Barcelona!

After our amazing trip to Palma, we made our way to our final destination, Barcelona. From the time we got off the plane, I got the feeling that Barcelona was a lot different than the other places we had been. For one, it was crowded. Everywhere. Once we got off of the bus from the airport, we were immediately thrust into the middle of a crowd of tourists. We made our way down Las Ramblas, the main avenue of the touristy part of town and eventually got to our hostel, the lovely Kabul.

Kabul was a bit different than the other hotels we stayed at during our trip. Kabul resembled a bar more than a hostel (their lobby looked more like a night club then a reception desk). Once we dropped our bags off, we met up with some of the other Dartmouth people and got some food.

Barcelona is the 6th biggest city in Europe and is the capital of the Catalonia, an autonomous state in Spain. Here they speak Spanish and Catalan, which (like Brussels) made reading a map and getting around pretty difficult. But after a couple days we got the hang of the city. Our hostel was in the middle of the Old City, which gave us access to many of the best monuments in the city.

Las Ramblas

After getting food at an amazing little bistro, our first stop was the Cathedral, which was beautiful but not as cool as the one in Palma (to me at least). From the Cathedral, we made our way to the Pablo Picasso museum, which he himself had sponsored in honor of his long time friend and assistant. While the museum didnt have any of his really famous works, we got a good look at a lot of his lesser we walked down Las Ramblas to the Jardines de la Ciudadela, which is a huge park fit with a zoo, an aquarium and lots of palm trees. Along with some beautiful t-shirt weather, Barcelona couldn't get any better.

A painting from Picasso's Blue Period

After we left the park, we made our way to the beach, which like everything else, was beautiful.

Once we had our fill of the beach, we walked around a little bit more and saw a couple more monuments, including the Christopher Columbus monument (which we found out was supposed to be pointing west, towards the Americas, but had been built wrong and actually pointed South. Fitting seeing as how Columbus' sense of direction was completely off).

Columbus!

With a days walking under our belt, we decided to get some food at a restaurant one of our Dartmouth friends had looked up. After waiting in a really long line for about 30 minutes, we finally made it in and had the best meal we had had in a while. Spanish food, aside from the extremely small portions (tapas is essentially getting a babies portion of food) is amazing. The paella we had at this restaurant was amazing and was well worth the long wait.

Paella!

Once we finished our meal, we walked around and looked for a bar. Barcelona is full of these long, endless alleys that eventually connect to the main avenues. In these lovely, but sometimes sketchy alleys, there are tons of guys trying to sell you cans of beer and other, more illegal things. Its a bit unsettling at first how open and forward they are with you but after a while you learn to wade through the crowds of these street salesmen. After hanging out at a small bar for a while, we met up with Joe (who had just gotten off a flight from Dublin) and went to a couple more bars before heading back to the hostel and getting to bed.

One of the small alleys

The second day, we saw a couple more monuments, including the Sagrada Familia and a gorgeous fountain built by Gaudi, a Spanish artist whose architecture is all over the city (and who died by getting run over by a tram. ouch).

For dinner, we got mexican food, which like everything else, was amazing (although Henry's daiquiri was full of rind). Henry, Joe and I decided that because our flight was so early (and because they only had room for one of us at the hostel), it would be better to just stay up the whole night and then get to the airport around 6 am. This proved to be a lot harder than we had planned. By about 4 am, we got really tired and by the time we got to the airport, we were struggling to stay awake. Somewhere along the way, it became my job to make sure we didn't all just fall asleep and miss our bus or plane. I accomplished this mission with a little loud techno bumped up to 100% volume. Once we got on the plane, I was able to give my ears a break, but it didn't do much because after another Ryanair flight, I couldn't hear out of one of my ears.

The ending to Barcelona was fitting. It was kind of like sprinting at the end of a marathon. We made it to 3 countries, 4 cities and somehow made it without missing a flight, getting pick pocketed or having any other awful thing happen to us. Overall, it was a pretty amazing trip. It was the kinda trip I hope i'll remember in 20 years. But as amazing as our trip was, it felt good to get back to Glasgow, and back to my small, but comfortable bed.

Overall Rating

4/5

Pros:

- Great Food

- Beautiful Monuments

- Amazing food

Cons:

- Expensive

- Transit system is not very good