the last thursday of the trip, we had an extra class in the afternoon so that we could leave on friday afternoon for barcelona.
we spent the afternoon in texts class talking about los girasoles ciegos, a book with four different short stories about life after the spanish civil war. thursday night katrina and i arranged to cook paella with our madre and we both took lots of notes to hopefully recreate the dish at home but had a hard time figuring out which spices translated and which we'd be able to find here in the states. it was amazing paella as usual and the pictures make me drool now. madre was so adorable too, she kept calling us the cocineras and that we were having a fiesta and made us a few tapas to snack on while we were cooking. afterword a bunch of us went out to umbracle for one last thursday night out at a discoteca in valencia and had a crazy time again, taking turns with the gogo girls dancing on platforms and enjoying all sick remixes downstairs.
friday morning was a class full of "why are you all so tired" from professor valle but there was nothing better than the cure-all of a doner kebab for the train ride to barcelona. rach cat and i made our way to rachel's friend caroline's apartment once we got to barcelona that afternoon. we immediately realized the differences in accents and heard/read a lot of catalan around us, but everyone still understood and spoke to us in castellano once they realized that's what we spoke. caroline's apartment was absurdly cool, a huge brightly colored apartment right in the middle of things in barcelona within walking distance to most of the major landmarks in the city. we got settled a little before walking down la rambla, a long street that leads from the city to the beach that is full of crazy street performers and vendors (also known for pickpockets but i finally learned my lesson and didn't lose a thing!) there were people imitating edward scissor hands and captain jack sparrow, one guy on stilts dressed as the nightmare before christmas and countless other people dressed up more and more absurdly the further you walked. also wandered through a cute little market with tons of smoothie drinks and fresh fruit but decided to stop at a cute little foccacia place for some dinner.
caroline knew a lot of people from all over (holland, turkey, switzerland, boston) and had them all come over to hang out at the apartment along with some of our friends from the program before going out. this led to a little trouble the next day as we were apparently a little louder than we thought but it all got worked out after being yelled at in spanish at 8 am saturday morning to wake up and clean. we tried to get into one of the bigger discotecas by the beach friday night but we had a lot of people with us and some of the boys were a little rambunctious for the bouncers' taste and the cover charge was ridiculous so we decided to hit up some discopubs instead which were really awesome anyway. we ended the night hanging out on the beach for a while before catching taxis home.
the next day was extremely productive with sightseeing.
we started at the sagrada familia and got some breakfast at a little cafe but after seeing the line that wrapped around about 5 blocks to enter the church, we decided to head up to park guell first instead. this park is absolutely stunning, it's all decorated with beautiful mosaics and the entrance looks like a gingerbread house park of some sort. Gaudi designed the park along with some other houses in barcelona (and coined the term gaudy) and there are countless viewpoints of the whole city from the mountains to the sea. we spent a few hours walking around taking in the views and enjoying the musicians and vendors. the musicians have to audition with the city to get dibs on certain spots in the park so there were some really talented performers in there.
we ended up buying some cool jewelry made from forks from this really interesting guy from columbia; he travels around and spends the summers in barcelona and gave us all little wire star rings that he made right in front of us while chatting me up in spanish about stars and light years. there was one guitar player who fell in love with rachel and was singing the wrong lyrics to american songs to her but with thrown in phrases of "yeah let's party tonight" and "meow." we even walked through the walkway that was on america's next top model and i had a blast imitating all the people looking at
everything through their camera lenses because they wanted to get pictures of everything.
we headed back toward the center of town and ran into some people from the group trip while shopping around in desigual, a store that was insanely cool but unfortunately out of my price range. we considered going into one of the cool gaudi houses but decided to do the sagrada familia instead since there were slightly hefty entrance fees for both. (i guess i'll have to go back to see them, bummer).
one of the girls from the program who had already been to barcelona recommended that we buy the audio tour of the sagrada familia and it was awesome advice because we learned so much about the themes and inspirations for every element of the church, inside and out. everything was planned out so deliberately, from the themes of the different sides and which side faced east/west to the colors in the stain glass windows.
