Barcelona

I can distinctly remember planning out my parents visit with them and thinking how long it would be until I saw them again. But as has been the case since I've been in Spain, time has been flying by and last Thursday night I was reunited with my parents once again! I flew over to Barcelona with Colleen who was planning on meeting up with some of her friends on Friday. When I got off the airport bus and turned the corner I saw my Mom and Dad both standing there looking for me. I skipped with joy over to them and was surprised when they both just stood still as statues looking at me. I stop in front of them when I realized they were trying to make me choose my "favorite" parent to hug first. It reminded me of something my grandmother "G" would have done, and I did not appreciate having to choose between the two of them! Needless to say my dad made comments for the rest of the trip about me hugging my mom first. But, really, could I have possibly won?

From there we walked to my parents' apartment which was in a fantastic location right of La Rambla in Barcelona. It was huge with tons of space to do yoga as my mom put it. We had dinner at a restaurant right across the street from my parents apartment and then walked around La Rambla for a while. Barcelona's night life is much more lively than Sevilla's. Even when we went to catch our train at 7:30 on Sunday morning there were still people out partying. My parents and I got a really big kick out of these men who walked the streets of Barcelona trying to sell individual beers to drunk people. Good business plan I guess.

It was so nice to be served real breakfasts while my parents were here. I have been salivating thinking about my mom's steel cut oatmeal with apples, walnuts, and cinnamon and let me just tell you I was not disappointed! On Friday after sleeping in and getting a delicious breakfast, we went and explored Montjuiic. We ended up walking up the majority of the mountain but eventually found the cable cars that took us to the top of the mountain. We explored the "castle" which was really more like a fort if you ask me and then took the metro back to our house. For lunch we went back to a restaurant my parents had already been to that had been recommended to them by their landlord. I ordered the "frijoles" (black beans, rice, fried egg, and a fried banana) which was enough food (and carbs) for an entire day.

My dad and mom both took very quickly to the Spanish idea of siestas. I think we ended up fitting one into our schedule just about every day. My dad says that, along with beer on tap at fast food restaurants, is one of the things he is going to try to bring back to America. It's certainly a different way of living, but I think it's one of the main reasons Spaniards are the 3rd happiest people in the world.

One of my favorite things about Barcelona was their open air market called la Boqueria. It was filled with the most beautiful fruit, vegetables, seafood and candy I've ever seen! I would love to have one of those back in Chapel Hill although I suppose the Carborro market is the closest thing we'll ever get.

While we were in Barcelona we also went to see the Magic Fountains at night. My dad had heard about the fountain water shows, and they were very impressive! We split some beers and chips (and were offered more beer by the makeshift salesmen every few minutes) while watching the fountain shows set to music. For dinner that night we stumbled across this chinese restaurant that had a special of a beer, 3 entrees and a coffee or dessert for 8.50 a person. We had previously been kicked out of 2 other restaurants for not speaking Catalan and there not being any room to sit down, so we were just happy to have a place to eat. Plus I haven't had chinese food since the night before I left for Spain so it was a nice change-up! At around 1am we went to a bar my Dad found called "Dow Jones" to watch the Carolina game. It was one of the ugliest games of our season, but the bar itself and people there were nice. The prices of the drinks change according to their popularity and every so often there are "crashes" were the prices drop by a euro. Pretty cool concept. The game of course went into overtime, but luckily we pulled out a victory! Oh, and we also met a girl studying there from Raleigh who turned out to be Roy William's niece! Pretty amazing the tarheel fans you'll find around the world!

On Saturday we explored Gaudi's Parc Guell which is covered in the most beautiful mosaics (Aunt Jane, it reminded my mom and me so much of you!). After that we took a bus to see the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral also designed by Gaudi. It was unfortunately closing at 2 for a "private party" so we couldn't go in, but the outside was impressive enough! Later that day we explored other parts of Barcelona, had a cafe con leche and sat out on the port overlooking the ocean for a little while. We then climbed to the top of the Christopher Columbus monument which had some impressive views even though it was quite claustrophobic at the top. For dinner we went to another restaurant right next door to our apartment which we all considered to be a blessing given the amount of walking we had done all day!

The next morning was an early one since Spain went through daylight savings and our train left for Sevilla at 8:30. We luckily had no problems finding our train (with the help of a very friendly Spanish woman) and after 5 and a half hours had arrived in Sevilla! That post will come next and I promise I'll add pictures once my parents send them to me (we took most of them on my Dad's fancy camera). Hopefully I'll be able to finish that entire post before I go to bed tonight, because tomorrow I leave for Dublin! Time just keeps on flying by!