Barcelona y Carnaval (en Oviedo)

¡Hola! Sorry for the delay between entries, but here is my Barcelona experience (and a little bit about Carnaval in Oviedo).

So we took the train into Barcelona and walked from the station to the hostel, which was more like a bed and breakfast.  It was on the "second" floor of the building, which usually means the American third floor, but this time, for some reason, it was on what would be equivalent to the American fourth floor.  We had the entire hostel to ourselves, it was all on one floor and there were a bunch of rooms with different numbers of beds, a dinning room, and a lounge-ish area.

Dinning room at the hostel :)

We got situated and settled into this nice, private place.  Then we went for a walk around outside on the hunt for a Mexican restaurant and stumbled upon:

Sagrada Familia by night

This cathedral is really famous - it was designed originally by Gaudí, but he never got to see it finished.  And neither have I, because it still isn't done!  He envisioned that it would take 400 years to finish, luckily with advancements in technology, they estimate less than 200 years, dated around 2026.  This facade looks basically finished, and the one opposite does too, but there is a third one that, as far as I could tell, hasn't even been started.

Anyways, we found a restaurant called Amálie and I got Mexican food, served up in a French fashion (in Spain...).

 The next morning we had breakfast at the beautiful table spread in the picture and then I went with Grace and Mary to visit Sagrada Familia.  It was soooo impressive...indescribable, so I will provide pictures:

Looking straight up at the ceiling 

The Nativity Facade

A view from the highest point the elevator took us

If you look closely at the nativity facade there is a tree...we are behind it.

Mary walking down one of the towers

Beautiful rainbow stain glass :)

After Sagrada Familia Mary and I took the tourist bus to Park Güell, a park designed by Gaudí, commissioned by a man named Güell.  It was really nice and relaxing, once we got to the parts not crawling with tourists.  There were people EVERYWHERE, it was hard to get away from them, but there were less the higher up we walked in the park.  I decided that I really like Gaudí - his art is really interesting and uses colors and mosaics a lot, which is nice.  Art is always better with color :) (or, almost always).

Me in Park Güell with the famous lizard-thing

In Park Güell with Sagrada Familia and the ocean in the background :)

After the park, Mary and I took the bus around, which was a double-decker tour bus, but the tour wasn't that interesting.  We met Grace on Las Ramblas, a famous street from Plaça de Catalunya to the ocean with a bunch of shops and tourists.  We went to La Boquería, a market where they sold alllll types of food - meat, fish, produce, candy, chocolate, etc.  Pictures are in the food section of my blog, I won't repost them here to avoid more redundancy.

That night a big group of Umassers went out to bars/clubs in Barcelona, but I stayed in with everyone else and just had a relaxing evening.  The next morning Mary and I walked to another one of the tourist bus lines and met up with 4 other people in our group.  We took the bus up to Montjuic (Mount of the Jews) which had things like the Olympic stadium from 1992 and other museums.  We all took the teleferíc up to the fortress on top of the mountain.  It was terrifying, but the views were awesome.

Taking the cable car up the mountain...

The ocean, the city, and, if you look really closely, Sagrada Familia in the background

After we finished walking around and taking pictures with various backgrounds behind us, we took the cable car back down (which was scarier) and went on the rest of the bus tour.  Mary and I got off at the beach and walked around.  It was another beautiful sunny day and the waves were huge!  I collected a bunch of small, orange clam shells that had little round holes in them that, if I'm feeling ambitious, I will make into a necklace.  The beach was right near Las Ramblas, so we walked up it again and went back to La Boquería and got some fruit to eat.  We just walked around, killing time, until it was time to go back to the hostel, get our things, and head to dinner.  We walked around looking for somewhere to eat for a long time - I was out with a bunch of vegetarians, so it was kinda hard.  We eventually found a place that said they would make vegetarian paella, so we had our first Spanish Paella :).  It was really good - it came in a huge pan because we had all ordered the same kind.

Paella! 

After we ate, we took the metro to the train station, met Carrie, Camilo, Cora, and the rest of the Umassers, and took the train back to Oviedo.  I took a Tylenol PM, and slept alright, but classes the next day were no fun whatsoever.

This weekend was Carnaval celebration in Oviedo.  There was a parade during the day that wasn't as flashy as the one in Tarragona, but it was still really good.  There were a bunch of people marching with drums, and everyone was dressed up.  I have never seen so many people in Oviedo at one time.  It was insane.  And then last night when I went out, there were thousands of people in every square and every bar and every club.  It was impossible to move or breathe.  It was INSANE.  Everyone was having a good time and there were tons of costumes, but I was uncomfortable most of the time because of having no room to breathe.  Other than that, it was a fun night and now I'm having a slow Sunday.  I helped my host mom make fajitas and they came out decently - finally something spicey!!

Anyways, it's back to the quiet life for me - no more traveling until March 10th, which barely counts because we're just going to Gijón.  I will update once in a while, especially if something exciting happens, but I won't be bothering you with so many travel updates haha.

¡Hasta Luego!