barcellona

4/12-8/12
It’s our last international trip (excluding the flight home). Sad, but we got a big group of like 15 to go to Barcelona and celebrate Caitlin’s 22nd! Monday was also a holiday in Italy (Immaculate Conception) so we had a whole extra day in Spain. We had an evening flight out of Rome on Thursday to Barcelona and got into the hostel around 11. The other part of our group had taken an earlier flight and was out getting dinner and going to some stock market themed bar called Dow Jones. Caitlin and I decided to go to bed since we knew we’d have an early start, but we really didn’t go to bed all that early since we were trying to plan things. As soon as we go to bed, the rest of the group comes in. Also in our room is an Italian (of course) who studies in England but was studying abroad in Spain. Got all that? The next morning we tried to start out early, got up for breakfast, but ended up leaving later than planned, such is the fate of trying to organize everything in such a large group. So we ended up just breaking up and doing what we do best - walking. We had a general idea of things we wanted to see and had some advice and a marked up map from guy who worked at the hostel. We decided to go see some castle on the top of the hill by the water. Well it was quite a walk just to get to the hill, and then quite the walk up. Our hostel was located on the Passeig de Gracias, a huge street in downtown Barcelona and on the way we got to see both Casa Mila and Casa Batllo, two of Gaudi’s most famous works. Then we stopped at Starbucks! Hey, we needed the caffeine, and it was Caitlin’s birthday after all. We also walked by the university, and through it I guess, it was pretty awesome! Of course we stopped at the random church, little market, and grocery store for the essential bag of Doritos. Luckily we also had some free Vive soy Bars that the hostel was practically shoving down our throats (they were expiring soon) to nourish us, not! Those things were gross, and the only one who could stand them was Peter. To make out uphill journey more eventful, Tracey decided to grab a shovel she found by the side of the road, probably belonging to the workers who were just up the street. She walked right by them, though, and they didn’t care. We finally made it to the top, with awesome views of Barcelona, however the castle was even higher. It seemed easy enough; we’d just have to keep walking up. Well we finally made it to a road, and found a funicular and a teleferic (like a little enclosed car on a cable in the air) and thought that the funicular went up so we paid and went in. Well we got there and found that it actually only went down the mountain, but we had paid to ride, so we rode it down and then back up, leading to some American on it to ask us why we didn’t get off and then having to explain the situation. So we’re back at where we started and we start walking up, not wanting to pay more to take the teleferic. We turn randomly thinking it’s going to be the right direction, but end up in some weird garden that clearly belongs to someone. There’s no way out but to turn around and we had already walked so far, so we climbed up and over the wall and jumped off it, right onto a street (I wonder what the people in the cars thought). Finally we make it up to the castle and walk around that. There are great views there too, and you can go up to the top of the castle (basically you can climb forever in Barcelona). On the way back down we stop at some famous statue where we find, of course, a bus load of Italian tourists (we can’t get away from them)! Also we find a park with super fun (and steep/dangerous for children) slides and swings, and continue down the path to find a Home-Alone-style zip line! So of course we stop and spend some time there, Peter find a cell phone in the dirt and answers calls in Spanish/English (but not Catalan) and somehow manages to tell the owner where we are to have her come and get it. We walk back through little streets decorated for Christmas and get waffles with chocolate even though Peter called us fat for eating them. Back at the hostel we try to find a place for dinner and a place to go out to celebrate Caitlin’s birthday that day. It so late by the time we end up leaving that we just end up going like across the street. All the food was good though, paella, patates braves, sangria! Except for the salad covered in mayonnaise (apparently popular). From there we go back to the hostel for directions to the club. Nothing is ever quick with 15-20 people though and it takes us forever to leave again. Not to mention that somehow we got split up before we made it to the metro and lost half the group. Then we had to go back to the hostel for directions (with our new Canadian friends we met in metro also going to the same place) even after we’d already paid to get in the metro. Finally we find out where to go and set out. We’re going to some big club called Razzmatazz which is like 5 levels and each one is like its own mini-club with different music and everything. After we get out of the metro we follow the hoards of people who are definitely too young to be clubbing or even up that late (clubs in Barcelona don’t even open until 1 am) and had to doge people on the streets selling any and everything “beer, coke, hash, chocolate?”. Once we got into Razzmatazz I had no idea how we ended up finding the rest of the group, because the club was like insane chaos. There were so many people so many different rooms that it was so easy to loose people. Every room was so packed it was practically like a mosh pit and smoking was allowed indoors so it was a hazy nightmare where you almost couldn’t breath. We did end up loosing some people in a jam packed techno room (where people shove you on purpose) but somehow found almost everyone when we decided to leave around 5. that’s when the metro reopened and we took it back to our hostel, arriving around 5:45 and going right to sleep, even though we all smelled like an ashtray and were covered in who knew what (one girl, who wore sandals to the club, was on the metro and her feet were black). A couple of us wanted to go on the Gaudi walking tour offered by the hostel in the morning so we got up 3 hours later, at 8:45 for that 4 hour tour with our cute German tour guide. We got to see a couple of things we had already walked by, and then saw Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral that is always under construction. We ended at Park Guell with the world’s largest park bench (also in one of my favorite movies, L’Auberge Espagnole). So much of Barcelona is influenced by Gaudi and all the architecture is so cool! After the tour we made our way back to the hostel and went to the big department store El Corte Ingles. It was huge! We went into a crazy huge H&M built inside what used to be an old church, as well. Then we went to an Irish pub some of our group had found the day before for dinner. It was cool because everyone there spoke English and we had really good food and cheap drinks. On the last day we metro-ed to the beach and the big market (which ended up being closed) but we ended up walking down cute streets and into some pretty cool cathedrals and then went by the Picasso museum since it was free (luckily, it wouldn’t have been worth the entrance fee). We went back the hostel since we had done everything we had planned on that day and ended up crashing on these huge awesome bean bag chairs in the common room of the hostel watching the only thing on TV in English we could find, some really crappy Dustin Hoffman movie. It was nice to veg though, we were so tired. Then we all went out for dinner by the beach at this really cool crepe place and walked along the beach. We skipped going to the traveling bar because we were getting up at 4 for our flight the next morning. Still we got back to the hostel late and then packed and went to bed around 1. Even though we were on different flights from different airports we all had to leave at the same time and we left around 4:30 to get a bus to the airport to get our flight to Rome. At FCO we had just missed the train to Viterbo and had to wait awhile for the next one. There weren’t many, probably because it was a holiday. Our train also only went to Porta Romana, so we had to walk home from there. Everyone else on the other flight was on the same train, though, and even though we got into Viterbo at 12:45, it felt like it had already been an entire day!