okay. so barcelona this weekend = amazing. minus the part where i was getting off the night bus and i feel water dripping on me, not because my water bottle was leaking, but because the cap had shot off of it and the entire bottle of water emptied into my purse. don't worry, the purse is fine, it dried. but when my camera dried, it was pronounced dead. it was sad. i have to steal everyone's pictures from barcelona, but luckily i had already uploaded all of my pictures off of the camera. so now i'm in the market for a new camera. and have to find one before this weekend cause the stetson/marist program is going to sevilla and cordoba for the weekend and don't want to steal pictures again...
so we get off the night bus and can't check into our hostel until 11. it's currently just about 7am. we decide to make our way to the beach and possibly catch a sunrise. so we get on the metro and lug our duffel bags halfway across barcelona to la playa! it was beautiful. but i'm sure we were super comical trying to find out way around town at the 7am hour with our mounds of luggage. we play at the beach, and each took a sip or two of ali's leftover wine (she brought some on the bus so she could sleep better... lol. she's hilarious) and then we navigated our way to our hostel and were there by 1030, we figured a half hour early was alright.
well, turns out the hostel had been remodeling and was only just reopening that day. and they weren't quite ready yet. they said check-in was at two, but we could lock our luggage in a room and explore until then. so we decided to, even though all we wanted was a siesta after an 8 hour all night bus ride. but it turned out well. we went to el parque de guell. it was fabulous :) gaudi did lots of work there. we had to walk up a huge hill though, the incline was probably over 45 degrees. it was ridiculous. my shins are sore. but the park was beautiful and we ate our lunches that our senoras' packed us on some pretty nifty gaudi mosaic benches.
then we found la sagrada familia (church by gaudi that's still under construction) and it was gooorgeous. we didn't go inside, though.
now it's about 6 and we decide it's time to check in and siesta. we sleep for an hour. get up. get ready. and try to meet up with the other kids we know staying at the hostel on the other side of town. this did not work out well. in consisted of us walking far too many blocks in heels, missing a bus, and taking the metro to a place where we would have had to walk another 12 blocks to meet them. we said f* this, we're out and just had tapas by ourselves (chicken paella, papas fritas, and chocolate cake-- so good!) and then we decided we were all too tired and rachel was too blistered from her heels to go out. she walked home barefoot. it was kind of depressing because we had our high early on during the day and the night was anti-climactic after talking about it and looking forward to it for so long. (none of us had yet to go out and drink/dance in spain) but we were optimistic that it would happen saturday.
saturday we got up early, but somehow the day was spent shopping. which was super fun, but kind of funny that that's how we chose to spend the day. we did see la casa batllo though, its an aquatic themed house by guadi. super amazing. i <3 gaudi. we went inside. this man was a genius.
oh! for food on saturday we had mcdonalds (we were on budget, and needed comida americana, so we had "american saturday) i had a happy meal and an ice cream cone-- they give you ice cream in sugar cones not cake! for .75 centimos! i was pretty happy.
and for dinner we got two pizzas from pizza hut. lol. it was good too.
then we got ready to go to the bar crawl that we had signed up for at our hostel. we're getting ready, open up our 1.55 euro bottle of sparkling wine, and enter the polish boys.
apparently ali was in the bathroom and said hi to one of the boys. he immediately fell in love with her. dubbed her his girlfriend. asked her to marry her, several times. and was pretty much all over her. there was a group of 5 polish boys, they sang ali happy birthday in polish. they came into our hostel room (we were playing music) and rapped to us in polish. we were all in hysterics. it was so funny. and then i guess they wanted documentation of simon (polish boy)'s love for ali, so they bust out this huge digital camera and a hand flash. a hand flash. rofl. it was ridiculous. simon didn't like the fact that ali smokes, so he threw her pack of cigarettes down. when we went down into the common room, the boys were outside and simon blew on the glass and drew hearts on the window. they walked with us to the metro, one of the polish guys put his hand on my back and was hoping i would go with it. i didn't. there was confusion at the metro, so we just walked ahead and got in a car cause we didn't really want them all over us all night. they got in a car right behind us, and a few stops down, they came into our car and simon tried to get ali to sit on his lap. she wouldnt. he kept touching her face and saying "you're so beautiful. for meee." and things of that nature. the boys got off the metro a stop before we had to. simon and friend put their hands on the window of the metro and stared longingly. when the metro took off, they ran with it. it was quite the scene.
bar crawl. 15 euros. 4 bars, 1 club. Free shots at all. the only problem is that it's a lot of waiting. bar crawl starts at 930, you get to the club at 230am. so you're at each place an hour, because the bars want you to buy more shots.
bar #1 shot of tequila. (salt and lime and everything... it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be... i really like the lime chaser)
then we got bored and it was ali's birthday. enter shot #2 of after shock. 3.5 euros.
bar #2 another shot of tequila.
ali wanted to split a beer, so there's 2 more euros to split a Heineken. i was a little tipsy after the beer, but i didn't last long.
bar #3 another shot. i'm not sure of what, they just had them lined up and were passing them out as we entered. it was blue. at bar #3 one of the bar crawl guides was walking around with a watergun filled with vodka lemonade. i had two shots of that.
bar#4 it was a long walk to bar#4. they sent around a bottle of vodka, i had a sip. i talked to a kid from UF who was on spring break from study abroad in london. when we arrived, i had my free shot. this was when i called james, cause i didn't have service earlier, i had wanted to call and tell him that i drank a heineken. i finally got through. he told me not to lose my virginity. thanks james.
kristen and i had decided that we needed to talk to someone we didn't know at this bar. so when jenna and i made our way to the dance floor, i danced with some kid from minnesota. but i was comfortable dancing with him, so that didn't last long. but i succeeded with my goal.
i liked bar #4 they played good ole american music :)
we finally get to the club. received our last shot. and danced. we had to repeatedly say no to sketchy guys who just wanted to grind. umm. i need my dancing space, thank you.
one of our tour guides danced with me, and i can see how girls trust the guys that work at clubs.. it's easy to be like oh. it's just the guy who works here, not some sketchy dude who wants to get in my pants. it's his job to make sure we're having fun. this is probably the wrong mentality. so i semi-grind danced with the kid from minnesota and our tour guide in the white hat. but that was enough for me. i will dance with my girl friends, thank you. i'm never going to a club with less than 4 girls with me, it was ridiculous. guys wouldn't just come up behind you and start dancing.. if you were walking by they would grab your arms and try to pull you to them. not cool. rich, a kid from marist, was all of our surrogate boyfriend for the night. overall, it was a fantastic night.
next morning we got up. i called you as your party was winding down. and we sat on a bus for 8 hours. it was a lot of fun though. me encanta barcelona.
