visitors

On Thursday Trish and her brother Al came to visit for two days. They were only here from Thursday night to Saturday morning so we didn't have much time, but we did manage to fit A LOT of sights in.

Friday morning, we started off by walking down La Rambla and into the Boqueria; we got there early so everything was really fresh. After that we walked through Placa St. Jaume where the Catalan Government and City Hall are and went into El Born area. We went to Santa Maria del Mar Church which was built during the Middle Ages when El Born neighborhood was the economical center of the city. The church was gorgeous, it was huge inside covered with stained glass windows. After that we walked down to the port passing by La Llotja (stock exchange) on the way. It was my first time down to the port since I've been here and it's a great area. This weekend it got to be about 65 degrees so it was a beautiful day, the beach was full of people. We ate lunch at a restaurant right on the beach and got Fisherman's Paella; it was really good, just a little messy because we had to de-shell all of the prawns. That whole area was called Barceloneta and it's right at the end of the city by the port and the beach.

After lunch we walked back to La Barceloneta metro station and took it to Passeig de Gracia (the main high end shopping street in Barcelona where all the rich people used to live during the Industrial Revolution). From there we saw Casa Batlló which is one of Gaudís houses he built. The building was amazing, it looked like it was out of a fairy tale. We didn't go on the tour inside but I'm going to go with Christina and Sam this week so we'll add pictures then.

From there, we walked up the street to La Pedrera, another of Gaudís apartment buildings that looks like a sea cliff right in the middle of the street. We did go inside here and got to go to the roof which offered amazing views of the city as well as an interesting rooftop layout.




From La Pedrera we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia to see Gaudís famous church. We didn't go inside as it costs 9 euros and does not have much inside, the real sight is all the symbolism of the two facades on the outside. There is so much symbolism on the outside that it could take hours to get everything in.

After La Sagrada Familia we walked back into El Born to see El Palau de la Musica de Catalonia, the huge music hall built by Domenech Montaner covered with tiles and columns. Christina, Sam, and I will also be going on a tour of the inside of that sometime this week. After that we went to the Picasso Museum and then finished our day by going home, showering, eating at 4 Gats again, and then going to Bar Marsella; an absinthe bar where Ernest Hemingway used to hang out at.

Trish and Al left on Saturday morning at noon and I rested up for the arrival of Christina and Sammy on Sunday.

They got in at 8:00AM and I met them at the airport. We all took the train back to Barcelona and then a cab from the station as they had two huge luggages each plus carry ons. To their surprise, we had to carry everything up my 4 flights of stairs. We went a little sightseeing today but I am going to let Christina and Sammy write the next few blogs about everything they saw!

Sorry I haven't written in so long. I just finished two weeks of mid-terms so now I actually have time to catch up on this blog. Since it's been so long, I have a few posts, but now everything is up to date, enjoy. I'll write back soon!

london!!!!!

This past weekend I met up with Trish and Erika again but this time in London!!! This is probably the trip I was looking forward to the whole semester. As you know, I'm obsessed with London, I wish I did a summer program studying abroad there after my freshman or sophomore year because it's such a great city and I love everything about it.


I arrived on Thursday night because I was supposed to meet other friends there, but they didn't end up booking a ticket. Luckily, I know the city very well so I was able to walk around a little where I lived when I was interning at the Westbury Hotel in high school. Thursday night I stayed in a hotel near Russell Square (where I lived when I was there) and I had a low key night, I was exhausted from the week so I went to sleep pretty early, but that was ok because I had to wake up the next morning to check out and then transfer to the other hotel to meet Erika and Trish and Trish's friend, Margaret.


Our hotel was called Hyde Park Suite Apartments and it was right across the street from Hyde Park and a block away from two tube stations that were on the most popular tube lines. Each day we just bought an unlimited day pass so that we could just go on the tube as many times as we wanted to see as much as we could.



Friday we went to the Westminster area and saw the London Eye, the Millenium Bridge, Big Ben, Parlaiment, and Westminster Abbey. We were soooo lucky with weather, it was sunny all day, even if it was colder than Barca, at least there was no rain.



Friday night we went to the Fall Out Boy concert because Trish and Margaret had a friend in the opening band that invited them. Luckily for Daddy, I got amazing seats and surprisingly had a great time! I forgot how much I liked Fall Out Boy's old music which was a lot of what they played. After the concert, we went back to around our hotel and Trish and I had Indian food for dinner which was amazing. After, we just went back to the hotel since it got late and we had a busy day planned for Saturday.


