Spain, the second-greatest country in Europe

February 16-19

At least, that's my opinion so far. If you can't tell, I LOVED Barcelona! While I was there I met up with Joy, who was the aupair before me for my family. She's working as an aupair again, for a family that lives right outside Barcelona and she's been there about three weeks. It was actually a huge coincidence how we even ended up talking. I only met her once, when she was here for a day before she went back home, right after I got here. I never talked to her after that, but then she called about a month ago while I was here alone, and I saw the 001 country code so I assumed that someone was calling for me (I usually only answer the phone while upstairs when I know who's calling, like Stefan or Stephanie), so I picked up. It turned out it was her calling to talk to the fam but they weren't there, so we chatted a little bit. She asked where I'd traveled, and I told her what I'd done and that I was going to Barcelona soon. I knew that she was going to be an aupair again in Spain, but I had no idea that she would be in the city I was going to! We ended up spending all three days that I was there together, and it was a lot of fun. I definitely don't mind traveling alone, but it was a nice change to have someone to tour around with.

Anyway, I'll try to keep this fairly short and chock full of pictures.

Day 1
I had stayed overnight in Stuttgart, where I was flying out of, because my flight left at 7 AM. That meant that my day started at 4 AM. I got to the train station around 4:45, planning to take an S-Bahn to the airport that left about 5. Well, it turns out I looked at the M-F schedule and not the weekend one, so I had to wait until 5:25. This kind of ruined my plan of being to the airport of 5:30, but luckily getting there around 6 still turned out to be plenty of time. But umm there's not really much to do in a train station at 5 AM, so after wandering around and looking at all of the closed stores that I had already seen the night before, I went and sat in the waiting room which was full of three kinds of people: people starting their day early, people just finishing their night, and bums. Most of the people in there were harmless, but at one point one creepy dude started talking to me about his beer and cigars, and then farted while standing right next to me. I decided that was an excellent time to leave.

Once I got to Barcelona, I made it to my hostel with no problems (although the metro took twice as long as they said it would!). Joy met me there around 11 and we set off for Sagrada Família, a church designed by Gaudí. Well, at least at first. He started working on it in 1883, but then like all big projects it was delayed--a lot. It still wasn't finished by the time of his death in 1926, and then of course the plans mysteriously disappeared and there was no way to finish it the right way. So, they just kind of sat around for a couple decades, and now they're working on it again semi-based on Gaudí's plans, but largely not. One side of the church is clearly designed by Gaudí, and the other side is in a completely different style. It's expected to be finished in 2021 or something like that. Unfortunately we wasted 8 euros paying to go inside. Biggest rip-off of the trip. It would have been worth it if there had been anything at all to see. As it was, we saw a couple nice stained glass windows, and a ton of construction equipment. Oh yes, and an exhibit on what kind of stones are being used to build the church. That's right. Stones. I don't think it gets more boring than that. The plus side was that you could go up to the top of one of the towers--if you were willing to pay another 2 euros. We were willing, but it was an hour long wait, so we skipped it. Long story short: if you ever go to Barcelona, don't pay to go in the church (unless you really love stones).


Once we left the church, we ate lunch and then walked down Avenue Diagonal, a loooong diagonal (duh) street that runs pretty much through the entire city. We looked at a couple of the cool houses there, and then from there walked down Passeig de Gràcia, where a couple Gaudí houses are.

We ended up at Plaça Catalunya, a big square in the center of town. We then walked down Las Ramblas, which I'm not sure how to describe. It's pretty much one big tourist trap. There are a couple of restaurants there selling over-priced paella and a bunch of kitschy souvenir stands. There are also a TON of "performance artists" who stand there dressed up until you give them some money, then they do something either stupid or really really creepy. I took a picture of some of the stupid ones, but the creepy ones were seriously too creepy to stop and hover by. From there we walked down to the port and looked at the boats and stuff, and saw the huge floating mall (apparently called Maremagnum). It was a really nice day, so it was nice to walk by the water.


After that we took the funicular up to Parc Montjuïc, a park on a mountain on top of the city.


We mostly wanted to see the castle, and we thought we were going to the right place--but apparently we were the only people who couldn't figure out the short way to get there. The funicular dropped us at almost the opposite end of the park from the castle, so we had another loong walk to it. We did get to see some nice gardens though. We had aimed to get to the castle by 7 PM to see the fountain and light show, but we were early, so we walked to the Olympic park. At 7 the light/fountain show started, and it was really cool! But...it only lasted 15 minutes (which was fine with me, because really, how long can you watch water and lights?).


Joy's host family had told her that you could easily sit there watching it for an hour. Well, 15 minutes was enough for us. Joy tried calling her family to tell them that she wasn't going to ride back home with them (they were in the city for a birthday party), but of course her phone was dead. So...we ended up having to walk to where the party was. And then we couldn't find it. By this point I was ready to lay down on the pavement and sleep. Eventually we found the family, and on their way home they dropped us off at a restaurant. By the time we actually sat down with our food, it was 10 PM. We might have been fitting right into the Spanish culture, but I was tired. I didn't end up getting back to my hostel until 11:30.

Hmm, it isn't working to keep it short, so I'll have to write this in sections. I know you people read my blog, so you better be grateful. And you better read every word I've written (that means you, Jonathan).