“Barcelona”

So sorry I haven’t written in a while, but I had a CRAZY weekend in Barcelona with all of my St. Thomas friends and am now, currently, taking a study break from our first exams in Spain. Don’t get me wrong, I have been having an absolute BLAST over here, almost too hard to study when I look outside and it is 75 and sunny with an entire city to explore right outside of my door!
So far, exams are going really well! Aced 3 of them, after studying by butt off, and have 2 more tomorrow. Forget about those though! Let me tell you about my weekend!
So this weekend was one of my good friend, Alli’s, 21st birthday so my friends and I all decided that we would have a sort of “reunion” weekend and invite everyone from school and see how many people would be interested (for all of our birthdays) and go from there. Little did I know, 20 people would be responding “ABSOLUTELY! YES!!!” so this short, little weekend turned into a, quite large, extravaganza!
Megan and I left Seville around 7:30am (our time; 12:30am yours) Friday morning and arrived in Barcelona a short while after around 9:00 or so. Without hesitation, we decided to not call any of our friends and instead roam the city and find our way around instead of waking up any of our friends who arrived the night before. Being the knowledgeable Spaniard I am now (hahaha) we hopped on an airport bus and actually arrived in plaza Catalunya, which is one of the largest and most well-known plazas in Barcelona which has the two “twin” fountains and a bird plaza. Literally I am calling it the bird plaza because there were THOUSANDS OF BIRDS!!! As you can see in the pictures… they kept landing on me, which was pretty TERRIFYING but I survived, without bird flu.
The next two days were pretty much a blur. We travelled everywhere and anywhere so quickly that they all seemed to be jumbled into one large excursion. Saw Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s mosaic park, all of the main plazas, and las ramblas which is the main shopping area. Everything was beautiful, minus the weather! On and off rain/snow on Friday and Sunday, but Saturday had a bit of sun to clear up the crummy weather!
All in all, the trip was phenomenal! Got to see tons of friends, explore a new city, and meet some new people and share some new memories. I can honestly say that the 23 of us that crammed into two hostel rooms, was TOTALLY WORTH IT!  Megan and I ended up buying lunch meat and bread at the local supermercado and saved about 40 euros because of it (for lunch every day)! The food was really good, but expensive, and to be honest… The group that I was with was DEFINITELY willing to pay whatever for the weekend. However, I saved some money, had a blast, and am still proud of figuring out the metro system! (Dad, in Germany, NOT SO MUCH!)

I miss you all so much! But, a new “Madrid” post will be up within the next few days… and get ready! That one should be exciting!

Laur

P.S. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SKYPE WITH ME! (Ash, Tess, Maddy, John Michael, etc. I'm bummed no one has been able to!!! GET ON THAT YOU GUYS! --- Mom, completely excluding you! WAY TO GO!)

Quote of the trip: “Donde está el parque mosaico de Gaudi?” (Where is Gaudi’s mosaic park?) --- Response from the American (who we thought was Spanish): “You are IN it.”