Friday, October 29, 2010

Happy as a Dane in Barcelona

The last leg of our trip was Barcelona. We left Amsterdam early and flew via Vueling and then went to our hostel. It was the nicest we had been in yet! Everything was super colorful and we had to cross an outside patio to get to our room. Another welcomed surprise -- Barcelona was warm, hot even! It was such a relief after the chilling weather of Paris and Amsterdam.

After be dropped our stuff off in the room, Beth and I went exploring. We went to a little cafe and got some food before walking down one of the main streets, La Rambla. It was really touristy and filled with shops and street performers. I thought the living statures in Rome were impressive, but the ones in Barcelona are crazy and very elaborate. Anyway, we walked down La Rambla to the water, and sat a bridge, soaking in the sun for a while. It was beautiful! Across the water, we could see mountains with sky car going to the top. There were people everywhere sitting and lounging in the sun.


After a while, we decided to move on. We walked across the bridge and found a mall, in which we saw a poster for a horror film festival. One show, called "Dead Set" was playing that night in the parking garage under the mall. Beth is a huge horror fan, so we decided to go before exploring the Barcelona nightlife. After that, we decided it would be a nice time for a nap, so we went back to the hostel until it was time to go to the movie.

When we awoke from our naps, we met our roommates. They were friends from California, and they were definitely the coolest roommates we had had yet. One of them looked and acted exactly like one of our friends at TURome. But anyway, we made our way back to the mall and down to the garage for the movie. It turned out that it was a British zombie mini series dubbed in Spanish. Neither of us speak Spanish, but we figured zombies movies are easy to understand regardless of language. And we were right. It was awesome! It was kind of scary and super funny. We plan to find it in English asap. Than we were walking on La Rambla, looking for something to do when a woman conveniently came up to us, offering a pub crawl. We eagerly accepted. It began at an empty sports bar, and progressed to another empty bar. Enter, the Danes. The Danes were two boys from Denmark -- Baby Dane (because he looked like he was 16) and Obelisk Dane (because he was the size and shape of an obelisk). We talked to them for a while and thought that they were cool until that started telling us about how awesome Denmark is. "Have you ever heard the phrase 'Happy as a Dane?' Yeah, well we are all really happy. We get off the first of every month to celebrate being from Denmark..." Yeah, not so great Danes....After that, we went to a club called Catwalk and danced for a long time. Then back to the hostel around 4...

The next day, we slept in a bit and then got Tapas for lunch. The Tapas I got were a little disappointing, but no worries. After that, we went to Casa Batllo, which is a house designed by Gaudi in the beginning of the 1900s. It was inspired by the ocean and has almost no straight lines. All the walls, ceilings, and doors are curved like waves and there were windows of stained glass. It was the most amazing house I have ever seen. After that, we went to the mini Dali Museum in Barcelona (the real one is about an hour outside the city and was too far for the day). It was pretty cool, though I much preferred the Gaudi House.




That night, we went to get paella. It was really good! Then, we met up with our roommates and went to an Irish bar. After a while there, we went to another Irish bar, before moving on to a club called Boardwalk. We stayed there all night and danced with several different people, including guys from Canada, Germany, and my favorite, Finland. It was quite an international experience. Then back to the hostel at 5...



We were flying back to Rome the next day, but unlike every other travel day, our flight was not until the evening, so we had the day to spend in the city. First, we went to La Sagrada Familia. It is a church, also designed by Gaudi, that looks like a huge sandcastle. It would have been so cool to go in, but the line was so long that we didn't think we would get out in time, so we just took pictures outside. Then, we explored the city a little more, then went to the airport and flew back to Rome.

Thank you Barcelona....

1 comment:

  1. love it as usual! keep writing i read every post :) i can't wait to see moreeee photos when you come back!! keep living it up :) i'm living vicariously through you!

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