Barcelona

Barcelona is one of those places that everyone says you need to visit but you're never really sure why. I'd heard about how cool Barcelona is, but I never knew specifics. Maybe I wasn't paying attention.. I don't know. But now I know why it's so cool!

Anna and I headed to Barcelona for the weekend. We booked our hostel and were working on getting tickets to the soccer game, but weren't really sure if it would work out.

We started Friday with just touring the city. We went to the Sagrada Familia basicilia right away. Gaudi started working on this church in 1883 and it still isn't done yet! It's expected to be finished in 2030, but it's completely funded by private donors- not the government or The Vatican or any other organization- which I think has both helped and hindered its progress.

Gaudi was the master of Gothic design. His works are just crazy. Honestly, I found them a little weird, but he was very ahead of his time and is said to have transcended mainstream modernism. He actually never drew his plans or ideas; he preferred to create them as 3D scale models.

Here it is- It's kinda creepy. I honestly thought it was supposed to look like a melting candle when I first saw it.

The amount of thought and care that Gaudi put into this church is astounding. He gave the last 43 years of his life to this project. It is centered around the life and death of Jesus. There are 3 phases to the church as a whole representing the birth, passion, and glory of Jesus. Once complete, it will have 18 towers: the 12 apostles, four evangelists, one for the Virgin, and the central tower in honor of Jesus. Each part of the church has significance and meaning.

I was in love with the stained glass windows! I think I ended up with almost 20 photos just of the colors.

Gaudi created the inside to feel like a forest. The pillars were the trunk and on the ceiling was the detail of the leaves.

We also saw the Gaudi houses. They were weird. Am I just not expressive enough to appreciate art or what? I don't know, but Gothic style isn't my thing.

Then we headed back to the hostel for the day. My mom was more than a little worried about me staying at a hostel after hearing all the horror stories of bed bugs and people crawling into bed with you. The hostel was awesome. It was probably the second best place we've stayed- after the Couch Surfing with Noura and Mathieu! We were in a 22 person room- which is really big. I mean, really big. But the hostel was in a great plaza, it had security guards, keys to get into the building, and individual lockers so we could keep our stuff safe. Also, we got breakfast and dinner free. All for 9 Euro. Amazing right? This traveling Europe thing is way easier than I thought it would be.

Saturday we got up early to get our tickets for the soccer game! We reserved them online but weren't sure if we would get them since we had to pick them up the day of the game. We waited about 2 hours and were the second group in line. When we got up to the ticket stand the guy asked if we wanted third or first row but we figured it really didn't matter in the nosebleed section anyway. So we turned on the charm and asked if he could get us seats with a really good view. Well, he did work and got us on the first level! We had such an awesome view!! We walked into the stadium and our jaws literally hit the floor. We even asked a security guard if we had the right seats because there was no way we should have front row view for the price we paid. Here's what it looked like-

I kid you not. We were right up in the game.

Happy girl!

Now, I need to explain the awkward blue cardigan. And you are probably going to think I have a death wish.
I like Cristiano Ronaldo. I think he's pretty attractive, ok more than that, but that's not the point. So when we went to a Barca game, I couldn't just leave him and buy a Barca jersey to follow the crowd! I bought my Real Madrid jersey, complete with official lettering with Ronaldo and number 7 on the back. And I was so proud of it! I figured I should at least wear the team colors for Barcelona, so I was lucky that I brought red skinnys and a blue cardigan- it was meant to be! I knew fans would be a little testy about me wearing a RM shirt but it couldn't be that bad right? WRONG. I almost died. People were genuinely offended that I would wear it. I had people yelling at me, and if looks could kill.. wow. It was intense. It probably didn't help that Barcelona is trying to secede from Spain, so not only did I remind them of a rivalry in the sports world, but I blatantly wore the one team that Barcelona hates politically too. Since Madrid is the capital of Spain, things are a little tense. Oops. It never even crossed my mind until I was almost stoned.

After the game we went with the hostel to Razzmatazz club. It was crazy. It's the second largest club in Europe and has 5 floors, each with a different type of music. When we walked in, I could feel the bass through my whole body. I think we spent more time walking around from floor to floor than we did dancing- it was a mix of being lost and just wanting to explore the whole place- my GPS probably would have come in handy to be honest.

While we didn't pull another all nighter for chocolate and churros in the morning, it was close enough that it threw off our whole Sunday. We did get to the port and the beach, which pretty much covered everything we wanted to see. Barcelona was just beautiful!

The Barcelona Cathedral. There was a guy playing the violin outside and it was so peaceful. We sat and listened for quite a while. It was such a cool atmosphere, and the acoustics were perfect.

Christopher Columbus statue pointing toward the Americas!

The bridge connecting to this restuarant. It moved when we walked in the middle.

I crossed off a couple more bucket list items! Success.