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Spain, VERY COLD, and as I still only had my stupid South America clothes I was probably the only person in the whole of Spain wearing as many layers as I had with flip flops! My first trip to a European supermarket in Madrid left me so overwhelmed by choice that I spent over half an hour wandering from aisle to aisle staring at the shelves, before eventually leaving with pasta and sauce and bread and cheese, standard.
My sister Hannah arrived from England to meet me and spend two days in Madrid and two days in Barcelona with me! Having not actually known anything about Madrid before I arrived we found that its a pretty cool city! There are hundreds of street performers EVERYWHERE! People just randomly dressed up as cartoon characters, or just doing a bit of dancing in the square. There are a lot of beautiful old buildings and squares, and we did the free walking tour around Madrid to see the, palace, cathedral, churches and various other sights. There is also for some strange reason an Egyptian temple, complete with original stonework and hyroglifics.
The tapas was great, and the best part was the gourmet tapas market, mercado de San Miguel, next to Plaza Mayor, inside an iron and glass building, which has many stalls each selling different types of tapas; tiny cakes and biscuits, cocktail sticks of olives and cheese and sundried tomatoes, crispbread with smoked salmon, literally all kinds of stuff, which me and Han freqented A LOT of times while we were there!
The overnight bus to Barcelona was crap, what's going on Europe? Why does South America have far superior quality overnight buses than you? That didn't make sense to me! But I did enjoy the fact that the taxi driver who took us to the bus station actually thought I was Spanish! Go me and my awesome language skills!
Unlike the bus, Barcelona was really cool. and has so much to do that we didn't have enough time for everything! We went to see the beach, which ws pretty nice, but obviously freezing cold as its now Winter, but I reckon in the Summer it'd be sweet to chill out on the beach! The gothic quarter has medieval stone buildings with gargoyles and archways across the roads, and a big cathedral, the passageways are lit by old lamposts so it looks pretty creepy at nighttime. We went to see two of the Gaudi designed houses on Passeig de Gracia, La Pedrera and Casa Batillo. They were both expensive to go inside so we decided to only go inside one, Casa Batillo, because it looked more colourful and exciting!
The facade of the outside is really colourful and the windows are round and wavy shaped like the sea. Inside there is a central stairwell tiled with blue tiles, going from lighter blue at the bottom to darker blue at the top nearest to the window, and on the roof there are tiled chimneys, and in the garden and on the back side of the house there are many tiled patterns and pictures, its really cool.
We met up with my friend Kasia, who I met in Brasil but is now living in Barcelona. We went with her to parque Guell, which was also designed by Gaudi, and has an amazing view over the city, a series of escalators going up the hill to get to the park, a church and a house in the entrance that look like they'd fit in somewhere in willy wonka and the chocolate factory, a huge terrace surrounded by tiled benching, with tiled archways underneath, its a real work of art, and it would be pretty cool to live in a house like that or have a Gaudi inspired garden, maybe that can be a project for the future....
Of course we also visited Sagrada Famila (it still isnt finished) but we didn't go inside as that was also incredibly expensive, and the queue for the entrance went all the way round two sides of the cathedral! And so the time has come to go home, Barcelona was a great end to an amazing trip, and a fantastic year away, but now its time for a short trip home before I set off on my next big adventure!
Adios! Chau! Hasta luego!
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