Fall Break Part 1, Barcelona

View of Barcelona from Park Guell

 All right, fall break post number one. Just want to start by saying that this was definitely one of the best weeks I have ever had. It was a tremendous amount of fun and I saw a lot of things that I never thought I would ever get the chance to see. So with that out of the way, let's start. We left for Florence on the 12:37 AM bus early Friday morning. We then had to sit around Florence until our bus for the Pisa airport left at 3:00 to catch our flight at 6:30. It was quite the ordeal. PLUS, the airline we flew on, Ryanair, blows. Super strict about carry on baggage. It has to be under a certain weight / dimensions and they're very particular about it and almost always weigh / measure, etc. Needless to say I was way past the limits in every way possible, so boarding the plane was very nerve wracking. However, escaping with no fines, we landed in Barcelona at around 9:00 AM. We were all super tired, so after checking into the hostel we proceeded to nap the day away. Another fun fact, upon arrival I almost got ran over by a moped, so that was pleasant. But luckily the disaster was averted.

Sagrada Familia

The first actual productive thing we did was to go see the "Sagrada Familia" church in Barcelona. Definitely the coolest church I have ever seen. It honestly looked like something straight out of Pirates of the Carribean, just the way it was designed and constructed. It was designed by the Spanish architect Gaudi, who is quite famous, and his architecture is all over the place. Barcelona in itself is a super modern, metropolitan city, and was really different than everything we were used to in Italy. Which makes it even odder to see this random, unusual Gaudi architecture sprouting out all over the place. All in all, it was definitely one of the cooler cities I have ever been to. The weather was great the entire time, probably sunny and 70's, pretty solid for the end of October. So that was day number one. Pretty much seeing the Sagrada Familia, napping, and wandering around Barcelona getting a feel for what the city was like and all. We then grabbed some lunch at this rando asian food restaurant called CASA FONG, which was unbelivable. Really good, we went there twice in fact. Super cheap too, so it was perfect. Then, Friday night we met up with some girls from our villa that were also in Barcelona at the time and went to one of the best mexican restaurants I've ever been to called Rossa Negra, I believe. It was tremendous. Line was super long so we had to lounge around the restaurant / bar area for like an hour and a half before hand, but that wasn't that bad since we all just chit chatted, made friendlies with the locals, and drank a bit. Day number one, done.

Just a quick side-note, we had a really nice hostel. It was pretty cheap and six of us had our own private room so we didn't have to deal with any riff-raff or sketchy individuals, which was nice. It also had a really nice patio and lounge area, and the staff was pretty helpful. It was right off of one of the main streets in Barcelona, in an area called Gracia, so good location as well.

The beach

The next day was a Saturday. Again, we didn't do a whole lot, but I honestly wouldn't have had it any other way. We made our way back down to the beach, shown to the right, and lounged beachside most of the day. We also indulged in some Paella, which was tremendous. Had to fit in some Spanish cuisine and not just mexican and asian food after all. We also took the time to have some tapas and brew at a beachside restaurant. My favorite tapas that I had whilst being there were definitely the Patatas Bravas, which was more or less just fried potatoes with this special kind of hot sauce on it, which was very good. Kind of reminded me of Raising Cane's sauce, but hot. So we spent the day eating and lounging, which was great. We also roamed around the streets and various districts of Barcelona a little bit more. Again, saw some sweet buildings designed by Gaudi, and again was loving the fact that I was finally running wild in a modern city again, as opposed to Florence. Saturday night, we decided to make some dinner at our hostel to save some money. It turned out great, breakfast for dinner of course. We made omlets and breakfast potatoes, quite good.

Me and some buddies at the beach

Also, Saturday night was our club rat night. We thought it was about time to hit some Barcelona clubs, and we went to one right down on the beach, which was a great choice. It was a pretty fun place, but the best part was definitely being able to leave the club on a moments notice, go chill on the beach for a quick minute, then head back in. It was a great time

Beachside Boardwalk on the way to the clubs. That kind of metallic looking thing in the upper/middle right was part of one of the clubs.

Needless to say our late night antics led to a mid-afternoon wake up. Which was fine, because we didn't really have an agenda and other people from the villa we were left had already moved on to their next destinations. We didn't really do too much on Sunday. More or less explored the downtown area around our Hostel as opposed to the beach, which was pretty cool. We found this great mexican restaurant for our last dinner, and I got my first and only glass of Sangria. Not a huge fan. But I was a huge fan of the mexican food we had. Best enchiladas of my life. Then we woke up the next day and a couple of us went to Park Guell. This was a park that overlooks Barcelona's skyline (see very first picture posted), and it was designed by none other than, you guessed it, Gaudi. It was a really cool place, and definitely wish we had more time to explore it, but alas our plane left for Edinburgh at around 5 o'clock. The park was great though, as was Barcelona. All in all this was probably the most unstructured, lounging, and food eating portion of the trip. Really liked the city itself too and definitely wouldn't mind finding myself back there at some point. Next stop, Edinburgh!

Park Guell

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