Strut Through the Barcelona Streets

Deep in the pavements kicking through the streets

To wonder like Picasso in the Barcelona heat.

Passion is the fashion and life is poetry

We welcome to another worlds where every heart can beat.

Goal of the trip, to be like the Cheetah girls when they visited Barcelona. Jokes, but we did watch the music video to Strut and realized that we went to all the places they were in the video. And we might have on occasion been belting it out on the streets. No shame, no shame at all. So, this adventure was taken be me (of course) and my roommate Kaylin!

Day 1
As all our other European adventures, we started our day at 3am to catch our plane. Surprisingly we had no problems getting to Barcelona or to find our hostel. We were some what prepared for trying to find the hostel unlike our carefully planned out trip to Brussels (that's a joke for whoever didn't read about Brussels). We ended up getting to our hostel around noon and couldn't check in until 2. So we left our stuff locked up in a room and thought we would walk to the beach. Before leaving, I did see that there was this incredible marketplace called Boqueria Market. We asked the girl at the reception where it was and perfectly enough it was on the way to the beach. And must I say, the market was AMAZING! It was so vibrant with colors and produce. Any type of food you would want would be there. Since Barcelona is known for having good seafood, we tried out some seafood salad which was amazing. There was also freshly squeezed juice everywhere, so we just had to have them. Plus, in Dublin I really haven't had much fruit. And me turning into my dad, I immediately wanted the coconut one. I have to say, one of the best coconut juices I have ever had. I have had a lot of coconut juice in my day and this one was just so much better. It had the right balance of sugar that it didn't over power the coconut and it didn't taste watered down. It was very pungent with flavor. Oh, I could write for hours about just the coconut juice, but that would probably bore people (besides my dad, but it would just make him jealous!!!). There was also a stand with freshly baked breads that looked amazing. So, we got a baguette to go and made our way to the beach.

Surprisingly the water wasn't too far away. We made it to this walkway thing were people were just sitting around soaking up the sun. I should mention that in the sun, the temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It felt so nice compared to the cold, rainy Dublin. We were still in our airport clothes, so I was sweating up a storm in this heat in my jeans.

We finally found the beach after walking around the marina for a bit. I looked up after and we were walking around port veil. The beach was just like any other beach, but we were in BARCELONA! We were pretty exhausted for waking up at 3am, so we casually walked around the beach. We put our feet in the water and it was about how warm the water is in New England in the summer. To me, that is warm and really wanted to go in for a swim. But unfortunately I wasn't appropriately dressed. We did take a little break on the beach were Kaylin tried to take a nap. I did the most classic Amanda thing possible and start setting up sunglasses pics. Here is two of the many I took.

We started to make our way back to the hostel because it was past 2 and we could check in. We were staying at the Hipstel in a shared 6 person bedroom. There were 2 beds already taken when we got there, so claimed the other beds. We made ourselves at home and realized how hungry we were, so we headed out to look for something to eat. We thought this would be the night that we were going to do our big fancy dinner. On La Rambla, which is a main tourist street, there was a bunch of restaurants with deals. We went to one were we got 3 tapas each with paella for only 9 euros. This way we got all our Barcelona must eat food out of the way. On our walk down, we noticed everyone had these huge jugs filled with sangria, so just had to have it as well. 

By the time we had dinner and made it back to the hostel it was only 7 o'clock, but man were we tired. We thought we would try to stay up later than that. We looked up stuff to do and found out that there was a fountain that puts on a light show at night. It was only a 2 mile walk away, so what the hay we went. Man was that walk longer than we thought. 2 miles in theory sounds like nothing, but after a full day of walking around with zero sleep, it was difficult. We ran into this interesting building thing and we saw people walking on top of it, so we tried to figure out how to get on top. It turns out on the inside, it is like a mall and there was escalators that went to the top. We walked around the top were you get a good view of the city. I looked up later we were at the Arenas de Barcelona. We got a view of where the Magic Fountain of Montjuic was. Behind it is a building called Palau Nacional (Side Note: cheetah girls filmed part of Strut here). We walked down to were the fountains were doing the show and guess what? They weren't even turned on. Maybe we should have looked up more about it before walking 2 miles. So, we slowly made our 2 mile walk back to the hostel.

Arenas de Barcelona

Palau Nacional

When getting back to our hostel, we got to meet our other 2 roommates. One was from Taiwan and had been there for 5 days already. She was just traveling around. The other was originally from Paris, but is now living in London. They were both traveling alone. See Mom, girls do travel alone and are completely fine.

