Barcelona (Part 1)

July 11th, 2012

This weekend I headed on a last minute trip to Barcelona with three other girls in the program. By taking the bus we saved some money, but the trip took about 7 1/2 hours to get from Madrid to Barcelona (which was as long as my flight to Europe!). In Barcelona they actually don’t speak Spanish, they speak a language called Catalan which is sort of afusion between Spanish and French. Another thing is that for “c” and “z” they pronounce as “th”, so Barcelona really sounds like Bar-th-alona. Barcelona was one of the most unique cities I have ever traveled to and it is a great city to explore in. But be careful for pick pocketing on the Metro because no later than 5 minutes of me being on the metro, I felt a pull on my bag and turned around to see the guy behind me on the escalator opening my bag to find only trail mix. I shot him the dirtiest look as he walked off to his next target.

In Barcelona we went on a bus tour of the city to get to know the different areas then we got a metro card and took off to explore by ourselves. For anyone traveling to Spain, the metro card is a lifesaver. Especially if you are only in town for a weekend it costs about 12 euros for a two day unlimited pass and that includes all public transportation including local buses and trains. We saw all of the big touristic points in the city like Las Ramblas, La Sagrada Família, and La Pedrera, all which were unique. Then we headed to the see the Pablo Picasso museum on Sunday afternoon since its free anytime after 2pm. It is tucked into a back neighborhood of Madrid which was full of historic buildings and quaint outdoor restaurants. Although the line to get in took about an hour, once you got inside to see the work it was worth it.

Next stop was the Barceloneta beach which is breathtaking. We went partially into the Mediterranean Sea which gave the Gulf of Mexico a run for its money. It was warm, but with waves and definitely had more things to do on the water such as surfing. We ended the day by going to the Olympic Port since it is where everyone our age hangs out at nights and we ate some Paella which is rice cooked with traditionally seafood. It was one of the best dishes I’ve had in Europe, I can’t even describe how great it was. On the way out of the bar, we passed several salsa clubs where as you walked guys would pull you in to them and start salsa dancing with you on the street. It was so much fun and such a beautiful night that we spent the rest of the time relaxing outside!


One Response to “Barcelona (Part 1)”

  1. Joan Ursini on July 23, 2012 1:08 pm

    hahaha…those pick pocketers have to do a lot better than that before they get any money from My Kayla! They don’t know who theyre messing with, dirty looks and trail mix is as much as they’ll get from you. Little do they know you’ve become quite the savy world traveler, right Babe??? Unlike yr grandmother who can’t even manage to hold on to her wallet in NYC, much less a foreign country! Now if they tried pulling me in to salsa with them they’d see a whole diff Jonzi. haha Then they’d see the dirtiest looks! hahaha

Comments are closed.