it was so elaborate and my jaw literally dropped when we got inside because it is so incredibly immense, and the columns that are based on the form of trees and branches just make it even more awe inspiring. it was interesting to walk through and learn about gaudi's interest in the mathematics of nature and incorporating natural forms and light and color into the architecture. i'm glad to have contributed to it's (eventual) completion. we got shooed out at closing time and grabbed some sandwiches to head over toward the plaza españa for what we thought would be a light show in the fountain; but there was some sort of band/orchestra being set up instead so we just watched the sunset and tried to figure out what they could be doing because we never actually heard them play anything and the setup was there the next afternoon too. saturday night we met up with some program friends at a bar called the dow jones where all the drink prices change based on demand like on wallstreet which was cute. we headed out to a discoteca close to the university (a good idea because the places near the universities are always more likely to have people our age) and had the best time ever dancing and taking ridiculous pictures like we were superstars on the little stages. cat and i ended up taking an adventure around the dance floor to avoid some creepy not-so-guapos. we headed back in taxis and began giggling at around 5 am and started again when we got up at 9 and didn't stop until tired hit at around 1 pm the following day.
i honestly have never laughed so much in my life. we took the metro to plaza cataluña and were going to hit up the hardrock cafe (my first and only american food while in spain) but were told we couldn't get lunch food until noon so we headed over to a restaurant called, what else, "restaurant." we had some amazing fried eggs (my new favorite) that i had demanded for breakfast and some batidos; rach had spaghetti of course. we realized that we were all still hungry and wanted to get hard rock so we paid our bill and literally ran across the street to hard rock cafe to eat again. yes, we ate two meals in a row. but it was so worth it, a cheeseburger has never tasted so good in my life. we convinced chips and curtis to ditch their walking tour and join us for lunch so we had a big loud american group eating everything in sight, we represented the usa very well i'd say. that afternoon we made our way to montjuic where there were more amazing gorgeous views of the whole city and sea with the opposite mountains as the landscape. that's one thing that made barcelona feel so cool is that it's kind of trapped between gorgeous green mountains and the clear blue sea. we were all really bummed that our giggle and incredible sight filled weekend was over but we made our way to the train station to head back for our last few days in valencia.
i was a little behind for monday's class after only skimming the readings we were supposed to do but was able to catch up and went to meet cat to get some work done in the centro after class. i wrote so many papers in spanish in the month of july and i got them down to an art by the end, four page papers only taking me an hour to write. we shopped around plaza de la reina for souvenirs and gifts for family and friends (merry christmas everyone) and met up with the uva crew that night at our favorite little dive bar by school. oh but we had planned to do dinner at a place called los bestias which is a crazy kind of joke restaurant filled with fallas-type overly sexual art but that fell through so i'll have to go back to do that too. tuesday i went to lunch at a wok all you can eat restaurant with nick seeing as both of us had been craving asian food all month, and it was pretty delicious and you can pick out whatever you wanted them to grill up for you and they'd do it and bring it back to you. that night everyone had to study and pack but i got really anxious so i went for a run through the rio.
i ran through the ciudad de artes y ciencias and the rio and by the palau de la musica and had a slight breakdown watching the sunset over such a beautiful place, wondering when i'd get to come back. there were people doing bike tricks and roller blading, people playing guitar and having picnics in the grass, strolling by the blue reflecting pools and chatting on the benches. ohhh i already want to go back.
wednesday was full of exams, both of which went a little rockier than i had expected but my grades ended up fine in the end so i'm happy. the goodbye lunch was a little more sentimental this time seeing as i was actually leaving. the food was still insanely delicious; we got croquettas instead of mejillones this time but the rest was the same and amazing. there were lots of toasts and pictures with professors who we all came to know and love. a lot of us realized we still needed some mementos and souvenirs so we shopped around and found this really cool authentic-feeling ceramics shop off of plaza de la reina. i had to get another little carryon suitcase after buying so many extra things and almost jumped on my suitcases to get them to zip up but got it all in order after about two hours. we all decided to do something memorable for our last night and head to the beach to start the night. we found abandoned wooden boats to sit on right by the water and pretty much everyone showed up, which was perfect for our last night. i finally got to go to akuarela, a discoteca right on the beach that my host sister had told me about the first week i got to valencia that is free monday-wednesday. that place was really cool and i'm kind of upset we didn't spend more nights hanging out on the beach, but it also helped to make it feel special and memorable.
it also helped to make the day of traveling with heavy stuff through airports a little more awful. madre woke us up with pancakes made from the cake mix sent from a former student that she didn't know what to do with, and chocolate dipping sauce. she sent us on our way from the soccer stadium but i think she left before she could see me bawling my eyes out. we all beat the suckiness of going through the airport by reminiscing and planning my uva visits and all our spain reunions, not to mention going through the duty free airport stores. the flights weren't too bad but it was a long day of traveling since my flight from new york to north carolina had a two hour delay, putting me in my bed at home at about 4 am. as if my body and sleep cycle wasn't messed up enough. the jet lag messed with me pretty badly the next few days but i'm mostly back to normal now, just left with memories and pictures calling me back.
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