Day 2

This is the only day that I had things I wanted to do. Our roommate from Paris told us that you can get a 2 day unlimited metro pass for only 14 euros, so we thought that was a great deal. Plus, we wouldn't have to walk as much as we did yesterday and we didn't even go very far. Barcelona is a very large city. We, of course, made our way down to the market again for breakfast/lunch. This time we tried the fruit. I got a cup of mixed fruit and it was so sweet and ripe. It was just what I wanted to eat. We again got our baguette, which I forgot to mention was only 1 euro. We also got ham and cheese croissants for later.  I decided this time I wanted to pair my baguette with cheese. There was a cheese stand and sense everything was in Spanish, I had no idea what I was getting. But, I am not very picky and I love trying new things. Turns out, I bought brie, or at least something that strongly tasted and looked like brie. It was so good though. After my whole small roll of cheese and by baguette, I was thoroughly stuffed and ready to start my day. We got on the metro and made our way toward Parc Guell, which is the tourist park in Barcelona. We might have slightly not know what we were doing. All weekend we looked like the classic lost tourist with me whipping out my map every 2 seconds to figure out where we were. Half the time, we still didn't know where we were. How we didn't get ourselves lost, I have no idea. We were pretty much lost the whole time, but some how managed to stumble upon everything we wanted to see. We weren't too worried because as long as we could find a metro stop we were set.

Parc Guell

Sorry, I am rambling again. Well we followed some street signs and walked up some random hills. Maybe even followed the direction of the tour buses, but eventually we found the park. The thing about Barcelona is about Guadi's influence on the architecture. Me being an architecture minor learned a little bit about him in my history of architecture class. This was the place you really got to see his use of mosaics and the undulations in the seats. This is where you also, supposedly, got the best view of the city. WRONG! Barcelona knows how to milk the money out of their tourist attractions. All the famous tourist attractions were like 20 or more euros to get into. I'm sorry Barcelona, but as a broke collage student, I am not paying that. The main part of this park was only 8 euros to get into, so we thought I guess we can afford that. Boy, was that a mistake. So, not worth it. You can walk around the rest of the park for free and you get just as good as views. Then if you want to see the front part, you could get a picture of it from the street.

Undulated seating

view from parc guell

Famous sculpture

View from street

After wasting our money at Parc Guell, I had heard of a different park that was free that you get a great view from. It was called Parc del Guinardo. Did we know how to get there, absolutely not. We just knew the general direction of where it was, so we just started to walk. Strangely enough, after about 10 minutes we see this giant hill and thought hmmm, maybe this is it. If not, it looks cool enough to walk up. We found the path and started to make our way up. As we got higher up, we saw people on top of this platform thing and started to figure out how to get there. It was "closed off" by a fence, but hey YOBO (your only in barcelona once). Plus, there was people already there so it wasn't that big of a deal. It turns our we found what we were looking for and boy were the views better than Parc Guell. And we didn't have to pay a single cent.

Had to take Classic sunglass pic

From top of Parc del Guinardo

We spent some time up here to enjoy the view and eat our croissants. I also spent some time taking pictures because it was just breath taking. I should also mention, but you could probably guess from my dress that it was extremely warm out. In that outfit, I was still sweating. We after some time started to make our way down. We thought we would be adventurous and go a different way down. Could this end disastrous.... probably? But, it really didn't. We could see everything from where we were, so we said when we get down, just head towards the water. We did and we finally figured out where we were because from the tops of the building we could see Sagrada Familla. This is Guadi's most famous work in Barcelona. Guess how much it costs to get a tour inside. 32 euros! We just admired it from the outside, which was stunning. It was so large. The only problem we found with going at the time of year we did is that all the tourist attractions are under restoration. We saw it at Parc Guell, here at Sagrada Familla, and also at Casa Mila which is where we headed to next.

Sagrada Familla

Casa Mila was the one structure of Guadi's I really remembered from my architectural history class. I remember it being so unique with all the undulations. The front facade was getting work done on it, so I only got to get a picture of the side of it. After all the walking we did, Kaylin wanted to sit down for a bit, so we sat down on a bench right in front of Casa Mila. This guy on the street asked if he could take 5 minutes of our time to do a survey. Seeing how we weren't moving, we thought we would take it. We were probably the worst people to take this survey. He was asking us about the shopping in Barcelona and we had done absolutely no shopping.

