Last stop, Barcelona!

Hello my faithful followers!

Welp finals week (more like weekend?) officially began yesterday and I have never felt so unmotivated to study than I have during these past couple of days so its been a real struggle. Ever since we got back from our weekend away we have been so busy with classes, eating gelato, and trying to prepare ourselves for what is to come December 20^th……

A week later and I was finally able to sneak in some time to type up a quick recap of our final weekend traveling in Europe!

For our last traveling weekend, a group of about 14ish girls decided to go to Barcelona! We arrived at the perfect hour of 10:00am on a sunny and pleasantly cool day in Barcelona. We hopped on the train from the airport and took it into downtown Barcelona and made the walk to our hostel!  As usual we found our hostel only after stopping to look at maps and street names 10 different times...but we made it as we always do and dropped our stuff in our rooms (Kate, Colleen, and I got upgraded to a private room, man we have been treated so well at all of the hostels we have stayed at). Before we began our intial exploration of Barcelona we had to stop at the complementary coffee/hot chocolate/cappunino/latte machine that was available for unlimited drinks all day. Probably chugged down a good three cups of hazelnut coffee in the 10 minutes that we were standing there…Oh our hostel, named Casa Gracia was also actually perfect. I am basically going to refer to it as a hotel because it was a hotel by all of my standards, actually even better than a hotel. First off it was decorated for Christmas, one golden star from Andree right off the bat, a huge Christmas tree in the lounge area in that was lit with lights and ornaments and tinsel. The tree was in this lounge area which actually resembled a mix between a cute study, sunroom and living room. It had mirrors along one wall in a room with huge pillows and bean bags and in the other room a vintage bicycle and two couches that were in front of a beautiful bay window that overlooked the street, and in the final room (the study) there was a built in bookcase with chairs and a little ladder propped up on the bookshelf, it was oh so darling and adorable…. ok so now that I have you basically situated in this hostel I can move on.

The lounge area in the hostel

So basically we spent all of our day Friday wandering around Barcelona, finding food first because that is priority, watching little children run around in a park kicking a soccer ball like with the confidence of David Beckham, and more walking around. We went to the HUGE fruit and candy market that was impossible to stop and look at things in because people were just everywhere and there was no room or time for stopping! We did manage to get a fresh fruit smoothie that was wonderful! After the market we walked along a middle strip that had different stands selling things and we made our way to the pier/dock at the very end of the long road where we took pictures with the thousands of seagulls and marveled at the view of the water and the boats as the sun set. We ended up walking down the pier and around (basically in a big circle) but it was very lovely. Barcelona is a pretty big city (bigger than I thought) but it is not like Rome at all (which was a nice change in pace). In Barcelona, you actually do have to STOP at red lights and wait at crosswalks, yea we don’t do that in Rome, apparently if you cross on a red you can get fined? Oops… Barcelona is also very clean, I like clean cities. Even though it is big it is way more spread out and less noisy in my opinion. The city was decorated very nicely with little Christmas light chandeliers and one hotel even had huge light lanterns on the side that lit up the whole front of the hotel. Later that evening around 7 we made a long 30ish minute walk to the side of town that has the famous Magic Fountains. Some girls that went to Barcelona a week prior told us we had to go to the fountain show so here we were! We got there around 7:30 and waited until 8 when we thought it was supposed to start. Welllll of course with the luck that we always seem to have it was a special constitution day and so the show wasn’t starting until 9:30. Welp it was cold and we weren’t gonna wait so we left. We made some friends with two guys from London that we talked to for a while and that we later saw on the metro on the way back but then they told us to get on the wrong train. NOT COOL DUDES. Anyways we made our way back to our hostel for dinner around 9pm and after that we were so tired that we called it a night. We didn’t even go get crepes or gelato (why would we get gelato in Barcelona anyways?) we were that tired!

Just some candy at the markets :)

We woke up on Saturday around 7:30 (that is usually our set time for waking up on traveling weekends, early enough to get the most out of our day but not TOO early cause we do like our sleep) and right away planned that we were going to go on a bike tour. I, being a second timer with European bike tours (my first one was in Florence) was all for the idea because I think that bike tours are the most effective way to spend limited time in a city that you have never been too. You get to see many places, see a lot of the city, and hear about some history of the city while riding a bike, getting exercise and having fun with your friends and trying not to run over every person/dog/baby that walks in your path. So yeah they are basically perfect. We met our bike tour guide at 11 and the six of us Smicks and about four other bike tourists began our ride through the city! We saw many different things on our tour and covered a large perimeter of the city in about 3.5 hours. We went into parks and past cathedrals, and made a pit stop at La Sagrada Familia! La Sagrada Familia is a church designed by Antoni Gaudi that has been under construction since 1882 and is predicted to be done sometime in the next 13 years, although our tour guide told us (and I think she is spot on) that she doesn’t think it will be done nearly in that time, maybe not even in our lifetime because of how much they still need to build and the fact that the incomplete, not finished aspect is what draws people to see this colossal church in the center of Barcelona and as long as people keep coming to see it the church gets funds from the tickets and they can keep building for as long as they desire! The weather for our bike tour was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, and about 58 degrees. The last route of our tour was along the beach…ahhh it was so nice however at one of the stops that we stopped at apparently my bike’s front tire got a hole in it and it went flat, and when I say flat I mean completely FLAT. I suppose I could have told the tour guide but I just rode the remaining twenty minutes on a flat tire. Lets just say I got my exercise for the day!

