Well, I think it's safe to say that my weekend in Barcelona was ridiculous. I had a fabulous time. We were off to a bit of a rough start, but overall we pulled the operation off with great success. We had to do quite a bit of traveling just to get to the airport to leave for Barcelona. We had to take the Bus to the Tube (as usual), then we rode the tube for about 35 minutes, before getting onto a train and riding that for almost an hour just to get to the London Stansted airport. Now I say we got off to a rough start because our flight out was delayed almost 2 hours and we ended up not being able to land in the airport that we were supposed to land in, and were redirected to a nearby airport (which really worked out nicely for us, because this airport was closer to Barcelona then the airport that we were supposed to be flying into). We took a bus from Girona (a suburb of Barcelona) into the city. This took almost an hour, then we took a 10 minute cab ride to our hotel, which turned out to be in the middle of the city, in a great location. So that worked out. By the time that we got all checked in it was almost 2am. Then to add onto everything else there was a problem with our room assignment, because they did not have any rooms with two double beds, but only rooms with one king sized bed. We had four people, Ellen, Raquel, RJ and I (duh). That is a bit tight, four people in one bed. Two people in a twin is manageable, but four in a king wasn't looking so good. RJ ended up on the floor, but we gave him one of the two pillows in the room. Raquel, Ellen and I all shared the bed, with Ellen and I sharing the other pillow and Raquel sleeping with her head on the towels. Sharing a pillow, especially with someone with a chest infection was really hard. Ellen and I basically spooned the whole night, and a few times she had to put me in my place and tell me to scoot over because I was basically pushing her off the bed. I guess she didn't really sleep that night because she was paranoid about waking everyone up with all of her coughing. Poor baby. Despite the numerous problems, we did not it get us down.
Saturday we got an early start (at least we thought), getting out of the hotel by what we thought was 9:45. Little did we know that Spain is an hour ahead of London, so it was really 10:45. We went across the street from our hotel into this department store, which Raquel says is the Macy's of Spain, and in the basement of the department store they have basically a grocery store. Since we were on a budget (which I worked out on the hour bus ride from Girona to Barcelona) we bought 2 bags of chips (queso flavor, and jamon flavor--that is cheese and ham flavored chips) and a bag of croissants and each of us got a drink. We decided to eat our breakfast/lunch out on a park bench across the street. The whole day the weather was beautiful. Warm, sunny, not a single cloud in the sky (which would later cause some very embarrassing tan lines from my dress, swimsuit, and sunglasses). RJ discovered that if you eat a queso and a jamon chip at the same time as eating the croissant, it tasted like a ham and cheese sandwich. So that was breakfast. After that we got on one of those double-decker tourist buses (which I had been against, but I have been persuaded to a fan), It was only 19 Euros for an all day pass, on both the bus line going to the North of the city and the line going to the South of the city, and you could get on and off whenever. It was nice because everything in Barcelona is pretty spread out, so we wouldn't have been able to see as much if we had been walking, and we got little explanations on all of the things. The history and architecture of Barcelona is amazing. They went through this modernisme phase with a lot of their buildings in the late 1800's and early 1900's. There was this one architech, Antoni Gaudi, who has all of these really amazing houses and churches and a park all over the city, with really interesting building designs, that are all really colorful and a lot of them are very mosaic-looking. It is hard to describe you just have to see it, So we stopped over at the Sagrada Familia, a MASSIVE church designed by Gaudi that is still under construction because it is funded by anonymous donations and because Gaudi died before they got close to opening it. We also stopped at the Park Guell, a park designed by Gaudi that it now owned by the city of Barcelona. It was so beautiful, Again you will just have to look at my pictures. A lot later in the day we also stopped at the beach and did a touch of suntanning and swam in the Atlantic Ocean. Again, fabulous. After our oceanic adventures, we hopped back on the bus to finish our second tour. We got off again at the Placa de Catalunya, a sort of open square area in the middle of the city, mostly because I needed to make a run to the Hard Rock Cafe for some t-shirts for mommy and daddy. I am a little bit sad, because those two t-shirts were the only things I bought (other than food) on the trip. I didn't have time to find anything for myself or anything for anyone else. After the HRC, we wandered the city a bit looking for food and souvenirs (the only thing we had eaten all day were the chips and croissants at 11 that morning, and this was about 8pm. We ended up going to this all you can eat buffet, where apparently the food was marginal at best. But I guess the positive thing about a sinus infection is that I couldn't taste anything, so it was satisfying to me. The one positive thing about the all you can eat buffet (other than the obvious, that we were able to eat a lot) was that they had a salad bar. It is SO difficult to find a decent salad here that is not like 15 GBP or Euro or whatever. No vegetables exist on this continent. Probably because they all have to be imported. Anywho, after dinner we took a normal city bus home, and I took a hot shower (because I was freezing because my dress was soaking wet from my swimsuit). While Raquel and RJ went to the bus station to learn about the necessary means of transportation for our trip back to the airport (this time it was Reus, where we were supposed to land Friday) I took a nap (which I later was very glad I did).
After they got back, I pulled myself together and went out with them to the beach for the summer solstice festival. It was insane. Words cannot begin to describe this event. On the Metro I honestly thought I was going to be trampled and die. There were probably over 100 people in the one car of the train (and I assume it was the same way for the entire train). I, unfortunately was in front of the door, and was getting shoved and shouldered and everything. I was gripping onto RJs arm for dear life. The windows of the train were dripping it was so hot because of all of the people. But after everyone was finally on the train and there was no more room to fit anyone else on, everyone was singing and laughing all the way to the beach. I later found out that they had to close down one of the lines because there were so many people trying to get down to the beach for the festival. I forgot to mention that this whole time, all of Barcelona sounds like Baghdad because of all of the fireworks and firecrackers going off. When we finally got to the beach, I was speechless. The same beach that we were on that afternoon was full of people and bonfires and fireworks as far as you could see, from the walls all the way down to the water and as far out as I could see. We met up with Raquel's cousin, Gerardo, and some of his friends down at the beach, including the next president of El Salvador's son, Hernando, who was obsessed with me. So we sat on the beach drinking and hanging out until 4am. Everyone was calling me Bunny, like at home, or 'Michigan' (for obvious reasons) and proposing marriage. It was hilarious. We killed a couple bottles of wine, a case of this beer and mixer drink thingy, and a LOT of vodka. Good times were definitely had by all. When we finally left at 4, because we had to be out of the hotel by six to make our 6:30 train to the airport, we were stopped from getting back into the Metro because there were still SO many people trying to get in and out of the beach (when we left, it was still the same, if not more people down at the beach). When we finally got back to the hotel, it was a flurry of packing, then basically running to the train station, still a little tipsy from the beach. Then it just seemed like a flurry of transportation, especially after the all nighter. We had to walk to the station, take a train to Reus, and a taxi to the airport, then the flight to Stansted (duh), then a train from Stansted into London, then the Tube to King's Cross, then a bus home.
The rest of my day has been spent eaten some lunch (a delicious burger and fries, or shall I say, chips), uploading my pictures to various websites, and taken a nap mid-writing an email (it was intended to be 45 minutes, but turned into almost 6.5 hours, so that is basically like just going to bed). Now it is almost 2am, so I think a return to my bed is necessary.
Although I am exhausted and sunburned, there is always more energy for another adventure...
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