I'm pretty sure I'm going to do London, especially since Florence is off-limits, and Gainesville isn't exactly portrait-worthy (I can imagine it now...."So, um, everything is orange and blue, and our idea of fine dining is Chili's..."). Maybe if you're lucky I'll share my portrait with you when it's done :]

Ciao, bellas!

P.S. If you have any questions or requests for particular subject matter in the blog, PLEASE leave a comment! I'm open to photographing/discussing pretty much anything :]