Barcelona

We have spent a little over two days here and have definitely sacrificed sleep to fit everything we want in.

Monday began in Valencia, and we spent the morning walking around the City Center. We saw Valencia's oldest and largest cathedral and went to one of the best farmers markets in Europe to get snacks for the train.

 We arrived in Barcelona a little after 6, but spent a little over two hours in the train station waiting to make a reservation for our train to Nice. It turned out that we couldn't make the reservation anyway, so tomorrow will be an adventure of taking quite a few trains in order to get there. We will spend the entire day traveling, but we might be able to get there for free with our Eurail passes!

By the time we got to our hostel, we were crabby and exhausted so we decided to just stay in for the night and book an extra night to have a little more time. This hostel is much better than the one in London. We have met quite a few very nice people and have had a great time here!

Tuesday we went on a free walking tour of El Gotic, which is the oldest part of the city made up of a maze of narrow streets. We learned about the Catalan culture and were surprised to find out that the people here want to obtain independence from Spain and speak their own language. 

Then we decided to take another tour immediately afterward, and we learned about the Modernism movement in the city's architecture. We saw several buildings all resurrected between 1880 and 1914, including Barcelona's famous concert hall, hospital, and three homes designed by Gaudi. Gaudi was definitely our favorite architect of the time--just as a side note, it is said that George Lucas got his inspiration for storm troopers from Gaudi's chimneys. This tour ended at La Sagrada Familia, which was Gaudi's last project before he died. It is a massive and very ornate cathedral. Only a quarter of it was built before he died, and it is still under construction today! It is supposed to be finished in 2026.

We then went on one last tour, which was more of a pub crawl. We got to try different types of Tapas, which are traditional small dishes that are served at pretty much every pub and restaurant. On these tours, we even made a couple new friends...a girl from Australia and a girl from Canada! At the last pub, the four of us ordered take away wine (which is actually legal here) and took it to the beach. When we got back to the hostel, we met up with two more girls from Australia who convinced us to go to a nightclub with them. This was definitely an experience, since neither of us had ever been to a club before, let alone in Barcelona. It was pretty much the typical scene from movies, and we stayed out late and had a good time.

After only 5 hours of sleep, we spent all day today walking. We wandered through La Rambla, which is a street full of little shops and performers. Something really trendy right now is a mouthpiece that makes your voice sound sort of like a high pitched duck, so there were men all over yelling with them trying to sell them. We went into another market like the one in Valencia and marveled over how disgusting some of the animal parts were. 

Our walk then took us to the harbor and the beach, then we found our way to the Picasso Museum. The building itself was as eye-catching as the art inside, and we learned about Picasso's transformations as an artist and were able to pick out scenes from Barcelona in some of his pieces.

Tomorrow we are leaving bright and early to begin our train adventure to (fingers crossed) Nice!