WELL incase you guys haven't already heard, I went to Barcelona this weekend, and most definitely experienced way more than I wanted. We experienced the best and the worst of Barcelona in 3 days.
So where do I begin? Let's start with getting ready to leave for the bus on Wednesday night. Well about an hour before we had to leave, I still hadn't packed yet, and Abby hadn't even gotten ready a little. All of the sudden I hear her go "Oh shit!!" She thought she had like 2 hours to get ready, not one hahah I've never seen anyone do so many things in one hour! I ended up making her sandwiches because she had no time to spare. Anyways we rushed to the train station and were still there about a half hour early because you can get on the bus a half hour before.. Yup, the bus ride was long... 8 hours long.. There were a bunch of people from Michigan State on our bus, there was about as many of them as there were of us, and there were probably close to 20 of us!
Finally at like 7:30 in the morning we got to Barcelonaaaaa!!! Since it was really early we decided to just stop at a cafe and get some food to try to kill a little bit of time before we headed to try to check into the hostel. So after a delicious pastry and orange juice, we walked to the hostel. Since it was like 8:30-9 in the morning we couldn't check-in right away, but they let us store our bags there so we could go out and do stuff. The lady at the hostel's name was Hannah (this will be important later on in the blog), and she gave us maps and told us where everything was and pretty much gave us the scoop on Barca. Well after our info sesh on Barca, we all got our swimsuits on and headed to meet everyone at the beach!! 7 of us were in one hostel and the rest were in another hostel. So we get to the beach and we knew the other group was already at the beach and we thought we agreed on meeting at one side of the beach, BUT apparently not haha They were on the complete other side!! So we hiked across the beach, and finally met up with them. The water was so nice!! Here's a picture of Abby, Taylor and I at the beach the first day:
We stayed at the beach for a few hours and then we all went back to our hostels and siesta-ed for like 3 hours, it was much needed! When we got up, we all got ready, and the showers and everything were really clean in the hostel! Cleaner than Puri's haha Anywho once we were ready we tried to take cabs to this one restaurant.. didn't really work out so well.. Not only did we have to split up in cabs, but some didn't get dropped off at the same place.. We had to wait and give them directions, but we decided to just walk down to the restaurant. As we're walking Ali was holding Abby's iPhone and we were all listening to music, and all of the sudden I turn around and Ali and Abby have the look like "What the hell just happened???!!" and I just see two guys sprinting down this shady alley. The STOLE her iPhone!!! Everyone around us didn't flinch or anything, because they aren't even phased by people getting robbed since apparently Barcelona is huge for pick-pocketing and whatnot! Well as she should have been, Abby was freaking out and we ended up going to a nearby hotel and using their internet to swipe her phone clean and whatever else we could! Finally after we get some of that done, we decide to get some tapas for dinner since we were starving. I got like sausage and some salad, they were pretty good :) I also got sangira (surprising, I know!), but it was nothing compared to Sienna's Sangria! Since Thursday was Festival de San Juan, there was supposed to be a big party on the beach and whatnot. It was pretty insane, wasn't exactly how I pictured it, but nonetheless crazy. They were all shooting off fireworks like 5 feet from people and people weren't even moving! There were even little kids shooting off fireworks.. Anyways we were there for a little while and then went back to the hostel, not much exciting stuff happened that night....
