Barcelona

La Boqueria

On Thursday night, we arrived in the wonderful city of Barcelona. We took a shuttle from the airport and walked the rest of the way with our luggage down Las Ramblas. It was instantly gorgeous with Christmas lights on all the trees. Our hostel was small and not very social, to my displeasure, but we found our room and met a nice German girl who was staying there. When we left to go out for dinner, it became evident that people on the streets of Barcelona harass girls much more than in Sevilla. We walked quickly past everyone to a tapas place that our hostel recommended. I did not think it was very good overall. We had a few good dishes, but most of them had too much mayonnaise or were too fried. Brenna and Rosa had a very interesting and unappetizing dish of snails in a bitter sauce. We stopped on the way home for pretty bad soft serve at Dunkin’ Coffee and regretted it when we found gelato just a few feet down the road. Then it was time for our first night of sleep in Barcelona.

The next day, we went to the best place in the world – Boqueria. It is a giant and never-ending market of every type of fresh food you could want to buy. It is famous for its fruit juices, and we had many a juice of the next few days. They were incredible! We always bought them from one stand, and the worker often gave us a free juice with our purchase. Yum yum yum. My favorite was mango coco! I also had a huge banana and nutella crepe that was messy to eat but so delicious. After we indulged ourselves, we strolled down Las Ramblas and found a cathedral with a Christmas market. Although it may have been due to the better weather, Barcelona’s streets were much livelier than Madrid’s. We went in and out of stores for the rest of the day and ate more kebabs. At the end of the day, we walked to the waterfront. It was stunning. There were countless boats and the water looked beautiful with all the lights reflecting off it. We headed home to relax for a bit before I met up with my friend Sarah, who is studying abroad there. We got drinks at La Oveja Negra, and it was great to hear about her abroad experience, complain about missing Tufts Naked Quad Run that night, and instruct her to give people hugs from me back at Tufts.

Park Guell

On Saturday, we conquered Gaudí. We went on a self-guided walking tour of his architecture around the city. All of his buildings were impressive from the outside but we didn’t fork up the money to go in. My favorite from the outside was Casa Batlló. We ended up at Park Güell, which was just as cool as I remember it being from my last trip to Barcelona. We hung out around there for a while and took many pictures of the gorgeous tiles. Later, we got dinner at Boqueria, including more juices, paella, kiwis, and pizza. Yum again. We couldn’t muster the energy to go out dancing, so we relaxed and chatted, like always.

On our last day in Barcelona, we had very overpriced coffee on Las Ramblas and walked to the waterfront, stopping to look at the markets along the way. It was even more gorgeous during the daytime, and we relaxed on the boardwalk for a while. We strolled along the water until we found a delicious lunch of black rice paella, patatas bravas, and melt in your mouth calamari. Then we just wandered around the city without direction and enjoyed gelato. We wandered upon the Arc de Triomf and a long walkway with an eco fair. Then we explored the park on the other side full of adorable Spanish children and eventually headed home. We had to get up early the next day for our 7 am flight back to Sevilla so we packed and had a quick but yummy dinner of falafels. It was time to go back to reality and work in Sevilla, but I was super excited to show Brenna and Rosa my amazing city. But this long trip definitely made me want to travel more, and I cannot wait for a Euro trip after my program ends.