Sunday, October 3, 2010

Barcelona...

Today I got back from a weekend trip to Barcelona and I am completely exhausted. Me and four friends left on Thursday and we flew out of the Malaga airport to Barcelona. Our intensive month class ended on Wednesday and we had a two day + weekend vacation before our regular semester classes start on Monday. I am officially in level seven Spanish which is considered “upper advanced” so I am proud of myself!

I am definitely happy I had the opportunity to go to Barcelona although when it comes down to it, the city itself is too big for me and all of the commotion makes me anxious. Besides the native language Catalan sounding soooo different than the Castellano I have been speaking and hearing in Granada, Barcelona was tourist central and every other person walking down the street was speaking a different language. I heard everything from Dutch, to Japanese, to English and it was difficult to know whether to speak in Spanish or English; I definitely had some encounters with people who could not speak English or Spanish. Everything was so expensive too! All of the meals, the transportation, everything was so expensive. I guess that is what to expect in tourist-based area like Barcelona. We did get to see some of Gaudi’s houses which were stunning to see in person. His designs are bizarre and ingenious; I can’t think of a better to describe it. We also visited El Parque Guiell which was beautiful. The park consisted of Gaudi’s sculptures and other designs in a garden setting which was lovely to walk through. Yesterday was actually really hot in Barcelona which I did not expect at all considering the days have been cooler here in Granada and so the walk became a bit uncomfortable after a couple of hours but I would recommend that anyone visiting Barecelona go there. Last but not least we visited La Sagrada Familia. Despite the construction cranes and scaffolding which have been and will be part of the fascade for an indefinite amount of time, the building is breathtaking. I found it so neat to walk by one side and see the lighter, more recent construction and then walk 10 feet to the right or left and see the discolored stone that has been probably been there since the beginning of the construction around 100 years ago. The line to buy tickets to tour inside was literally around the block so we gave up on that idea and decided to just enjoy the outside of La Sagrada Familia and take pictures. I wish I knew what everything represented as far as the figurines and the different carvings that are part of the fascade; they must have some kind of symbolic meaning although I can only guess at what it is.

I can’t forget to write about my favorittttttttttte meal that I have had so far in Spain!! Last night I ordered Spinach prepared the “Catalan” way with pinenuts, raisins, and ham. It was so filling and absolutely delicious. It was cooked with olive oil (of course) and it was so great. I plan on making it when I get home to the States.

All in all, Barcelona was a successful trip even though last Wednesday I did not think we were going to make it to the airport in time for our flight. We ended up having to change the time of our bus from Granada to the airport to 3 am in order to have enough time to check-in. Everything was so hectic on Wednesday due to the strike here and we were not even sure if our original 7 am bus was still going to run since they canceled a couple of the later bus routes on Thursday as part of a continued strike action. Although I personally didn’t see any striking or rallying here in Granada I heard about various situations throughout the city which ended up being extremely dangerous. Barcelona was one of the cities with the most intense uprisings and the news coverage on Wednesday was certainly not depicting a fun/safe place to travel to which made us all nervous. Luckily for us, by Thurday afternoon the streets were calm and returned back to normal and our weekend was fabulous.

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