Barcelona

So I am currently spending my last night in Barcelona, I will be back in Ireland around noon tomorrow. I am completely beat. I have walked around this city so much that I dont even know how many miles I could have possibly wandered around. My friend Brian, from RWU, and I got here at noon on Friday. It took us close to 30 minutes to find our hostel, the Centric Point Hostel, which is the nicest hostel Ive stayed in, plus we get free internet, but they do charge you for other stuff that you need, i.e. a top sheet/blanket and towels. Friday we just spent the time walking around La Rambla and the harbor. La Rambla is one of the main streets that every tourist goes to. It is filled with little stands selling souveniers and also pet stands believe it or not. The pet stands sell everything such as, parakeets, parrots, baby water turtles, tortoises, pigeons, rabbits, chincillas, hamsters, all sorts of other birds, ferrets, and guinea pigs. I also found that if you go to a souvenier shop and ask a price of something and then decide not to get it they will go down as far as possible in price to make you buy it (I did not find any previous information if bartering was appropriate so I didnt try). We also tried two different types of spanish foods: tapas and paella. Tapas are small portions of food that you share (although we didnt know this till after we ate it) so generally you are supposed to buy a whole bunch, but we only bought ourselves two each. Paella is a rice dish, generally consisting of rice, veggies, and fish/meat. It can get rather pricey and in some restaurants the dishes are large enough for several people. I have to say the small take out portion I got was great.

On the second day we spent finding all of the Guadi architecture. It was absolutely amazing. I would highly recommend the Sagrada Familia. It has to be the most unique church I have ever seen. There was also park designed by Guadi which was really beautiful and overlooked the city giving you the best view. We also checked out a few markets, especially this one famous one because the building has an interestingly colorful roof that has a rippled shape to it. Since Brian is an architecture student you can believe we check out a lot of buildings. We also checked out the Olympic stadium to find some sort of huge festival for children being held. I have to say compared to the Birds Nest, this stadium looks extremely simple and kind of boring.

Today, we went to the Museu de Picasso. It was a quaint art museum but it showed all of Picasso's work that not many people are familiar with. Picasso was truly an amazing artist throughout his life. His portraits and drawings pre-cubism are phenomenal. After Brian left today, I spent some more time wandering around, but couldn't do much more than I had already.

Also, although Barcelona is in Spain the locals speak Catallan which has many differences from Spanish. Most of the menus were written in Spanish and Catallan. It even turns out though that some of the locals can barely understand spanish it is that different. The language barrier was a little difficult but using some vocab helped a bit.

Thanks to hostel prices and bus tickets I quickly found myself running short on the 200 euro I brought with me. Although Spain might be slightly cheaper than Ireland it can still get expensive.

Overall, Barcelona was a great place to visit. There is so much to visit, there is no way you can see the whole city in 3 days. I think a week would be good, but it would be expensive. I was hoping to see some of the areas that were in Woody Allens newest movie, Vicky Christina Barcelona, but I had no such luck. I think the area he filmed in is on the outskirts of Barcelona city or are in an area called Poble Espanol but I wasnt able to make it out there.