Barca Barca Barca

          As is always the case with spring break, it has been crazy.  For some stupid reason, our flight from Rome to Girona (an our bus ride outside of Barcelona) was not only on Saturday (the second day of break) but also not until 9:30 pm.  I was exhausted from exams during the week, and once I hit my seat on the plane, I was out.  Except flight attendants on Ryan Air think that their job is to bump into you on every pass.  And the one's not playing bummer carts down the aisle are on the intercom talking about something.  I was literally woken up 10 times.  Thankfully we made the 11:45 bus even though our plane arrived late.  In Rome, we had decided to get spring break going on the bus and pulled out the fifth of Vodka we had purchased at duty free.  With no chaser and only gum to slightly help, it was difficult to put the bottle to my lips, but I powered on.  One swig, and I was instantly reminded of high school, standing, or in this case sitting, in a circle playing pass the bottle pretending that it doesn't burn and that you're the coolest if you don't make a face.  Instead of sticking 5 pieces of gum in my mouth and running into the dance before the alcohol starts to kick in, we had a nice 20 more minutes to relax before arriving in one of the greatest cities on earth.  We took cabs (2 because we were 5 people) to the hostal.  Dano was somehow obliderated and doesn't remember much.  The hostal man was very worried about him staying there and threatened to kick him out.  It didn't help much that once he showed us our room, he found him rummaging through a room that had a private sign on the door.  But with some pleading and close supervision, we convinced him to let us stay.
          We rushed to change and left the hostal at about 1:30 am to cab over to Porto Olympico and start partying.  We were (supposedly) meeting our friends from the program who were also there for the weekend.  All of us starving, we got donor kebabs at a place in the same building as the best club in town, Catwalk.  Now the first time I was in Barcelona, Ben Holber (a friend from home) had been raving about them, but I wasn't impressed.  But this time, with and open mind and developed palate, I fell in love.  The combination of spicy, tangy, crunchy, and heat made an unbelievable pita.  I opted for the chicken and added tomatoes and onions to the tzatziki and piles of spicy sauce.
          After that pit stop, we went and stood in line for Opium, the club the girls were at.  Now chances of getting in as 5 guys and no girls was slim in the first place, but we were turned away because we were all wearing sneakers.  So I took them down to the beach level where we went to another club with less strict dress code and got some drinks.  I went with the classy G & T and a shot of vodka on the side for what might be the most expensive bar tab ever, 14 euros.  They were both very watered down making it an even sweeter deal, but I had already ordered so there was no going back.  We were there for a while, but went to try Opium again from its beach entrance when we had finished out drinks.  There we were told to go upstairs so we gave up.  Feeling courageous and stupid from the alcohol, I sat on the exterior of Opium's outdoor seating as far away as possible from the bouncers.  I swung around and bam! was sitting at a booth on the club's patio.  I waited for a wingman to follow, but they hesitated and a bouncer came over and told them to go.  I struck up a conversation with 2 guys from Holland to blend in and passed undetected.  Without the support of a wing, there wasn't much I could do.  The club was too big to search through the crowd for the girls and I hopped back over the booth after about 10 minutes to reunite with the group.
          Pissed off by prices and not being able to get in, we checked out the casino on the boardwalk.  It would have been very fun if it didn't cost 4.50 just to get in to the table games.  I reaffirmed my despised for slots and lost 4 euro pretty much instantly.  After that there wasn't much else to do, so we called it a night and cabbed back to the hostal and went to sleep at 5 with empty wallets, bad attitudes and headaches looming...
          The next morning, 4 hours later, technically 3 since Sunday was the day Europe had Daylight Savings, we were up having a terrible included breakfast of toast.  We lounged around (not everyone was truly out of bed) and left at 12 to go explore.  Dano had brought his skateboard because Barcelona is world famous for it and we went to a little section by our hostal that is apparently in lots of skateboarding films.  This one guy (left) was amazing doing a nollie pop shove it to manual to no comply off.  If you don't know what that means just know that that is very hard to do.  Dano did his best too (right)

          It was then up to Las Ramblas for a walk on the people watchers best street lined with grey trees and wierdos of all sorts.  The pedestrian only center embarkment is littered with the standard street artists and guys that want money for standing still in some sort of costume that add flavor to the street and bring it to life.  We went and said hi to the girls whose apartment was 10 euros cheaper a night and overlooked Las Ramblas before grabbing lunch kebabs.  AFter we metro-ed up to the Sagrada Familia to gaze upon Gaudi's trippy still under construction church.  The line was too long to go in, but the facade is worth  a 2 hour stare itself.  

