Gaudi

A couple weekends ago Julie and I made it up to Barcelona.  As some of you may know I’ve been to Barcelona once before with my parents and younger sister, Dinora.  But, our visit last time was very short and did not consist of much site seeing.  We left early Saturday morning for Barcelona because on Friday our program took us to Ronda which ended up being a sub-par trip to a tiny town in southern Spain.  The entire time all I could think about what how I could’ve been in Barcelona if I had known how boring it was going to be.  The tour we went on was long and treacherous.  There’s a huge gorge in the city which is supposed to be the main point of interest, but our tour didn’t bother going down to get a good view of it.  Oh well, such is life.  So Julie and I got to Barcelona before noon and we wanted to drop our stuff off at our friend Jim’s place before we went out into the city.  Of course, me with my wonderful memory and all forgot to write down the directions I got to get to his apartment.  Jim’s phone was off (we later learned it had taken a swim in the Mediterranean the night before and was broken) so I made a few calls and finally got a hold of my friend Todd to get into my facebook for the directions.  After dropping our stuff off we headed out with Jim, our tour guide.  We went down part of Las Ramblas then headed towards the beach.  The marina and beach were gorgeous!  First impression of Barcelona made me wish I had studied there rather than Sevilla.  (don’t get me wrong, I love Sevilla, but Barcelona is amazing!)   

Parc Guell with one of Gaudi's animals

Anyway, we ended up running into some people we had met in Granada a few weekends before and went to Parc Guell with them which is a park in the middle of an unfinished Gaudi housing area.  I loved the park.  Julie and I got a lot of cute pictures around the park and one of the girls we were with pointed out an area that was used for the finale fashion show for America’s Next Top Model!   After seeing the park we headed back to Jim’s to cook dinner and rest a bit.  That night we went to watch the magic fountains (fountain show), but were too late and ended up walking into the old bull-fighting ring (now a mall ever since bull-fighting has been banned in Barcelona).   That night we went out to Razzmatazz, which is supposedly the biggest club in Europe (so I was told…).  It was cool, but all of the room looked identical save the music and it was like a maze trying to get from room to room.  It got to be really annoying trying to find new music!  The next day Julie and I decided to go out alone.  Jim was nice to have along with us, but he was the world worst tour guide! (no offense to the kid) But, he didn’t know what or where anything was, he was more along for the ride.  Basically, mine and Julie’s touring style is much different than his.     

In front of Sagrada Familia

Sunday we set out to see Sagrada Familia, the unfinished church designed by Gaudi.  According to Rick Steve’s it isn’t expected to be completed for another quarter of a century!  We wanted to go in, but when we got there it wasn’t open yet so we set out to see Casa Mila and once we got back they were closing.  Casa Mila is another one of Gaudi’s buildings (this one is finished, haha!)  I loved the house, but I think the highlight of the visit inside was the roof where we finally got to see what Rick Steve’s put on the front of his Spain book.  I got the same picture he did, unfortunately there is a gate in my version and not in his (I’m going to call photoshop on his part).  After Casa Mila we went to go see Casa Batllo though we only saw the outside, yet another work of Gaudi.  After going back to Sagrada Familia and discovering we weren’t going to be able to go in we decided to head back to Las Ramblas and walk the entire street.  We started at Placa de Catalunya and slowly made our way down towards the Columbus Monument.   We stopped in all of the little shops to do some tourist shopping.  The workers were so obnoxious!  I couldn’t pick up one thing without be swarmed by workers trying to make a bargain with me.  One place I found a really cute crescent and picked it up to look at it.  When the guy came up to bargain (or so we thought) we asked how much it was and he told us the price was on the back.  We then tried to bargain with him and he said no, so then I put it back because I wasn’t’ interested in paying the labeled price and he freaked out on us!  We had been talking Spanish to him, but he went off about how you can’t pick up things and not buy them and that we were typical Americans blah, blah.  I just raised my eyebrows and starred at him in utter surprise at how he was talking to us. 

The same picture Rick has on the front of his book!

I was dumbfounded!  All of the other workers may have been annoying, but they weren’t rude.  After he went off on us we just walked out.  I looked in every other store I went in, but couldn’t find another crescent, which was really sad, but there was no way I was going to go back and buy something from that man.  I ended up getting a little Sadraga Familia magnet with the Gaudi pattern of the colorful mosaic art.  We ate dinner in a little plaza a few blocks off of Las Ramblas, which was good.  Once we reached the end of Las Ramblas we roamed around the streets and chatted just killing time.  It was too late to really go see anything, but we didn’t feel like going back to the apartment to sit around.  At one point we were sitting and chatting somewhere on Las Ramblas and this creepy man snuck up behind us (shirt unbuttoned with his belly hanging out) leaned over between us and just starred at us.  Julie noticed first and hit me in the arm.  I turned towards her and saw him and freaked!  We both jumped up and ran off.  When I turned around to make sure he wasn’t following us he was just standing there laughing at us.  He was such a creeper! But thankfully didn’t give us anymore trouble.  We ended up getting a bottle of Cava (apparently a Barcelona drink, but it ended up just being Champagne?) and walking down Rambla de Mar.  Our flight left really early Monday morning because we had to get back for classes on Monday so we took about an hour long nap then headed to the airport.  Over all consensus, I absolutely loved Barcelona.  I wish we had had more time there/I wish we had time to go back, but unfortunately we don’t.  I am glad we decided to go though as it was one of our last minute trips we booked.  Definitely one of my favorite places I’ve been to yet!