Barcelona

On Friday the 6th Nick, Bill, and I woke up at around 4 AM and took a taxi to the Gatwick airport for our 7 AM flight. I actually had the flu so I remember very little about the car ride and plane ride because I was sleeping for most of the time. We got into Barcelona and took a bus into the city's most popular street known as La Ramblas. We stayed in a hostel just off La Ramblas called Kabul (which apparently is a "world famous hostel" not sure how they obtained that prestigeous status) When we got there I immediately took a nap. Nick and Bill walked around for a while and woke me up after an hour or so. We went to the Picasso museum which was in a really cool location kind of a hole in the wall really old building. From there we went and ate tappas and then walked around La Ramblas some more. Headed back to our hostel and all took quick naps and then went to dinner that was provided by the hostel. I was still very sick and had no more advil, so I went out to try and buy some which I guess they dont have at the pharmacy's in Spain. I got something which I think was equivalent, but did not work nearly as well as advil. Nick and Bill went out with girls that we knew that go to our school in London and actually happened to be on our flight. I just stayed in and went to bed.

The next morning we got up around 10 and had breakfast at the hostel. From there we went to the famous Sagrada Famila church which quite interesting: the church was actually started to be built in the late 1800s and construction continues to this day. It was designed and started to be built by Gaudi who died halfway through construction. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but construction was halted for financial reasons or wars. It's kind of an odd place, the church looks like a "drip-sand castle" but there are still cranes and construction all around it. Though it is a Catholic church, the inside is not completed and thus has never had mass. It’s a very beautiful sight to see though and the weather being nice made it even better. From the Sagrada Familia, we took a bus to the hills and ended up at a park called Guell Park which provided us with a fantastic view of the whole city and bay. It was probably my favorite part of Barcelona besides the soccer game that we went to later Saturday night. We went back to our hostel after eating and then just played cards for a while. We took the metro to the FC Barcelona stadium and scalped tickets for about 35 Euro for the Barcelona v. Athletico game. The atmosphere around the stadium was very festive, the fans were in to their team and it was exciting. It turns out that the tickets we bought were second row seats right behind the goal- really cool. When the game stared it became clear as to why the seats were so cheap: they were partially blocked by media cameramen, but were still able to see fine. In the second half Barcelona (clearly the better team) shot at the goal closest to us and were able to see three balls hit the post which was very exciting. Barcelona won 2-0 and pretty much dominated the entire game. After the game we went back to our hostel and I went to bed while Nick and Bill went out.

The next morning, we woke up and had to check out of our hostel. Though we were staying one more night, we decided to get a change of atmosphere and switch hostels to one about ten minutes away. We check in to the hostel and walked to the bay side of Barcelona. It was a beautiful day out so we went to the beach for basically the entire day. Nick’s friend Bill flew back to the States at around 5 PM. Nick and I just walked around Barcelona and the bay for a while and went to our hostel. We ended up meeting these crazy drunken Irish kids that were staying at the same hostel as us and we ended up just talking with them pretty much the entire night. Nick attempted to go out with them, but I stayed in and talked with other people that I had met at the hostel. We ended up meeting people from Portugal, Germany, Ireland and America which was exciting to hear about other cultures etc. The next morning we woke up checked out of the hostel and almost missed our flight to Rome.

Hopefully I will have the Rome and Venice blogs out soon