On Tuesday, our bus left for Barcelona at 8:05am so we met at the train station at 7:45am. A lady heard me talking on the phone in English (oops!) and introduced herself because she was American too. Her daughter Elizabeth is studying at the private university here in Pamplona and she and her husband came to visit for a couple of weeks. They were all headed to Barcelona for the break as well.
We had to take the more expensive bus to Barcelona because the regular ones were all full. It ended up being really nice and we got some snacks too. It took about 5 ½ hours to get to Barcelona and I probably slept for about 3 since it was so early in the morning still. The other 3 girls were sitting together and I’m kind of glad that I wasn’t with them because they talked almost the whole way and I just wanted to sleep.
When we arrived, we found the metro and took a line to somewhere close to our hostel. It actually ended up being kind of far away, but we didn’t really know were we were going exactly. We lugged our suitcases and stuff down Las Ramblas (the main tourist street) and found our street and our hostel. We checked in and went to our rooms. I was in a separate room fore the other girls because I booked my reservation separately. I ended up being on the fourth floor in a room with 4 beds (instead of the 10 bed room that I was expecting). There were 2 guys staying in the room and one unoccupied bed, and let me tell you, it kind of freaked me out. I mean, I’ve never stayed in a room with guys that I didn’t know before so I was a little paranoid about all of my stuff. Luckily, we each got a locker to put our stuff in and I made sure I locked everything up because I had no idea if I could trust the guys or not.
After we all got settled, we decided to find somewhere to eat for lunch. We decided on a little outdoor café on Las Ramblas and ordered some bocadillos (little sandwiches). After lunch we walked down to the pier where there was a shopping mall. We got Starbucks (how American!) and looked around in the stores for a while before deciding that we wanted to check out the beach. It was kind of far away, but we walked there. It was nice to finally see a beach and the Mediterranean Sea, but the weather definitely wasn’t warm enough to be in a bathing suit. We walked back to the hostel and all of the girls took a nap while I wrote in my journal for class and read. The girls all got “ready” to go out which took forever.
We decided to go out for dinner. We walked around for a long time and couldn’t’ come to a consensus on anything. Finally we were getting pretty far from the hostel so we decided on a place called “Restaurante Catalunya.” I ordered paella because I wanted to try a typical Spanish dish. As an appetizer we had some simple bread with smashed tomatoes and olive oil on it and it was really delicious. I was glad that I got the paella because it was really good. I got the chicken type so there was chicken, rice, and vegetables all fried up together (you can see it in the picture). It was a really long meal, but we all had a really good time just talking and hanging out at the restaurant. It was past midnight when we left and we all decided we were too tired to go out afterward. We all just went back to the hostel and crashed.
