Beautiful BARCELONA

It's finally here!! I know you have all been waiting anxiously to here about Barcelona. Well... it was BEAUTIFUL. I will now give you a break down of my life starting on Thursday night.

Thursday Night :
We took a bus from Alcala into Madrid and then a bus from Madrid to Barcelona... now let me tell you. This bus ride was 8 hours... 9 if you count the one from Alcala. We left at 10 pm and arrived in Barcelona at 7am where it was cold and rainy!! Perfect for a weekend away :)


Friday Morning:
So its 7am and raining....So we went to a cafe and did some homework and then we went to our hostel. I shared a two bed private room with my friend Sarah! It was great, I had a full sized bed, we had a sink/mirror and a place to put our clothes! We also got free coffee/tea all day.

sagrada familia

After putting all our stuff down...we went exploring!! We walked all around this park we found and just around the general area taking pictures. For lunch I had a bratwurst...it was actually really good and I was sick of eating sandwiches. Then we went to the Sagrada Familia.

    If I were to recommend anything in Spain it would be the Sagrada Familia- for those of you who don't know... it is this HUGE cathedral that was designed by Gaudi. It is still unfinished and therefore while it is under construction in all my pictures...but it won't be finished for another 1-2 centuries. It was the most incredible thing I have ever seen.
    After that we just went out to eat and then went home to bed to get up early for the next morning :)

Saturday:
       A couple of friends and I got up early to take a train into Figueres. It is the place where Dali's museum is.... I know I'm so cultured ;) I didn't know much about it but it was actually really neat. And I figure for teaching it will be neat to tell my students I have actually seen his works in person and all that stuff! So we spent a couple hours in the museum- all of his stuff was brilliant and the jewelry was just incredible. The pictures just don't do anything justice!

    Also while in Figueres, we stumbled across this antique market that only happens once a month and we got to see some pretty fun things. It had all sorts of really old books, pipes, jewelry, and so many more things. It was really neat!


Sunday:

    We took a train to the Park Guell in the morning. We had to climb up this HUGE hill... I swear it was on an 80* incline. And then we walked around and took tons of pictures. The park was so big and there were so many detailed pieces all around it. The benches and the lizard are the most well known.

    After that we took the train down to the Romblas which is basically a big shopping/market area; it sells three types of things: jewelry/girly stuff, flowers, and animals. I bought some treasures that are really cute and we walked around some more. There was a man who had pieces of wood and was engraving things into it- bracelets/earrings/boxes- it was way cool! You could even buy baby turtles, bunnies, birds, hamsters...all sorts of things! It was kind of weird.
     After that we ate lunch and went back to the hostel to get our stuff and then we went to the Picasso museum! It was interesting...slightly boring but art isn't exactly my deal. None of his really well known works were there...it was mostly things from earlier in his career.

Those were all the highlights! It was a great weekend. We finally had nice weather on Sunday so it was great to be out and walking around. We took the bus again last night at 11pm and got back to Alcala this morning at 8am... then I went to school and now I'm writing this up for you guys :)

love you all- talk to you soon :)

and a special ps: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!! sorry I can't be there. love you