Ciao! Or should I say Hola because the gang is in SPAIN for fall break!!!
Currently it is Sunday morning and I am sitting in an ACTUAL Starbucks drinking a big coffee (unfortunately, they do not have pumpkin spice lattes here). It’s nice to have a little slice of home in Barcelona. We left on Friday afternoon (thank god because NO ONE had it together until 10 minutes before we left) and headed for Fiumicino airport. This is the first time I’ve been back there since the day we landed in Rome, and I can’t believe how much has changed in these past few weeks! Anyway, I hate airports. Almost as much as I hate the DMV. They make me stressed (which, I’m sure, is true for most people). And of course this girl is the one who packed like a moron and had a can of hairspray in her carry on. So when they threw out my hairspray they also caught my mousse, hair gel, shampoo, and conditioner that were all too big to take on the plane… So they all got chucked. I guess that’s my own dumb fault. But I’ll skip the rest because no one wants to read about an airport.
Once we got to BARCELONA it was about 9:00 PM on Friday, and we had no real plan on how we were going to get from the airport to the hostel. And apparently when the Italian entered my brain, my four years of public school Spanish subsequently exited. So I couldn’t remember a single useful sentence. We eventually figured it out and made to our hostel which was AWESOME!
James was loving it.
Clearly we all turned into complete monkeys when we found out we were staying in a jungle gym of bunk beds!
On Saturday we were all up early, and the first spot on our list: STARBUCKS. All we wanted was a normal sized coffee rather than the tiny cappuccinos you find in Italy. After we got our caffeine fix we headed out to see the sights.
My FAVORITE part of the day was seeing the Church of Sagrada Familia which is a gigantic unfinished church designed by the famous Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. It was literally incredible. And it is not even finished, The church was designed and started in the late 1800s and it’s completion is not scheduled until about 2035. Isn’t that nuts!?! But when you see it, it is clear why it would take such a long time.
WHAT?
Then on Saturday night we went to see what we called the magic fountain. I’m sure it had some lovely Spanish name but no one knows what it is. It’s this gigantic fountain in front of the national art museum that performs choreography to music. It was so cool! Except most of the songs were American by people like Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears.
Saturday night we all went out to dinner and then hit the clubs! Which was very different than American clubbing. First of all, all of these clubs were on the beach which was gorgeous, and they were in a row on this strip so people would just skip from club to club. We all somehow wound up with free passes to one of the clubs so it was a cheap night out! We danced until practically dawn and then came home and crashed. I managed a total of 2 hours of sleep before I was up again.
But in the morning when I got up there were many more messed up things going on than my sleep deprivation. I was the first one up and I noticed a pair of legs wearing jeans and sneakers sticking out from Kenny’s bunk. I thought Kenny had put his pajamas on but I didn’t think anything at first. Then when everyone began to stir Kenny got up laughing and asked:
Kenny: “Hey guys why did James pass out in my bed?”
Jen: “Um… James is over here?”
James: “What?”
Reality sank in, I guess the door had not fully closed the night before and some way- too- drunk American college kid had wandered in from the room downstairs and passed out in the bed next to Kenny!!!
OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!
So I quickly scaled the ladder to see what was going on. From the back he did kind of look like James, he was in his 20’s and he spoke American English. I poked him and said:
Jen: “Um excuse me… but I think you’re in the wrong room. But it’s ok!”
Dude: “Huh.” (He seemed like an experienced vagrant)
Jen: “Are you ok? Do you need some water or anything?”
Dude: “I want a bacon, egg, and cheese.”
Jen: “Yea well, that would be nice.”
James kindly urged him to “Get out.” He took his sweet time and when he finally left in a drunken stupor we all burst out laughing. These kind of of shenanigans WOULD happen to us.
On Sunday we all went down to the bay to ride on a cable car ride over Barcelona. It was COMPLETELY worth the long wait, the view was gorgeous. And it gave us a great outlet to wander around the city.
After a long day of exploring we made it to the Picasso museum which had been on the top of my list since we got here. It was AMAZING and displayed a really wide range of his works from him early years to his death. I am now fascinated and can’t wait to get home to paint!
On our last night in Barcelona we FINALLY managed to find good Paella and sangria (which EVERYONE should try, it’s lovely). But here’s the lesson we learned from a couple different meals of ordering Sangria: Order your own. Be sure to order a different kind than everyone else. Because one night James, Kenny, Jordan, and I all ordered chicken paella and they brought it all out in one big dish. Which would have been cool if it was actually enough to split between four people. So the last night we all got our own and had more than we could eat, which was glorious.
We spent our last night in Barcelona listening to James narrate the sex advice from Cosmo. Which was oddly HILARIOUS. Today we’re off for the second part of Fall break, we’re staying in GREECE with Andriana’s family. I CAN NOT WAIT! However I wish I could just skip the airport part.
Adios!
Jen