Saturday morning we woke up and went to Porotbello Road, a huge outdoor antique market that is only opened on Saturdays. It's a great place to find antique anything as well as jewelry; I got another horn necklace because I lost mine in Geneva.


After Portobello Road, we went to Kings Cross Station to see Platform 9 and 3/4's from Harry Potter!


After taking a million pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4's, we went to Leicester Square to buy tickets for a show that night. We should have planned it out better because a lot of shows were sold out by the time we got there, but we were able to buy tickets for We Will Rock You for later on that night.

After Leiscester Square we walked over to Picadilly Circus to take the tube from there to Baker Street to go to Madame Tussaud's. Obviously Madame Tussaud's is a huge tourist sight so we had to wait in a half hour line, but it was fun to take pictures with all the wax celebrities!





Saturday night we went to see We Will Rock You by Tottenham Court Road Station which is a play of all Queen music. I had seen it when I was in London during high school, but it was great to see again, I love all of Queen's music and it's such a fun show to go to, not to mention the amazing voices all of the actors have!


We went back to Leicester Square after the show to Chinatown and had some Chinese food for dinner. We went to ZooBar after that, but Trish and I left early from there because we don't like clubs and because we had early flights this morning. Since the tubes were closed because it was after midnight and because we didn't have any money, we decided to walk to get a little closer to the hotel and then take a cab from there. We walked from Leicester Square passed Picadilly Circus, up Regent Street to Oxford Circus and then we walked across Oxford Street passed Bond Street and Marble Arch which was the beginning of Hyde Park, but at that time, it started to rain and we were not close so we took a cab the rest of the way. We got back, packed up, and went to bed.

Luckily this morning my flight was at 11:25AM and Heathrow was only 15 minutes to where my hotel was so I was able to sleep later and leave later as well. I got home at around 4:00PM Barcelona time because Barcelona is an hour ahead of London. Since then, I've just been relaxing before school tomorrow, thankfully I won't have too much work for the next few weeks, just in time to welcome Christababa and Simone!!

mid-term week

These past two weeks have been mid-terms for the CEA program. Luckily I only had one group presentation for my International Marketing class the first week so I was able to enjoy my weekend in Barcelona a little bit. My friend JM came to visit for the weekend so we did some touristy things which was nice, I really enjoy all the sights here in Barcelona!

Unfortunately; however, from last Sunday (March 1) to last Thursday (March 5), I was non-stop with work. Tuesday I had my International Marketing Exam; Wednesday I had a 30 minute presentation for my Cross-Cultural Management class in the morning, and an exam in my Barcelona City:Past and Present class in the afternoon; and Thursday morning I had a presentation in my Spanish for Business class. It was a rough week full of a LOT of work and no sleep. Luckily, I had London to look forward to!!

geneva, switzerland

Thursday February 19th I met up with my roommates from Miami, Erika and Trish, in Geneva. We had been trying to plan a trip to meet up and Geneva was the one place that worked out for all of us. We also met up with our friend JM who is studying in Monaco.

Geneva was a nice place to go visit; however, there wasn't really much to do at all; luckily though, I didn't really go to be a tourist, I mainly went to meet up with my friends so we had a great time! The first night (Thursday) Trish and Erika's flight from Alicante was delayed so they missed their layover in Madrid so they weren't able to get to Geneva until Friday morning. Thursday night, we just went out to dinner, there really wasn't much to do going out wise, it's definitely not a city known for the nightlife.

Friday we walked to the main shopping road by Lake Geneva. We saw the Jet d'eau which is the huge gyeser that shoots out from Lake Geneva. We were also able to see Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Swiss Alps, from a distance which was cool.




For dinner we went to a Fondue restaurant where we got one order of cheese and bread fondue and a steak fondue that came with all different sauces. They didn't have a dessert fondue so we just ate some of the Geneva chocolate we bought earlier in the day. Friday night we actually went to a club that was in France. Since Geneva is right on the border, the trip was only 20 minutes away. The club we went to was called Macumba and it's supposed to be the biggest club in Europe. It had 17 different rooms each offering a different genre of music. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of people out, so it wasn't that much fun for us and it took us forever to get a cab back to Geneva at the end of the night.