SO Friday morning. We get up, shower and whatnot, and we decided that it was going to be a sightseeing day. First stop: La Sagrada Familia! This church has been under construction for 90 years!!! They're supposed to finish in about 10 years, so it'll have taken 100 years to finish it!! We ended up doing the audio tour for it since the guided tours were over for the day.. La Sagrada Familia was absolutely goregous!!! We managed to spend 3 hours inside of it!!! I could not get over it, and the audio tour was awesome and pointed out so many things I would have never noticed or known about, well worth the 4 Euro :) Here's a picture inside La Sagrada Familia:
Here's a gorgeous candid photo of me inside Sagrada with the sweet headphones (Antoosh this is proof I was there!!):
SO after La Sagrada Familia we were all starving and we decided to go get food, but ran into some souvenir shops first :) AKA- Ray I got you your birthday present! We somehow stumbled into some restaurant that had pizza, but was run by Chinese people so it was obviously real Italian food haha.. we probably should have turned away then, but we didn't. The pizza wasn't absolutely terrible, but I've definitely had better, and at that point I would have eaten anything! haha Well after dinner we were going to head to another touristy stop, but decided we were just going to do a sightseeing tour bus the next day (which we never ended up doing haha) and ended up just going back to the hostel for a siesta :) After our lovely siesta, we all got ready and started drinking at the hostel.. We met some of the people there and then decided to go meet up with everyone at this bar called Chupitos (shots in Spanish), BUT we hadn't eaten and we stumbled upon this little cafe with delicious pasta and pizza that tasted like white castle!!! We were in heaven!! Once we scarfed down some food, we went to the bar.. And on the way ran into some bachelor party and took pictures with them inside a photo booth, I have a copy so I can show you once I'm home :) The bar was crazy though, it was packed and there were sooo many shots, like lists and lists of them and they were all 2 Euro each!! I ended up doing this shot called "Boy scout" where they put the alcohol in the shot glass (obvi), give you a marshmallow on the stick, pour alcohol on the bar and light the bar alcohol on fire while you roast your 'mallow and then you stick the 'mallow in the shot and drink it... SO GOOD!!! Wish I would have taken another!! I ended up taking another shot there, but I can explain that in person if you want.. Oh and there was no AC, and like one fan, we were dying!! Here's a picture of the part of the boy scout shot:
SO after our shots we leave the bar and run into this guy selling light up rings and sunglasses... We obviously had to buy them!!! Abby, John and I all got the sick rings and Ali got the awesome sunglasses! BEST idea. After that pretty much half the group left because they wanted to catch the Metro (lame), but me and a few others stayed out and were walking along the beach and whatnot. We weren't over by the clubs, but we heard music coming from this club at the hotel, so we walk over there, but you needed a room key to get in, so instead we just walked and chilled at the hotel bar. We're cheap and the drinks were expensive so we just played tic-tac-toe haha Half of us decided to go to the top floor, the 25th floor. The view was awesome!!! BUT we notice there's an up button on the top floor, intriguing, no? Oh and we can hear music coming from upstairs, sounded like a rooftop party! So we try to use elevator and it says you need some key or something to get to the 26th floor.. We couldn't get up and decided to go back down to the lobby... While most of the group went outside, Ali and I notice there's a hostess and a line to the elevator that goes to some restaurant (on the 26th floor), Ali starts telling the hostess that our friend Hannah is up there and we don't have our keys, and to check the list cuz we're on there hahaha (the only Hannah we know was the hostel lady Hannah, and she most definitely wasn't at the hotel haha)The lady said we could go up!!!! So I went outside to get the rest of the group, and then that's when she said we weren't dressed up enough. The lesson I learned? To just leave the rest of them and head up to probably the sickest party on the 26th floor haha Pretty much after that we just went back to the hostel and passed out!
SATURDAY: We got up early (thanks for the wake-up call Jack) and we met up with the entire group at the cable cars. It was like 10 Euros to get up and down, but it was a pretty sweet view! There was a castle up top and it was cool overall :) Although San Sebastian's view was sooo much better. Here's a picture of Abby and I on the castle somewhere overlooking something haha
After the cable cars we got lunch (hamburgers, fries, and a coke <--- I love America!) and then went to the beach to fry :) It was pretty nice out! and the water was perfect!!!! We ended up staying there for a couple hours instead of doing more sightseeing, but it was a lot of fun :) Here's Abby and I at the beach!:
Once we went got back from the beach, we seista-ed as per usual and then made ourselves dinner!! 12 Euros total for 7 girls for pasta, cesear salad, cheese, and two bottles of fine, not too shabby!! Dinner was delicious and afterwards we just started drinking at the hostel. BEST idea. The people staying at the other hostel came to ours and we just drank for a little before we decided to head to the bars. We took the Metro to a stop we thought had the bar we were looking for, not so much, but we stopped in a random bar, people drank and then we decided to hit up the clubs! Not sure exactly how this all went down, but we walked right up to the entrance of the club and got right in, no waiting, and didn't have to pay the cover charge, apparently someone made friends with people at the front of the line hahah It was awesome!! The club was a ton of fun :) BUT after. Some of us decided to go to the beach since it was right there and we all sat down and somehow I set my purse down next to me, and by the time I looked back over.. it was STOLEN. I didn't hear a single thing or even see the person. Nobody did. My purse had like everything in it. Luckily I had my real passport in the locker at the hostel. But I'm even more lucky that Ray picked up his phone and helped me while I was completely bawling on the phone to him. Thank you Ray!!! Anyways after calling Piccell, the credit card companies and my mom obviously, I finally went to bed. I'll give more deets on my next blog about what I had to do after it was stolen.
I woke up, showered, and we left for the bus... longest bus ride!! 8 hours!!! When we got back it was around 8:00, but we didn't eat dinner until later, and then just went right to bed.
Minus the whole being robbed, Barcelona was really cool!! BUT I don't think I'd go back, who knows what they'd steal next time!
Barcelona, please be nicer to us Americans. Gracias.
And if you read this whole thing, I'm impressed! You must really like me :)
Love you all!!! :)
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