Nikki, Matt and I were in Barcelona this past weekend and it was so amazing! Matt and I flew on an hour flight and Nikki took a 7 hour bus ride! She is crazy but also saving money! So Matt and I met up with her Friday morning at 10am for a 10:30 free walking tour. We met at Plaza Reial and a woman from Maryland, who is a spanish citizen, showed us around Barrio Gotico- the gothic neighborhood/ quarter, and told us about all the best places in Barcelona. All the buildings are so old and tall on cobblestone pedestrian streets. We were so craving Mexican food, and our tour guide told us about a great burrito place, La Rosa Negra. It was so cool to talk to an American who was actually living in Spain as a citizen...makes me wonder if i could do it! So we had great guacamole and chips and yummy burritos!
Then we took the metro to Park Guell. Guadi worked on the park for 14 years and ended in the early 1920's and this guy Guell was his friend. We took about six escalators up this mountain to get to the top because it is so steep(the kind of escalators they have at malls), then hiked up a windy dirt road and had the most beautiful view of Barcelona facing eastward towards the Mediterranean. We saw the huge Gaudi building La Sagrada Familia, a dome crystal building and other tall sparatic buildings along the coast. We could see for miles and miles. Then, we climbed down the other side of the mountain to see more Guadi buildings and structures. There is this huge view point with long tiled benches designed by him and then when you walk downstairs there is an open area with columns and a colorful tiled ceiling. It is really spectacular, especially for him to design this in the early 20th century. After the park (it is more of a dry deserty landscape but still considered a park i suppose), we walked about 45 minutes to La Sadgrada Familia. It is this huge building with many different points on the top and has been under construction for years now and will not be dont until 2020. We just stood in front of it and stared for a good half an hour! The line was too long to go into too...tired from walking all say we headed back to the hostel to recover.
Craving american food seemed to be a strong theme throughout the weekend, and we we set off to find some pizza- which was not hard because a lot of Italian tourists come to Barcelona since it is so close and on the Mediterranean. We sat down to a nice dinner and had pizza and crepes for dessert! After dinner we walked off the pizza and went to have a drink at Plaza Reial, just a little square off of the main street of Las Ramblas. Nikki and Matt LOVE dancing so they dragged me to a discoteca in a mall of all places! It was on the top story and called Sunset. I am not crazy about dancing but it is fun with them, so we danced until oh maybe 4am. Desperate for water we left and bought water and headed home on the metro which begins to run at 5am everyday..so we waited a little!
Oh I forgot to mention the hostel. First of all it was mislabeled upon enterig. It has a sign for Hostel Windsor instead of Hostel Rambla y Catalunya, so that was fun tryign to find it. Then you walk in far to the back of the tall hall, kinda like you walking into a church or cave and look up and there are 6 floors with a staircase up above. The reception was a little hole in the wall in the very back..so we got our sheets and head up to the 1st floor, which is actually the second floor because the ground floors in Spain are 0. So we walk into our room and there are 3 bunkbeds and 2 triple bunk beds! I have definitely never seen one of those! We were supposed to be in a room with 10 people but a couple extra is fine. We got settled and then started seeing people walk through our room through doors on the opposite side, so we peeked in and there was another room of 10 people who had to walk through our room to get to theirs! So basically we are in a 22 person room. AND THEN some more people walk through more doors in our room that leads to another hostel room of 8 or so people. I am thinking, thank gosh i brought my earplugs. Then another door opens to my right and a couple comes out of a private room....crazy! But it was really fun meeting people and talking througout the weekend, but I have never had so many roommates! So that was our friday!
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