Saturday we tryed to sightsee some more, we went to the United Nations. Our hotel provided us with free public transportation passes around the city so we took a cable car to the UN; unfortunately, since we went on a Saturday, it wasn't open so all we could see was the outside with all the flags of the different nations.


After the UN we tried to find the Red Cross Museum, but we couldn't find it. We walked through the Cathedral of Geneva where John Calvin preached. After sightseeing, we went back to our hotel and got ready to go out. Unfortunately, my flight the next morning was at 7:05 AM so I didn't get to sleep all night and got home at 8:30AM and slept until 4:30PM. All in all it was a good weekend, I think the next time I go to Switzerland, I'll plan a trip to Interlaken to go skiing.

celebration of santa eulalia

I got home from the airport around 6:00PM and at 7:30PM we went to la Catedral de Barcelona for the celebration of Santa Eulália. Santa Eulália was a woman who rebelled against injustice at a time when the Roman Empire was persecuting Christians. She never gave up her fight and she was killed by being put inside a barrel pierced with nailes and rolled down a hill.

Santa Eulalia is now interred in the Crypt of la Catedral and she is celebrated every year with a big celebration in the Placa Nova right outside the Catedral.

We walked over to Placa Nova and there was a huge parade of people with sparklers dancing around the streets. It was quite a thing to see, there were hundreds of people: old and young, celebrating around the Catedral. I will also add pictures of this tomorrow when I get them onto my computer! I will write back later on this week.

firenze: saturday and sunday

Saturday was our wine tasting day in Tuscany! We left Florence on a tour bus at 2:00PM and went into Tuscany. Our wine tasting was at a castle with a lot of history. The castle used to be the home of the Pacci family. The Pacci family was the second most powerful family after the Medici's.

The Pacci's attempted to conquer the land from the Medici's by killing the two Medici brothers when they were at church in the Duomo on a Sunday. The attack only killed one of the brothers and Lorenzo escaped. Lorenzo then took revenge on the Pacci's by killing anyone who supported them as well as the family themselves.

We were able to be in the room where the Pacci family plotted the attack on the Medici's, which was also the room where Lorenzo came to after he killed all the Pacci's to destroy the Pacci coat of arms that was above the fire place. The room also contained one of Raphael's original works; La Belle Jardiniere (The Beautiful Gardner). It was really interesting to see all the history in that one room.

Under the castle were the barrels full of wine. We went to the Chianti region so all the barrels contained Red Chianti wine. Also downstairs were the old terracota pots that used to hold all the Olive Oil. We were able to learn a lot about Chianti wine as well as Olive Oil and why Extra Virgen Olive Oil is the only kind that should be purchased by anyone.


After our tour, we got to try one white Chardonnay wine that the family makes and two of their Chianti's. We were also given a sample of the olive oil and other small snacks. After that we went into the shop where I bought some Olive Oil and we all shared a 10 Liter box of the Red Wine to drink.

Saturday night, Valentine's Day, four of us went to a restaurant Tres Panchi which is a tiny little restaurant that is not well known to tourists. At dinner, we decided to continue on with the Chianti taste so we got a bottle of Chianti Reserva (Reserva meaning that the wine was aged in the barrels and in the bottle). We then each got a salad to start, I got and arugula, parmaggiano reggiano cheese, fresh mozzarella, and avocado salad. After that we all shared three dishes. The first was Truffle Risotto; me being a huge Risotto fan, LOVED this dish. Then we got a chicken breast in Lemon Sauce which was also delicious and the third was Ravioli was Gorgonzola and Arugula sauce. Each dish was amazing. For dessert we shared Cheesecake and Chocolate Cake as well as some Limoncello and Cappucinos. We all were stuffed after that meal, luckily the Limoncello helped us feel a little bit digested.

Saturday night we hung out with a group of boys who also go to NYU and then we all went to a bar and then to a club called Space. The club was huge with three floors and we had a lot of fun! The only bad thing was the walking home at the end of the night because we were so far from the apartment.

This morning I woke up around 11:20AM and packed and caught the 12:27PM train back to Pisa for my flight home. The flight back to Barcelona was on time and everything went very smoothly. Now I'm back in my apartment resting from the weekend and getting ready for school tomorrow. I will add pictures tomorrow of everything from Florence!