I've summed up my opinion of Gaudi as someone who takes what we find appealing in architecture and alters it slightly to mess with you head slightly.  I like it and appreciate his skill; maybe that's why I like this city so much, because it's basically a whole museum to him.  He designed our next destination, Parc Guell.  The park was supposed to be a "gated community" for the rich on a 60 acre plot, but flopped before it was finished.  Gaudi lived here during the last years of his life, and in my opinion didn't fail at all.

          We watched a band play a couple songs before taking a rest on the concave and convex mosaic bench that defines the park's landscape.  From left to right, Jamie, Me, Jake, Josh (bottom left), and Dano.

This I had all done before, and was glad when others were enthusiastic about hiking a little over a mile to the top of the mountain.  We trail blazed most of it, and at one point raced the final stretch to the peak.  The peak offered 360 degree views on its flattened top and we could see all the way to the water.  

After some photos and cooling off time, we walked down and visited the wave columns.  It's a series of slanted columns that support the park trail above it that Gaudi engineered to resemble a wave from the inside.

This one, I am about to eat it really hard...

...somehow, I saved that fall.

          Then it was time for the real waves at the beach.  We shipped back to the hostal to et our bathing suits and started walking to the beach to meet the girls for a late afternoon/ early evening in the sun.  We walked for about 10 minutes before someone said we won't make it in time if we walk all the way there.  I protested, but succumbed to the group and we cabbed back to Porto Olympico to get to the beach quicker.  Problem was that I was right and they weren't that far down, so we ended up paying 5 euro to go father away and walk back to about 5 minutes from where we were originally standing.  (Why don't people listen to me?)  We drank the beers that we had picked up before hand and gazed at the water and let the soothing waves calm us (or at least me).  Dano got a massage from a random thai lady street vendor, which we thought was very amusing.  We walked up a street after the sun started to get low and I had deja vu at two places where I had walked four years ago with Ben.  One where the streets are typically european with clothes drying on clotheslines between buildings and the second, a port side placa where we had played soccer with two 12 year olds for a couple of hours.  Unfortunately these events didn't not play out this time.  We instead stopped for churros for a before dinner snack and then split up and planned to meet in an hour and a half at 10 to go to dinner.  We went and got more beers (at 3.60 for a six pack, why not?) and returned to the skateboarding spot from the beginning of the day.  We gave a brew to a kid so that he would let us play with his basketball.  We played a little dos v. dos baloncesto, where I slipped on the dirt/ gravel court shredding my hand.  Disappointingly, Jamie and I lost to Josh and Dano and we didn't have time to run it back.  Instead, we went back to the hostal, changed, and met the girls on Las Ramblas for dinner.  We ate in some placa and Jamie and I split paella.  I don't remember much else due to the high levels of day drinking (hey, I needed one stereotypical spring break day).  After we went to a bar and danced and had fun before I left at 1:30 for the hostal.  I packed until 2 and then put my head down for a second before my alarm went off at 4 am to take me to the bus stop and back to Girona for my 8:25 flight to Mallorca.

          It was a crazy 30 hours in Barcelona, but worth every second of it.  Although its westernization bugged me a little bit, I still consider it one of the greatest cities on the planet.  It was now time to test out other cities and get the island section of my trip underway.

I didn't add too many pictures to this, because I will be putting another facebook album up soon with pictures from my entire trip.  I took close to 1,200 photos during the week, and sorting through them to find a few good ones is not easy.  If anyone is having problems with the facebook albums (or doesn't know how to use it) let me know.  Thanks.