Walk, Walk, Walk in Barcelona!!

We touched down in Barcelona after a long day of delays to be greeted by the warm Mediterranean breeze and my dear friend Mike Seidmon’s loving arms. Seidmon lived on our floor freshman year and we have been great friends since, he is currently “studying” in Barcelona. Our hostel was located about a two-minute walk from La Rambla, which is Barcelona’s big and lively avenue. The hostel was adorable, very well kept, nice sheets, our own private balcony overlooking the street, and a public terrace that was its finest feature!

I love hostel life. Brushing my teeth with girls from Holland, sitting out on our terrace and talking about everything with a couple from Ireland, and sharing a room with girls from Belgium the first night. When we arrived we went to an unbelievable dinner and sipped on some fantastic red vino, which by the way is such a cooler word that “wine.” Spread the word about vino. Anyways, afterwards we changed and went out to a club titled Bikini something or other. Didn’t get home till about 7 am.

The next day, Thursday, was a very exciting day because one of my favorite people ever, Zach Samaras, who is studying in Madrid, flew to meet us for the weekend!! After we checked him into the hostel we decided to walk, and walk we did. I am pretty sure that the three of us walked a total of 6 to 8 miles meandering the streets of Barcelona. We walked to the beach and met some crazy kids who were swimming in the freezing cold water. I went up to them and said, “Hey! What the heck are you doing in there? It’s flippin freezing!!” Their response, “we are from Canada.” That explains everything.

After the beach we stumbled upon La Boquaria, a massive and hectic open market, which had everything from baby lambs head (with eyeballs!!) to Haribo gummy candies of every kind to some of the freshest fruit I’ve ever seen.

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Supposedly this is the oldest market in all of Europe, we went at the end of the day and they were practically giving away their delicious smoothies, and I was very pleased to find myself some tasty pomegranates!! We also found an open antique market where I bought a pair of splendid vintage sunglasses for what I bargained down to 12 euro! We ate a great meal of Mexican food and mojitos with all of my IU friends, Robyn, Seidmon, Zach, Liza and I. It was quite the joyous reunion!! At night we walked back to the beach to star gaze.

We met our fourth roommate once we returned, a Brazilian man who was at least 34 that spoke Portuguese, a little Spanish, even less French, and about five words of English. This led to a rather interesting living situation with the man we named ‘Greg Ramirez.’ Greg led to some great laughs due to the complete language barrier and age difference.

Friday we attempted to rent bikes but after a big fail we decided, well Zach decided, to walk to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. If you have ever been to Barcelona you must know this is not something the average tourist walks to, far too far, but not for young Zach. This building has been in the process of completion for over 200 years.

We paid 13 euro each to walk inside this not even nearly finished, yet absolutely unbelievable, cathedral. After touring the inside we went to the Gaudi museum that taught us a lot about the man. All of his architecture is greatly inspired by nature and almost exactly matches up with the piece of nature he had intended to recreate. Very beautiful and inspiring. One of the most amazing portions of the museum was a collection of photographs of La Sagrada beginning in 1898 where the building was just beginning and the surrounding area is nothing but grass.Mind blowing!!

After that we convinced Zach to let us give our feet a break and took the metro to an area closer to our hostel and sat down for a bite to eat. Since we were on the Mediteranean and since I have an obsession with seafood I obviously ordered the Seafood Paella. Delicious! We walked around and saw the Arc de Triomf and decided to call it nap time. After nap-time we met up with Seidmon and went out clubbing. I have never felt like I was in an episode of the Entourage more. His crew was a group of 20 bros all wearing nearly the same blue button down shirt—top three open—all ready to have a major brofest. They reserved a “VIP” area for this special evening and with “bottle service” where girls bring out bottles of Absolut in skimpy outfits with sparklers, literally I felt like P. Diddy. The club had shows in between certain songs where dancers performed to Michael Jackson’s Thriller dressed like zombies on tables and stages, it was wild to say the least. We danced at this club until we realized it was about 5 am and our feet hurt.

Once we returned we quietly returned to our hostel room to find that Greg Ramirez was not back! What a party animal we had on our hands!! We hung out on our patio until we were completely exhausted and saw Greg stumbling into the room, clearly a little tipsy trying to communicate with us in a combination of Spanglifrench. Once the lights were turned off things got weirder, Greg on the top bunk began laughing hysterically to himself and muttering, “I do not speak English!” over and over and over again until Liza, Zach, and I were all three laughing hysterically along with him. It could have been an episode of a television show, definitely one of the funniest moments of my life.

Saturday morning was not a pretty one for Liza, girl was hungover! We met up with Seidmon and went to Spannibus, Spain’s largest cannabis convention. It was really funny, and Zach had been looking forward to it for quite some time. Afterwards we headed over to Park Guell. The park was originally part of a commercially unsuccessful housing site, the idea of Count Eusbei Guell, whom the park was named after.

The park is located on a rocky hill that winds up forever until you reach the top and overlook the most spectacular view of Barcelona. The architecture of the Municpal Garden is truly fantastic with Gaudi’s colorful designs and curvy structures. Barcelona’s Gaudi designed buildings are one of a kind and give the city a life of its own. That evening we went out to dinner and ate some great gelato. My other friend from IU, David, met up with us for a little walk on the promenade, it was very nice to see him even though it was such a short while. It was a truly fantastic weekend with truly fantastic friends.