Barcelona

We left Vienna Thursday after class. Rachel, Jordan, Andy, Kirk and I took a train to Bratislava. We were catching a plane to Barcelona. We spent the first night walking around the city, eating, and looking for good shopping places. Our hostel was in the center of the active part of the city. We stayed in a creepy, dirty place. I personally found a bug in the shower and under my covers in my bed. It was the scariest moment of the trip, and after Andy checked my bed for bugs for the third time I decided to sleep there anyway. The next morning, we got up and went to the Dunkin Doughnuts across the street. We decided Spain and America have one major thing in common. We both can’t survive without doughnuts. Thus we decided to start every morning in Barcelona with coffee and a chocolate cake doughnut. It was a good weekend.

We had heard from some of the girls that went to Barcelona over fall break that the bike tours were cheap and fun! So we decided that those were two great reasons that couldn’t be ignored. Our tour guide was Austrian and she had moved to Barcelona with her boyfriend. He was from Africa and was a singer. She took us all over the city. But I do want to say before I get start describing everything beautiful that I saw; that the phrase “it’s like riding a bike, you never forget” is very misleading. I had not ridden a bike since I was pretty young and I didn’t just hop on that huge bike without problems. Turning, stopping and not running into cars and buses were just the beginning of my struggles. If you add in getting started on the bike, the super crowded streets and trying to catch up to my tour guide you can image the difficulty that I had. Not to mention at all, the bruises on my back side for about a week. Thankfully halfway through the tour she stopped at the beach so we could have a break. I didn’t want to sit down at all. We all took silly pictures on the beach and had a coke break. Later we rode by Barcelona’s zoo, park, and where they had the world fair years previous. There were vendors and shops out on the street everywhere we rode. I got several of my gifts here in Barcelona.

At night we went shopping and out to eat. We walked along the big boardwalk and watched the performers and saw huge sand creations that people had made hoping for money. I saw a mermaid, the Simpsons and Santa Claus all made out of sand. It was fun to also walk around and talk to the people of Barcelona.

Sunday when we got out we only had a couple of hours in Barcelona before we had to catch a bus out of the city to the airport. So of course we started our day the way every day should be started, I believe I had a cinnamon and apple doughnut with a large water bottle. I was very sad to leave Barcelona; I had never had an American Indian shop, the beach and a Dunkin Doughnut right beside my hostel before. I didn’t even mention the beautifully warm weather or the fact that the whole city shuts down for a two hour nap time in the afternoon. I believe that the nap rule was in place because they all knew how much naps mean to me. I truly loved Barcelona.