Andree love from Barcelona

La Sagrada Familia 

After our wonderful bike tour Kate, Colleen, and I walked back down to the water and we found a nice restaurant that our tour guide suggested along the water where there was a whole long strip of bars and restaurants. We got a table outside and enjoyed a fantastic meal of Sangria (with Olives as an appetizer), salmon (the best I have ever had in my entire life) potatoes, asparagus and for dessert cheesecake with raspberry sauce. So delicious. So savory. So expensive. But we felt like we needed to treat ourselves to a nice dinner, plus we were in Barcelona so why not! After dinner we walked out to a pier and watched the sunset and then headed back to our hostel. We took about a half hour power nap because we were drained and felt like doing nothing but we knew we could not go to sleep at 8pm on Saturday while we were in Barcelona. So we took our nap, got some more hot chocolate and coffee and headed back out. We went down to the metro station and waited for the metro to take us back to the Magic Fountains. Most of the girls that came with us were at an Imagine Dragons concert that evening (they all had a wonderful time) so while they were rockin' out to "Radioactive" we were watching the fountains dance to songs like "Domino" as the lights under the water changed colors and mist sprayed our faces. Colleen, Kate and I danced and took pictures and made cliché hearts with our arms. It was great. After the fountain show we went to a little shopping mall that was about 5 minutes from the fountains and walked around in it for a little while before heading back to the hostel.

Love at the Magic Fountains! 

Sunday was here before we knew it and we gathered our stuff and headed out for the last bit of exploring. For the first part of the morning we headed back to La Sagrada Familia to see inside it. It was magnificent and the architecture and stain glass windows were beyond incredible. We spent a while looking around and taking pictures and then a few of us made our way to Park Guell (famous for the Lizard). Unfortunately you have to pay to see the Lizard so once we made it up to the park (tons of steps and a few escalator rides later) we just sat on a bench for a goof half hour and enjoyed the city view of Barcelona that stretched just in front of us with the water in plain sight. We had no energy left in us, no snacks and that “our weekend of traveling is ending and we have to go back to Rome” feeling so we were pretty lazy as we made our way to the metro station and hopped on the train to head to the airport. 

We were back in Rome just in time for mass to welcome in the second week of Advent. After mass we got gelato and headed back to our albergo home. That was it, and Barcelona was a wrap. Greece, Switzerland, Austria, Barcelona, and cities in Italy on the weekends while living in Rome during the week and attending class in the city and living in the city. Who woulda thunk a 20 year old college student would have been able to do all that?! Traveling has been an experience in its own. It has been exilerating, annoying, exhausting, worldly, challenging, rewarding, expensive, cheap, clean, dirty, beautiful and incredibly fantastic. Although my traveling though Europe has come to an end for now it is only predicted to be on halt for a short time period (I need to refill my wallet and learn some more things, eh and maybe get a degree before I embark on another European adventure after graduation).

Last week Monday through Thursday: classes, gelato, some shopping for our wonderful people back home....

During Advent a group of us have been participating in something called "Advent Angels" (its like Secret Santa but during Advent) and so Thursday night we all went to Miscellena, a fav restaurant among Saint Mary’s girls, to celebrate the end of our little Advent activity. We exchanged gifts, talked, ate and enjoyed Sexy Wine. Lovely evening with some rather lovely girls.

Friday night, Colleen and I went to see the Nutcracker at the Opera House here in Rome. Initially we wanted to see a professional ballet but it turned out it was a school of dance that put on the ballet but it was actually very good. Family and friends mostly made up the audience in the relatively small theater but I was happy we were able to go and see The Nutcracker and support the arts here in Rome! Brava to all the dancers!  

Well folks, it is Sunday night here. Actually it should probably be more like a Tuesday that’s what it felt like to me. A final yesterday and a final today plus lots of successful procrastination walking around Rome doing last minute shopping. Never the less I have three more days of finals to get through, or to not get through, because I don’t want to leave, and one day where I have nothing planned but to spend and devote all my time to Rome and then, my time here comes to an end.

From now until I embark on my journey home to the States on Friday morning I do not think I will have time to write to you all so my next post will likely be coming from me on an 8 hour United Flight way up somewhere in the sky…..

Buonanotte!

Andree