Alors, last Friday morning I got up nice and early, 4 am to be exact to finish my packing, shower, and catch my 5:35 bus to a nice little ghetto train station in Tarascon to then catch a train to Montpellier where I then caught one more train to Barcelona. Whoosh. By the time I was finally settled in my siège (seat), I was tired and slept a majority of the first couple hours of the 4.5 hour journey from Montpellier to Barcelona. Of course we had to spent like 45 minutes at the border and my passport was checked twice but whatever.
Once I made it into Barcelona Sants Train station, I quickly hopp
ed the metro to head to my hostel/dormitory thing I stayed in that weekend. These were the directions. Walk straight towards this one thing, turn left when you see the park. There we are. Well... let's just say that didn't exactly help me much. But after about 20 minutes and sweating completely through my tank top, I managed to find it. I freshed up a little bit after that long day of travel and then took the metro to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's extremely famous church that is still being build and won't be done until 2030 (whoa!) I'll get back to this later.5 of my other friends from the IES program were coming by bus and they were staying in an apt literally across the street so I met up with them for a few hours, chilled on their very comfortable couch where my friend Rob talked about taking a siesta (we were all feeling quite Spanish that weekend). Not too long after that, I took the metro back to my hostel because my dear friend Alissa who I work with at the Learning Abroad Center (study abroad office) who has been studying/living in Toledo, Spain since January would be arriving shortly. What a great reunion. We hugged, we made loud noises, it was excellent.
After a little siesta of our own, Alissa and I went to meet my other IES friends on Las Ramblas, one of the main areas of Barcelona, to have some tapas and sangria for dinner. This was Rick Steve's advice for dinner (keep in mind I can't remember the street names), walk down Carrer something until you see the church, go down the tiny street to the right of the church until you find one that looks most inviting. If there's one thing I learned, Rick Steve does not steer you wrong... unless it comes to the nightlife because every "nightlife" place he mentioned in Barcelona closed at 10... yeah. I'm going else where for that information. Anyways, great advice, we found a great tapas place where some Spanish men shared a drink of theirs they called.. panther milk... not going to ask what it was but it was tasty, they had a bottle of whatever it was from the bar and offered to us. Bienvenido!!! Tapas + Sangria = Maura's tummy is happy. yum yum yum yum.
The rest of the weekend, Alissa and I spent doing our own thing but it was a really nice way for us to catch up
after so many months of seperation! She's my BFAW for those of you who don't know this, its an acronym made by my good old Dad for Best Friend at Work... and her and I have made a twist and call each other MAT for mejor amigo del trabajo... sweet. So Saturday then we did some exploring of Las Ramblas, there were pet stores EVERYWHERE as well as several people who do the whole statue thing, weird. We got lunch then at the Boqueria, a large market just off las Ramblas. I got a huge quarter piece of pineapple... AMAZING. Then, We walked up the Passeig de Gracia where you find the Casa Milia and a few other of Gaudi's famous buildings. Gaudi is quite incredible, I've never really seen his work before but wow. It's really cool. He's very famous for all his mosaic style art and funky looking buildings... this post is half dedicated to him btw. Then that night we decided to get a taste of Barcelona night life so we went with two new friends we met in our hostel to a club called CatWalk which was mostly tourists but fun none the less. We didn't have the energy really be Spanish because we walked back around 3, rather than at like 6 as it's not uncommon to do.Sunday, I made some breakfast (eggs with lots and lots of cheese, mmmmm) and we went to the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished church of Gaudi. So let me talk about this for a minute. Gaudi started building this church knowing he wouldn't live to see the final product and he even lived in it for part of the time! Rick Steve's describes his church as a "cake-in-the-rain" and it's actually very accurate. I've never seen a church look like it. It kind of looks like a pointy cone shaped candle that's melting downwards. Gaudi designed three different facades for the church, Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection. The navity was the only one completed before his dead and that is uniquely just his design. The other completed facade is the Pass
ion, which due to the loss of some of Gaudi's designs, has the contributions of other architects, which is one thing I find particularly unique abou this church. Yes, it is Gaudi's church but theres several other people who have left their own personal marks. And the difference is pretty big from the Nativity to the Passion. The other thing which is wild is that people are still worshipping here, despite the massive construction. Normally, when you think of visiting a really famous church, its hundreds of years old.. no. This isn't even done yet. And its built solely from private donations and admission fees. My 9 euro contribu
ted to that! Woo! Feels good! After that, Alissa and I stuffed our faces with nachos, chili, and hamburger that we discovered at an irish restaurant just next door... talk about comfort food. We filled our stomachs and then took a 30 minute plus walk uphill to go to Park Guell, created by Gaudi as well! The mosaic design was all over and the view of the city as well was gorgeous. After taking several pictures, we decided it was time to go back down to our hostel, stomachs still full, I was dying from all the walking.We decided to stay pretty low key our last night and we went to check out this bar just off Las Ramblas that Alissa's boyfriend had suggested to us. To enter, you need to go through part of the wax museum and once you get through that creepy room, suddenly you enter a magical forest where there are trees inside and a little waterfall and fairies. It was the most unique looking bar I'd ever seen. They even had their own personalized cans of Red Bull! And it was filled with French people, the bar, not the can of Red Bull, duh. (Barcelona was like France in Spain, i swear, so many French people everywhere, I loved it of course!) That was definately a good finale to the trip as we were exhausted from walking all day, neither of us could have handled too much excitement. So after a beer and some croquettas, we called it a night.
The next day Alissa and I said our goodbyes (tear! but only until September!) and took our respective modes of transportation to our seperate destinations. I arrived in Montpellier that night around 9 where I was met by Sean and Rob. The three of us walked to our hotel, after I assisted an American woman and her two daughters find a hotel (go Ibis!), and got some dinner at the Creperie à la Comedie... yummm! Then we went out for a little dancing at the Australian Bar where I unexpectedly ran into a bunch of friends from the year before... whoooaa! and then finished out the night dancing to Tektonique at the Rock Store, the local disco in down.
We spent most of the next day in Montpellier exploring the city. Rob will be studying there in the fall so I wanted to make sure he saw a lot of good stuff. It also happened to be the July 14th... La Fete de la Bastille, or France's national holiday. I really expected a whole lot of hoop-lah etc... but no. It was rather dead. France just does not do national holidays like we do. But I did get to see some fireworks back in Arles later that night, so I suppose that helped.
Alright, this is way too long and I would like to tell you about the CORRIDA that I saw yesterday but I will wait until the next post...
Bisous et Besos :)
Mo
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