Casa Mila

The day before when we were at the Arenas de Barcelona, they had a food court that we thought would be a good thing to eat at, as in it was cheap. I had also looked up the night before after our fountain fail, that the fountains at this time of year only run on Fridays and Saturdays from 7 to 9. Seeing how yesterday was a Thursday, we thought great we have two more opportunities to see the fountains. The Arenas de Barcelona was close to the fountains, so we spent sometime in that area. It seemed to be busier than normal, but we also didn't know what normal was. There was a projector showing a slide show and a stage with someone talking on it. The promising sign was that the fountains were turned on. It was getting close to 7 o'clock, so we started to make our way towards the fountains. We were getting closer and there was security guards blocking the way, saying we needed to go around. Kaylin was thinking ahead and said we should wait until 7 to make sure that the show is actually happening before we walk around. We became more and more curious about the crowd around us. There was people wrapped up in flags and people holding signs. There was news casters interviewing people on the street. Everything was in Spanish, so we had absolutely no idea what was happening. Kaylin was so curious, so asked one of the security guys. It turned out a gathering for the Catalan independence from Spain. Kaylin looked up later, but that Sunday there was going to be an unofficial vote for their independence from Spain. We also asked the security guard if the fountain show would be happening. He gave us a smile, a little chuckle, and a slight shake of his head. Great, 2 times we made our way down to the fountain and still haven't seen this show.

Fountain fail day 2

People at the Catalan Independence gathering

Day 3
Since we had done all the touristy things we really wanted to do the day before this was going to be a day to wonder. We again made our way to the market again for our 1 euro baguette and this time we got some ham to go along with it. Apparently their ham is a specialty or something. It was really cured and dried. It tasted more like salami than ham, but still good none the less. I should mention now that every time we went to the market, we spent less than 5 euros and it filled up until dinner time. Broken collage kids dreams right there! But, we saw this other market place called Mercat d'Hostafrancs during our second fail of the fountain show. We decided to go check it out because Kaylin wanted to get some souvenirs. It was smaller than the other marketplace, but still cute.

Since we had our metro passes, we hoped on the metro and made our way to the Arc de Triomf. I have seen the Arc de Triomphe in France, so I was curious to see what this one looked like. This one had a lot more details to it and had a copper color. We walked down that avenue and through some random park. Then thinking of what else we could do, I thought it would be cool to see the FC Barcelona Arena. So, we hoped back on the metro and made our way over to the western side.

Arc de Triomf

FC Bareclona Arena

We were now really in the middle of no where and there was only 3 stops left on the metro line till we hit the end. Plus, on my map there looked like there was a monument of some sort at each stop, so might as well right! The first one, we took 2 steps out of the metro station looked around, and there really wasn't anything. So, we took our 2 steps back into the metro station and made our way to the next station, which had a park at it. We take our first two steps out of the station and realized, the metro stops were probably about 1000 feet away from each other. You could literally see the other metro stop. We walked through this park and decided we would play around with the various things in the park.

Just goofing off

3 times the charm right! If you can guess, yes we made our way back to the fountain for the last time. This is our last chance to see the fountains. And guess what!!!! We finally got to see it. I have seen the fountains at the Bellagio and these were good in a different way. These one changed the colors of the lights and played it along with current pop music.

Fountains day 3 success

Sense we were on a roll of light up things, we had seen this lit up building and thought we would check it out. It is called Torre Agbar and it literally is what it looks like. It was just a lit up building. We took 2 steps out of the metro, 2 steps into the metro.

That night we decided we would go out. And if you want to hear that story, you will have to ask me in person! Cliff hanger, I know! Really not that interesting, but this post is getting really long.

Day 4
This was supposed to be our beach day, but we wake up and its not very sunny. It also isn't very warm and it starts to drizzle. But, we were hopeful and worn our bathing suits, so I also didn't bring my camera with me. Of course, we make our way towards our favorite market place. To our very disappointment, it was closed! We walked toward the Gothic quarter and some street that Kaylin wanted to see. Then we made our way to some museums that we knew that was free on Sunday. We ended up walking through another cute little marketplace. At 3pm, the Picasso museum is free, so we thought that would be a good thing to do, but the line was unreal. So the rest of the day, we pretty much did souvenir shopping.

The next day was our day to go home. The thing I didn't realize was I had a quiz that Monday at 1. Parents, you are going to hate me, my plane landed at 12:10. I ran off the plane, went through border control, and hoped into the taxi. I told the taxi driver to book it because I had a quiz to take at 1. I made it to campus at exactly 1 and ran to the classroom. I sat down and took my quiz, so don't worry parents. I am still going to school :)