Spagna

I promised myself I wouldn't be emo in this blog. WOOPS!!!! Can't stop the angst. I have something to be emo about right now but I'm going to refrain ((and inside my heart will bleed T_T)).

So let's talk about SPAIN! Time to bust out my handy-dandy...notebook! Well, journal. But that isn't in keeping with the Blues Clues reference that I'm sure you all got immediately. I kept a journal diligently throughout all 11 days of our journey. This post gon' be HUGE. But I have nothing better to do right now.

Day 1, March 31, 2010. Commence spring break. Packed in the morning. Managed to stuff 11 days' worth of clothes...er, more like 8 or 9 actually...into my rather small never-before-used suitcase (my mom brought it out for some reason when she came in October). Each time I closed the zipper--and it seemed to get harder and harder to do throughout the trip--I was in awe. At the same time, my suitcase seemed to get lighter and lighter throughout the trip. Probably because my muscles were expanding to fit my new body-builder physique. Anyways we took a bus, a train, a plane, and a taxi in order to get to Barcelona. Not without issues, however. Bus: late. Train: we thought we had missed it, but our desperate and very public sprint across the station turned out to be for naught. Plane: Also late. By about an hour. So all 8 of us from the Smith group going to Barcelona sat around, talking and eating Christine's food until it finally came. Good ol' Ryanair. The flight was frickin' TURBULENT and I kind of screamed at one point. When we got to Barcelona it was extremely late so we decided against trying to walk to our unfamiliar hostel in an unfamiliar city in the unfamiliar dark. And got a taxi. And I spoke in Spanish for the first time (just "gracias"). The hostel turned out to be part of a fancy-looking apartment so it came as a bit of a surprise that the hostel was....not so fancy. In my journal I have "HOOO boy what an experience." We didn't get the warmest of receptions from the man at the desk (it was 1 AM but still...). He told us stuff and brought us to our room. Our room, and 7 other peoples'. Now this was something new to me. The light was on, people (strangers who I tried to smile at given that we had been forced into the most private of settings together) were in bed sleeping or reading. The man gave us our sheets. Everything we did made rustling sounds that I was very aware of. Funny story about the sheets. Didn't fit. I tried a few different ways but instantly resigned to the fact that no, it would never work. Camilla's bed looked like a hammock or one of those inflatable pool beds, with the edges bent up. I just left one corner of mine off. It was NBD. The pillow case was even more ruthlessly absurd. The pillow was a geometrically perfect square, the case was as long and skinny as...I dunno, a pipe. A garden snake. The snake metaphor is good because it looked like it had just swallowed a small animal when I got it in. Miraculously it wasn't uncomfortable. At about 2 when we had gotten ready for bed (and I dried my face with my shirt due to lack of towel) a German dude said "Gute nacht" and turned off the lights. Wish I could say I slept like a baby after a long day of traveling. False. I got no more than 3 hours of sleep. Due mostly to the sounds of snoring and phones ringing and me being the lightest sleeper in the world (WHY I didn't remember to put in my earplugs I do not know). I heard some Italian guys talking about me in the bathroom ("capelli rossi"...red hair...obviously I was the only redhead in the hostel, if not the city). But my FAVORITE part was when a group of Americans (of course) came in at some ungodly hour. "Dude did you just get back?" "Pretty much yeah." "Oh she's puking." etc etc. Very unlike me, I didn't feel desperately frustrated to the point of misery, instead taking it as "the typical hostel experience." Ironically this would be the most "typically hostel" night of the ENTIRE TRIP. haha.

