Braving Barcelona

Brace yourselves ladies and gentleman. This past weekend was a four day weekend, I traveled to Barcelona, and I met up with Anna Fraine. For those three reasons this shall be one gargantuan post (and for those three reasons it will also be full of awesomeness of course). With that said, let the story begin:

I stand in the middle of Terminal 2 in the Barcelona airport. It's 8:58pm, 23 minutes after Anna's flight was supposed to get in. I look at the arrivals board outside our meeting point of baggage claim. No flights from Prague*. After already having asked an airport attendant if I was in the correct location, I was out of ideas. Huge airport. Huger city. No cell phones. No airport pager system. No way to find my friend. Well this is off to a good start, I thought. Just as I was about to give up on my getaway weekend I heard the sound of relief- "KAAATE ARNOOOLD". It was the bellowing voice of Anna Fraine that I hadn't heard in over three months. We embraced in a no doubt picturesque reunion hug. I still have no idea how we found each other.

After getting slightly reacquainted, we headed out on a bus to find our hostel. We got a bit turned around in the large Plaza Catalunya, but eventually found our way to the main street closest to our accommodations. This main street was called La Rambla. It was jam packed and full of life all weekend long. There was always something to see and always something to eat. La Rambla was lined with vendors, artists, and performers of all sorts 24/7. My favorite street performers from the weekend included the Edward Scissor Hands impersonator, The Massive Fat Suit Lady, and the really sketchy mummy who wrapped Anna up in his mummy cloth and whispered "sexy". Since those kind of characters thoroughly freak me out (same goes for fully costumed Disneyland characters), I decided to keep my distance. As for the restaurants on this street, Anna and I were able to find some mouth-watering paella and consume it faster than we could say catch-of-the-day-shellfish-selection-over-rice-and-veggies (that's paella, btw). La Rambla was a main staple of our Barcelona experience.

We arrived in Barcelona late on Friday and simply explored the surrounding area for the duration of that night. The next day we attempted to go on a free walking tour, but failed. Instead we made our own tour and explored several sites of the city by means of the metro system. We first wandered into Guell's house of some sort. I don't know many details about that because, to be honest, it was boring. After that stint of boringness we meandered down to the port. We wandered about the sea front before making our way to the metro and heading to La Sagrada Familia. La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family) is the architect Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece. He intended for it to be a cathedral, but that intent may or may not come true. It's still being constructed, but from what it is thus far I can say La Sagrada Familia is easily the coolest cathedral I've been to (and trust me, I've seen my fair share). After being amazed by one work of Gaudi's we discovered another one of his treasures- Casa Batlló. This was a house Gaudi constructed with the theme of underwater in mind. It was incredible. Every detail exuded water in some manor, and yet was still conveniently practical. Gaudi's work never ceased to amaze me throughout the weekend.

Saturday night we met up with some Portuguese people that Anna had met through couch-surfing. In was an interesting mix of a night. The crowd we rolled with included one Portuguese guy, the tiniest Portuguese girl ever, two German girls, an Austrian girl, and a Lithuanian girl. The Portuguese girl was my entrainment for the evening. She was shorter than me with a child's frame and an explosive personality. At one point in the night she slapped the hand of a pickpocket to prevent theft from one of the German girls. The night was pleasant, until we got to a techno club. Ugh. All that electronic/techno music sounds the same to my ears. How do you even dance to that anyway? Once we realized the music wasn't getting any better, and we weren't becoming any less awkward at bopping along to the "beat", we decided to head home. That wrapped up Saturday for us.

We kicked off Sunday with a free tour of the Barcelona Picasso museum. There we met up with three of my friends from my Oviedo program. We all sauntered through the museum waiting to see some contorted faces or other famous Picasso works. No such luck. Turns out that stuff is in Madrid, Paris, and New York. I did, however, get to see Picasso's rendition of "Las Meninas" originally by Velázquez. Normally that last sentence would sound like blabber to me, but I had just learned about this painting in my art class, hence my level of enthusiasm for seeing it in person.

Once we finished being classy and looking at art, four of us headed out to find Park Guell. Park Guell is, well, uh, it's cool. I don't know much about it. I do know that in our attempt to find this park we ended up on an inadvertent hike. Great, my favorite (insert over exaggerated sarcasm here). Turns out the park was on a lower level, but after walking fifteen minutes uphill in a state of confusion we ended up at a pretty cool lookout point. After descending from the accidental hike location, we found Park Guell. Park Guell was actually really cool, I would suggest googling it. There were houses there that were modeled after the houses in Hansel & Gretel's fairy tale. They looked like giant delicious gingerbread houses. We also found the ANTM (America's Next Top Model) runway from cycle 7 when Caridee and Melrose walked in Barcelona. We had far too much fun with that. After mock-modeling our way through Park Guell, we had no plans and decided to take that opportunity to head to the beach. Yes, the beach. We had a late night stroll along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was beautiful and freezing. Of course, I put my feet in and played Wave Tag.

By Monday we had seen everything we wanted to see and done everything we wanted to do. We took the day to go souvenir shopping and consume our last Barcelona treats. We found our way over to a large famous park. I can't remember it's name, I actually don't think we ever knew it. It had a giant, gorgeous, gold embellished fountain. It was massive. (ANTM cycle 7 filmed their commercial episode there). There was also a large, possibly life size, Mammoth statue. The park was a fantastic way to pass the rest of our time in the beautiful, beyond big Barcelona.

That night I dropped Anna off at her bus stop and we said our goodbyes and wishes of safe travels. We hugged it out and went our separate ways after one hectic, astounding weekend.

That was the end of the weekend, but that's not the end of my story. You lucky readers get a bonus tidbit. It's a story about our hostel. Our hostel situation was a bit last minute, therefore some of the common comforts had to suffer. We were in a room with three bunk bed sets, so six beds. We shared the room with five Asians and one French woman throughout various points of the trip. With these kind of accommodations we obviously didn't have our own luxurious bathrooms. Instead we had dorm style public bathrooms. That didn't bother me, but our shower experience did. One night Anna and I both decided to hit the showers after a long day. After a few minutes into my shower the water became unbearably hot. Due to my discomfort I reached to adjust the temperature. As I touched the handle I felt an odd sensation. It felt like when your hand is either falling asleep or waking up after falling asleep. It was all tingly. It happened a few times before I realized I couldn't touch the handle for more than a couple seconds. I shouted over to Anna "Hey Anna...does it feel like you're being-" Anna cut me off with her urgent response of "-electrocuted?!" Yes folks, I'm pretty sure I was gently electrocuted several times during that shower. It's safe to say I only showered once this weekend.

*(For those of you who don't know, Anna is my friend who studied abroad in Prague this term. We planned to fly from our individual cities/countries to meet in Barcelona for the weekend)