Barcelona: The city in Spain where Spanish isnt spoken...

just my luck!!! so my title is a bit of an exaggeration. obviously the speak spanish in barcelona. BUT it isnt their main language on any signs, menus, etc and therefore instead of feeling lucky in other places when english is the second language, here I´m lucky when spanish is the second language on something and it´s not just catalan. also, sorry for the no caps, but they´re a little too much effort to deal with on this crazy foreign (not that crazy im just lazy) keyboard.

So to recap the last few days! (Photo note: I´m at our hostel right now and we have computer access but no access to the hard drive, so I cant post photos now, so I´ll be back-posting photos from the last few days once we get to an internet cafe and can put photos up. But for now, be fulfilled with my lovely and enlightening adventures and stories.

Sooo where did I leave you?

Our second day in Ibiza we took two buses to a more remote/quiet beach called Cala llenya which was beautiful. The water was great and so was the beach. that night we had our final dinner in Ibitha and packed up our stuff because we had an early flight to Barthelona the next morning.

We got to Barthelona EARLY the next morning and couldnt check into our hostel yet so we schlepped our suitcases around (which i love doing...) and first looked for a non-existant internet cafe that both of our books had and then when we couldnt find it we went to a cafe and had some drinks until it was time to check into our hostel. Our hostel is GREATTTT! it´s filled completely with Ikea furniture (which is my dream!) and right on Las Ramblas and Placa Catalunya. Once we checked in we had lunch. I had a tipico dish (tipico nibbles mom!) that had spanish sausage, a fried egg and potatoes which was really good. Then we bought a 2 day ticket for a hop on hop off (also known as flop on flop off bus in my family due to the inevitabilty of napping on such a bus) and took all three routes in offered which was about 5 hours in total. Of course I fell asleep while on the top of the bus (hence flop on) and got a weird sunburn and now have an odd rash on my left cheek..awesome. I keep touching the odd bumpy rash and hope it goes away..fingers crossed y'all! We didnt hop on that day because we wanted to get a good layout of the city and see an overview of all the sights before deciding what we wanted to do. It was also amazing to see the incredible parks, great architecture and art all throughout the city. Barcelona seems like a really art and design focused city. which = super cool.

That night we went to a fabulous dinner at a restaurant called Organic off of las ramblas. it was great!! Then we prompty fell asleep once we got back due to our early morning that day.

Today we woke up, went to a fabulous place for breakfast where we has dark hot chocolate with cream (it was like drinking melted chocolate) and I of course had a proscuitto sandwich. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: (it´s not actually proscuitto, its ham made in spain and there is a whole section in my lonely planet about it and is glorious and common and I try to eat it every day so as to appreciate spain as best as i possible can. so i called in proscuitto, but its actually spanish ham and delicious!)

Then we began our GAUDI Day!!!! We started with La Pedrera which was really amazing, beautiful and innovative and I´m convinced that Gaudi is the Dr. Seuss of architecture. It´s too bad they made that a public building and not apartments anymore because I would love to live there.

Then we stopped for lunch (didnt have a proscuitto sandwich) and made our way to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi´s huge church in Barcelona. It´s still not finished, is full of scaffolding, but you can still see Gaudi's design and vision. we decided not to wait in the two hour lines for the elevator up to the tower and strolled around the church, took pictures and looked at the different designs and details that Gaudi made sure to include in this work.

Once we got our religious fulfillment of the day, we made our way to Park Guell, the park Gaudi designed which was originally intentioned for private residences. We walked around there for a long time, looked at the mosaics, hansel and gretel like houses, listened to the musicians playing in the different areas, and ran into people from Stanford. <--- :-0 is that your face of surprise right now?!? Yeah stacey randomly ran into her big sib from stanford that she had her freshman year who was there with two friends. And not only did we randomly run into them in Park Guell in Barcelona, but we are also on the same bus with them to Pamplona and plan on having lunch with them there. Quick tangent: Vote/survey: Should we go to a bullfight in Pamplona? (answers could be stuff like, yes it is a cultural experience, no it is cruel, or yes it is a cultural experience but be aware it is cruel, or other and explain. grathias)

So, we walked around the park for a while, took a bunch of pictures and then took the bus back. we stopped at Casa Batllo which is another Gaudi building and while we didnt go in because the entrance fee was 16.5 euro which is literally the price of dinner, we did look at the outside which really exemplified Gaudi´s style and aesthetic (ie what houses would really look like in Seuss Land).

Then we walked back to our hostel, looking at street performers on Las Ramblas on the way. One other observation. Barcelona recently added bike lanes to all of its major streets and on top of that also has began this public transportation effort called Bicing (bicing.com) where people can pay an annual fee and rent bikes for up to 24 hrs per time throughout the city at electronic bike stations (there are 100s of them throughout the city). I think it´s a really intriguing and great idea for people to pay a minimal amount and be able to use public transportation bikes whenever they need to.

Now, it´s 10 at night and dinner time!!! Overall, so far I love Barcelona. I love the art, design and parks throughout the city and also really appreciate their efforts to have alternative forms of public transportation. We have two more days here and I look forward to going to a crafts market tomorrow and also some other non Gaudi sights.

Adios all! (or whatever they say in Catalan)
Hannah

PS-please hope that my odd, one sided-not visible but tactily noticable facial rash goes away. grathias.