Matthew's Abroad Adventures: Barcelona

It was pretty awesome. We stayed longer here than I did in Ireland. We had Thursday off (and I don’t have classes on Friday) the four of us (Amanda, Julia, Amir and I) left on an overnight train to Barcelona on Wednesday night and came back Monday morning at the crack of dawn. We stayed at really nice hostel that was a block from the main cathedral and in the heart of the gothic quarter. It had a kitchen and we made a lot of meals because we’re so broke after traveling so much. Went to the Picasso museum, had so much of his stuff from when he was four, drawing on napkins, until his death. Way cool. Gaudi’s stuff, especially la Sagrada Familia (clearly), pretty much completed me and I can cross that off my life’s list. Seriously, coolest building I’ve ever, ever seen and I’ve wanted to go ever since taking that architecture course freshman year. Yeah, yeah, nerdy. Whatever, have you seen it? Other than that, minor details: picnic in the central park, really weird “maritime museum” complete with a real, actual medieval galley, Gaudi park (seriously, where does this guy get off?), Gaudi’s house, a little bit of the Barcelona bar/club scene. Unfortunately, we missed getting to go to the big cultural center with the “magic fountain” that looks pretty much amazing because we didn’t realize it would be closed on Sunday. Jesus (and siestas) still rules on high in Spain. Oh yeah, we realized that since we have all been studying in Spain and listening to our host families’ propaganda, we’ve all have become really centralist. Everybody is just as loathe to speak castellano in Barcelona as English. Infuriating. You’re in Spain! Shut up.