Here is my final post on my travels. I chose this name for my post (above) because as many of you probably know, I went to Spain during my Junior-year of high school. Barcelona was the only major city that we did not stop at, so I felt like I had essentially been missing a "piece of the puzzle." However, now that I've been to Barcelona, my "puzzle" is complete! :) Here's what happened the last few days of our travels:
September 24th:
We just went through the usual routine: wake up, eat breakfast, leave for the airport, get there, get our tickets, go through security...you know the drill. I must mention, however, that the Venice airport is probably my second least favorite airport. EVER. It was VERY unorganized, it took forever to get our tickets issued to us (if our flight hadn’t been delayed, we probably would have missed it), and it was SO crowded. The only reason I like it better than the Madrid airport is because I wasn’t inhaling cigarette smoke every two feet...anyway, so, after our flight was arrived after a long delay, we boarded our flight to Barcelona. When we arrived in Barcelona, we grabbed a couple of taxis to our hotel where we checked in, had a half-hour break to eat, and then met back up for a tour of the city. We were shown around the city by the program coordinator for the GLS site in Barcelona; he was pretty cool! The main thing that we saw was La Sagrada Familia, the unfinished cathedral in Barcelona that was designed by Gaudí. It was pretty awesome, and a little different than I expected (in a good way). While touring the city, we just roamed around the backstreets while our guide explained stuff to us. After our tour was over, we were free to go, so our group went in search of food. Some of us ended up buying some stuff in a small little street market, however, we decided to eat back in the restaurant at the hotel, so I saved the stuff that I bought at the market for my breakfast in the morning. After some of the girls and I ate, I just turned in for the night--it had been a long day!
September 25th:
This was our free day in Barcelona, so I ended up sleeping in (it was wonderful!). After I woke up and got ready for the day, I met up with Faith and Leah. They had done some researching beforehand and had looked into different things to do; we decided to go on a bus tour of the city (because, to be quite honest, we didn’t see a ton of the city the night before since it was a walking tour...so I was excited to see the rest of the city). When we were all ready, we left the hotel and found one of the bus stops, purchased our tickets, and hopped on the bus! We sat on the top of the bus, so that was super fun! Can you say double-decker experience anyone?! :) After maybe an hour or so, we decided to get off of the bus since we had stopped back in a major part of the city that we had been in the day before. We ended up finding a cafe to go eat at, and then went...dun dun dun...SHOPPING! We had only gone into a couple of stores when Faith decided that she actually wanted to go to the aquarium, so she left Leah and I while we continued shopping. (Good thing she did because we ended up shopping for about 2 or 3 more hours!). Do not worry though--the purchases I made were well thought out, and good bargains. (I ended up making use of my Spanish actually because I saw a sign (in Spanish of course) saying that students could get a discount in one of the stores the day that we were there!) It was the only time on the trip I really went shopping shopping, and since I made smart purchases, I felt really good about my day of shopping! After Leah and I had shopped our hearts out, we decided to hop back on the bus tour, just on a different route (there were three routes to choose from). Sadly, we were delayed almost an hour because of a protest/march that was going on. Since it was taking forever and since the bus hadn’t come to our stop after about 45 minutes, we decided to walk to the next one...which happened to be right by one of the only things I really had my heart set on seeing while in Barcelona: Casa Battó! It is this very unique and beautiful house that Gaudí designed. I originally thought the outside was covered in shells, but when I got there, I saw that I was wrong: it was just decorated with a mosaic of things (it’s hard to describe...I’ll try to figure out how to post pictures on here soon!). It was definitely cool, and I was so happy that I got to see it! :) After Leah and I looked at the house for a while, we hopped back on the bus. We stayed on there until we got to the National Art Museum and decided to disembark there. At the bottom of the hill that the museum is on, we heard music, so we went to check it out; it turned out to be a free concert! For those of you who don’t know, we were in Barcelona during one of their biggest festivals of the year: La Merce. This festival basically celebrates and commemorates the plague stopping before it reached Barcelona; in other words, it’s a big celebration of their evasion of the plague. So, throughout the weekend, there were free concerts everywhere, fireworks at night, and, from what I hear, a lot of partying in the streets. (*I was never actually downtown late at night during the festivities, so I got to avoid the huge crowds in the streets! And thank goodness, because I’m sure it was crazy!). Anyway, after spending a little time at the concert, Leah and I started to make our way back up to the art museum. On our way there, we saw a bunch of people waiting for something, so we asked a man what everyone was waiting for. He said that the big fountain that we were near was supposed to start up soon and that it would be accompanied with cooling lighting and music! It was supposed to start in just a few minutes from the time we arrived, so we decided to stay and watch. Sadly, however, an announcement was made that the fountain show was not going to be shown that night, so that was a bummer. So, we made our way back to the museum, where we waited for fireworks to start. They ended up starting in a completely wrong place though, and the best view we got was from behind some trees... :/ Oh well! After the fireworks, Leah and I just decided to make our way back to the hotel. We found a place to eat near our hotel on our way back, and then I turned in for the night since we were going to have a long day the next day. Although I didn’t quite like Barcelona as much as the rest of Spain (when I saw it in 2007), I did find it to be unique and I really enjoyed my experience there! This was probably my third (or fourth) favorite day overall (after the days on the Grecian Island and in Florence...).
September 26th:
Insert normal wake-up/taxi/airport routine here...we finally boarded the plane. We flew to Athens; I think I sat next to Constantia on this flight...she’s SO funny to fly with because she is quite scared of flying. So you will see her making the sign of the cross over her body quite a few times when taking off and during times of turbulence. We tried to distract her as much as we could. haha. After arriving at the airport in Athens, we waited for our connecting flight, and then boarded. I sat next to a fellow GLSer, Nick, and in our row was a very nice woman (probably in her mid-30’s) named Carolina. Nick and I talked quite a bit and got to know each other better which was great, but I talked to Carolina for a major part of the flight; at the end of the flight, she ended up giving me her e-mail address in case I ever need anything while in Cyprus. She said something along the lines of “If you need anything, just e-mail me. Like, if the students at the university are mean to you or causing you trouble, tell me and I will teach you some bad words.” haha. She was very nice, like I’ve found most Cypriots to be so far. After we landed, we went through customs and picked up our luggage. When we had all gotten our luggage, we all loaded into a big van and headed back to our apartments. When we got back, it was getting to be pretty late at night, and our roommate Shami was still awake, so we caught up with her. She went to Zimbabwe to visit family while Kayla and I were traveling around (since she is part of a different program through GLS), so we all caught up and exchanged stories of our time abroad. It was a long day, so after catching up and unpacking, I went to sleep! I had a fantastic time everywhere I went, and I definitely had an amazing time exploring the world around me.
This, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the end of my travels...for now. :)
[*Keep a look-out for a couple of general posts on life in the future, and some more updates on other travels that I have planned!]
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