Day 2, April 1, 2010. The first thing we did in Barcelona was go to Starbucks. hahaha I know it sounds bad, but neither of us had been to a Starbucks in Italy or in America in a very long time. Neither of us had had breakfast, either. So I got my usual caramel frappaccino and it was WELL worth it. Also I was struck by how friendly the girl behind the counter was. We were off to a good start. We then went to the Museum of Modern Art. Part of the exterior resembled a roll of toilet paper. The inside was starkly white and full of sunlight. In my journal I have "It was cool but weird but cool but we were exhausted." Normally I'm not a huge fan of modern art. Normally it makes me scoff. You should NEVER be able to say "a blind 3-year-old could do that" about a piece of art, say I. Camilla and I were in agreement, especially when we came to a shirt in a box that was on display. What the HELL. There was a lot of bizarre stuff in there, and after a while we were just too tired to pretend to be enjoying it. But I guess it was kind of cool just in that it was so different from all the Renaissance art we have in Italy. After that we had some mediocre empanadas in a tiny place for lunch. Then we walked down the famous La Rambla, where approximately 600,000 animals were being sold. It was some weeeeird outdoor pet store. There were many bunnies (!!!!!), hamsters, turtles, mice, and, my personal favorite, PIGEONS. Pigeons. Come on, really?! Because you couldn't just capture one from the street if you really wanted one? I said to Camilla, "I think some have escaped." Then there was a variety of street performers and the soon-to-be ever-present whistle-vendors. They're these whistles that you can't see when they're in your mouth that make very realistic tropical bird sounds. Popular in Spain, apparently. And oh I can see why, they're not annoying at ALL!! So La Rambla was the most bizarrely happenin' street I've ever walked upon. At the end we found the sea. We crossed the bridge (designed to imitate a wave--just the beginning of an abundance of fantastic architecture in that city). There we found a HUGE movie theater, a HAAGEN-DAZS (I was extremely. extremely tempted to purchase), and an aquarium. All of these things lead to me writing "Barcelona is owning Florence." I loved it because it was modern, clean, and impressively well-structured. It had it together. We kept just walking, and we found an important cathedral that, of course, was under construction. And, like the aquarium, too expensive to go inside. Then we were kind of cranky so we went back to the hostel and read/slept. We asked the man at the desk (a different, nice one) where the nearest grocery store was so we could get foodstuffs. Never have I been to a grocery store so grand. The entire city of Barcelona was shopping there at that moment. The place had ESCALATORS, that's how huge it was. I dunno, this was impressive to me. I am often dazed by food. Back at the hostel we made dinner--luxurious soup, salad, bread. Afterwords we asked the man if he had any suggestions for a chill place to chill and he recommended a tea place. (While we were asking the German dude from our room invited us to a couch-surfing meeting...I'm sure that would've been awesome times). So we found the place and we felt extremely classy. We sat on pillows (I think...there should have been pillows).The waiter was a real character. He was consistently hilarious. And yet annoying. Before, after, and during our tea (I got apple cinnamon-flavored tea. He came with a box of tea-filled vials and we got to pick) there was this ongoing commentary about how Camilla was doing all the talking and how she needed to shut up so I could speak because "she can speak! let her speak!" and so he'd ask me questions and it was just generally weird and awkward but in a dumb funny way. We got politely kicked out at 11 or 12 or whenever it closed and he gave me some inspirational (and IRRITATING) words of wisdom before parting. He told me to be loud, to yell right then and there, because "shyness won't get you anywhere in life." I was like "thank you! I'll take your advice." and punched my fist into the air and marched triumphantly out the door, onward into my BRIGHT FUTURE THAT AWAITS!! THANKS, TEA MAN!

Day 3, April 2, 2010. The earplugs my uncle gave my mom, and that my mom gave to me, are UNBELIEVABLE. I owe my well-being to them. After breakfast (we got yummy Spanish Special-K with red berries) and directions from the hostel lady, we made our way to the Guell Park. I honestly had never heard of it before. But I'll tell you this: it is the BEST park in the world. And I don't have to see all the other parks in the world to know this. It reminded me of so many wonderful things: Candy Land, the Jungle Book, Roller Coaster Tycoon, dinosaurs. Gaudi's fantasy world was like an amusement park without the rides. We ate the sandwiches we had brought on a bench in the designated picnic area with tree flowers and the sound of several musicians/bands draped around us. It was a stunningly gorgeous day. I got a sunburn so bad that the hostel man asked me if it HURT later that night. But it was worth it. We explored the whole place: the famous mosaic bench curling around the perimeter of the largest open plaza area upon which all 600,000 people were trying to sit, the strange little mound with a cross on top that continually drew people up (and from a distance it looked like ants on a Christian anthill), and, of course, the bumpy-columned tunnel through which CariDee and Melrose from America's Next Top Model Cycle 7 walked the final runway challenge as vampire brides. Despite the 600,000 people, not one of them annoyed me. This is rare for me. No one was rude. Or if they were I didn't notice. So after that we made our way to another of Gaudi's masterpieces: La Sagrada Familia. It was amazing to see a cathedral so UN-cathedral-y. Completely unique and inspiring. How often do you see colors other than brown and gray in a church's exterior? But of course it was under construction too. And waaaaaay too expensive to go in. But we found a part that you could enter for free, and it was much better this way because we accidentally stumbled upon the tomb of Gaudi himself. We sat for a while in the chapel, then headed to the cool-looking hospital that Camilla wanted to see. I could not physically move my feet any longer by the time we got there so I NEEDED a hospital. Back at the hostel Camilla got a text from our friend Emily, who was also in Barcelona (12 of the 20 Smith girls would be in Barcelona at some point that break), asking us if we wanted to meet for dinner. So we met her and her two friends for dinner. Or, a quest for tapas. It was pretty good! We all got different things and shared. Such is the tapas tradition. We then wanted to find dessert. We were detained for about a half hour as a result of a RELIGIOUS PROCESSION, complete with huge elaborate Jesus and Mary floats (deeeefinitely the wrong, and inappropriate, word) and black pointy hats and robes and music. The place we wanted to go to was literally 10 steps diagonally across the street but a police officer wouldn't let anyone through until the procession had gone by. It was hilarious. But no it really was an interesting cultural thing to witness. It was Good Friday, after all. At the dessert place I got ice cream. Ice cream IN hot chocolate. Dulce de leche ice cream. Best idea ever? Yes. Then we wanted to see flamenco dancing but we got there just a few minutes too late. Dang it. So we called it a night. Back at the hostel apparently the people in our room were all born with some sort of special eyelids that makes them completely oblivious to 4 sets of fluorescent lights blaring into their face. I didn't want to be the one to turn off the light. But by the time it was 2:30 I had had QUITE enough of suppressing screams of frustration under my covers, so I got up, crept across the room, took a deep breath and slowly extended a shaking hand 1 centimeter above a girl's head to hit the switch. I muttered "Was that REALLY that hard" under my breath before getting back into bed. JEESH.