Tuesday, Saint Patty's Day, I had to go to class in the morning so Christina and Sammy went to the Picasso Museum and we met up after that for lunch before my next class. We met up and I took them to lunch by my campus. Lunch was a little rocky for Christina and Sammy. First, the whole menu was in Spanish or Catalan which did not make Christina very happy; Second, Sammy, being the vegetarian she is, decided to order the "hamburguesa de vegetales" thinking it was a veggie burger (turning out to be a real burger with veggies on it); Third, Christina decided to be like Julia the picky eater and get all huffy about not having anything she likes (she ended up with a grilled chicken sandwich). My sandwich was delicious, I guess Spanish food takes some getting used to. Anyways, after that, I went to class and Christina went to the Hospital de Sant Pau right next to my campus which is a hospital built by one of the famous modernist architects Domenech i Montaner. They thought it was a little strange I was sending them to look at a hospital, but it looks nothing like a hospital:
After they walked around the hospital, they went to Las Ramblas to go to the Boqueria, the famous food market in Barcelona.
I met up with the two of them after my class and we went to the Gothic Quarter by the Cathedral to go to the Museu de Historia de la Ciutat which is an underground museum that has all the Roman ruins from the 5th Century. Barcelona has the most ruins underground than any other city! We got to see basically the whole town from the laundry buildings, to the wine cellars, to the fish workshop, but after a while the museum got a little repetitive so we went back to my apartment to get ready for the Saint Patty's Day festivities!
We went to this Irish Pub called George Payne by the main campus of school as well as by my apartment. We were there for a few hours for happy hour and then it became 10:00 PM and we were all starving so we ended our day with a meal at the Hard Rock. When we got back from dinner, Jaime tried to convince us all to go out again, but we were all exhausted so we hung out, watch gossip girl and went to bed.
Wednesday I didn't go to my classes and we went to Montjuic for the day. Montjuic is the hill in Barcelona that has the old military fortress as well as amazing views of both Barcelona as well as the Mediterranean.
We went to the Castle at the top and then took the train down to the bottom of the hill where we saw the Palau Nacional as well at the Font Magica.
We then took another bus to El Estadio Olimpico where the Olympics were held in 1992. From there, we tried to get to Camp Nou (the FC Barcelona Fútbol stadium) for a tour, but we were too late, so we just went back home.
For dinner, we tried to find a Cuban Restaurant I had found in one of my guidebooks, but we couldn't find it and decided to eat at El Japones, a great Japanese restaurant were we drank Green Tea Beer.
Thursday we rented bikes and road them down to the beach! The weather has been gorgeous here so the beach was packed. Our bike ride down was a little scary in that we had to drive on the sidewalk of a main street with all of the pedestrians and cars. We made it down to the beach safe an sound though, which was good. We sat out by Villa Olimpica by all of the nightclubs and by Hotel Arts and had lunch at on of the clubs, Carpe Diem.
After that we drove back to the bike rental place, this time on a less populated street with not many cars or people. After we brought back the bikes we went to Camp Nou for the Stadium Tour! We thought the tour was going to be guided, but it was basically just a path that we had to follow. We got to see a lot of the stadium including: the visitor locker room, the chapel where the players pray before their games, the area where the team and coaches sit on the sidelines, the President and press box, as well as the sponsor seats.
From there, we went back to the apartment and rested for the night because I had friends that had just gotten into town and we were all meeting up! Thursday night we went to dinner at Taller de Tapas and then went to meet everyone at Oveja Negra before going to a club. Oveja Negra was fun and then we went to Opium on the beach where I ran into a lot of my friends from Miami who were visiting Barcelona from other countries for their spring break.
Friday morning, we woke up a little late and got dressed to go to Parc Guell, the last sight they had to see before leaving Barcelona. We got to Parc Guell around 2:30PM and hung out there for a little taking pictures (unfortunately, as most of you know, we lost those pictures when Sammy's camera was stolen from us on Friday night).
From Parc Guell, we went for lunch at Pizza Marzano right on the top of Las Ramblas before heading out shopping. First stop, obviously, was TopShop because Christina had only been talking about it the whole trip. We all managed to find really cute clothes and got them. Sam and Christina did want to find shoes, but we were unsuccessful on that front.
Me, being the dummy I am, bought tickets for the Girl Talk concert thinking it was Friday night when it was really on Saturday night, so our plans got a little shifted on Friday night but we managed to have fun anyway, before the mugging that is.
We started off going to dinner with my friends from Miami: Pia and Chelsea. Then we met up with the other Miami people as well as Erika, my roommate from Miami, and some of her friends from Alicante at Chupitos, the shot bar. The bar was packed, but we managed to find a spot at the bar and have some fun shots! After a little while there, we all went to another bar Dow Jones, which has a drink list that looks like the stock exchange and the price of drinks go up or down depending on how many people order them. That was a pretty fun bar, until it closed for the night around 3:30AM. It's after this that the whole night took a turn for the worst...
We all took a few cabs to Las Ramblas to try and find another bar to go to, but it was full of creepy people and it was getting late and Christina and Sammy wanted to go home to get some sleep before we had to leave for the airport in the morning. So the three of us started to walk home (2 blocks away).
Once we reached Carrer Comtal, we were only about 2 minutes away and these two guys attacked us trying to take our bags. One guy tried to grab my bag, but it was across my body and under my jacket so there was no way he was getting it, so he moved on to Sammy as I fell to the ground. Sammy got scared that he was going to hurt her so she threw her clutch so he wouldn't touch her. That guy grabbed the clutch and ran off. Then I looked up from the ground and saw the other guy grabbing at Christina's bag, which was also across her body like mine was, so I got up and rammed into him pushing him into the wall and hitting his head on the concrete. Once I did that, he ran away because by that time he realized that we were fighting back and that there were two other girls there that would help us.
The two girls behind us said that they thought the guys were our friends and were just joking around; I guess humor is a little different in the US. But anyways, they walked us back to my apartment and we locked the door and watched TV until we had to go to the airport at 7:30AM.
Other than that one minor mishap, I think the girls really enjoyed Barcelona!!
No comments:
Post a Comment