Barcelona
Barcelona was a strange place. Not in the sense that it weird, but in the sense that to me it was different. It was my first time in a new place, where the culture, customs, and habits were different from mine. Earlier in the semester, my friend and I had decided to pay an extraordinary amount of money to go watch the famous football game that happens annually called El Classico. The game did not happen due to protests, but we still went, and it was a good thing we did.
The flight was at 8, so my friend and I woke up at 6 to catch a taxi. The flight ended up taking off at 1 from a city an hour away due to strikes, but when the flight took off we were both on it. I was a little grumpy about the situation, but there was a Starbucks right outside my gate when I landed which made me happy. This day was spent getting orientated, learning the expansive public transportation network, and finding where we were supposed to sleep. We met my friend’s girlfriend by where they were going to stay and find something to eat. It had been a couple of weeks since they last saw each other, so I left to go find my friend’s apartment, which was on the other side of town. This is when I really got to see the city.
Barcelona is a city they always use as an example of what should be done in Urban Planning. The transportation system works together seamlessly, with perfectly timed trains, metro and buses all that uses the same card. Coming from the Bay Area, this is a new concept to me. The architecture is an incredible mixture of old and new, blending different styles but somehow still all following the same unity. There would be a French colonial right next to a Neoclassical next to one of Gaudi's modern Catalonian apartments, but not one of them looked out of place. What causes Barcelona to stand out, however, is the way it is organized. It is a grid system on top of a grid system, superblocks composed of smaller blocks. Each block and superblock form distinct neighborhoods which makes it easy to get around and provides an even blend of both private and public space. I understood why it is an example to the rest of the world.
The person I stayed with I actually met during a summer program I took at UC Berkeley. We got to talking because she had grown up in Florence but now went to school in Barcelona for architecture. She was nice enough to offer up her apartment for me to stay at during my stay in her city, and my wallet and I were very grateful, even if I had to fight her cat for pillows the entire time. That first night she took me on a tour with her Vespa across the city, showing me the views in Parc Guell, all the main areas around where she lived, and finally to a hole in the wall tapas place for dinner where I got fried avocado and bravas, or fried potatoes with some spicy sauce thingy.
After this I met back up with my friends, now two more as two of the girlfriend’s friends had shown up and went to an ice bar down on the beach. We were mainly there for pictures, we lasted 20 minutes in the cold. After that, we went to a bar crawling a bit, but at that point keeping my eyes open became hard to do, so I started to head back to the apartment around 3 in the morning.
Saturday, I walked and saw the city. We met at Parc Guell and walked around until we decided we were hungry and went to find food. There is a small sandwich shop by the marina where the line is always long. I got two sandwiches, one for then and one for later, but I ate both then. We then walked around the marina for some time and then we walked along the beach where I got my shoes wet and became grumpy about it. We had some drinks after that and so I became less grumpy, but after that I went back to my friend’s apartment to change my shoes.
We ate dinner at a place called Surfsups, by the water. I got a burger with ketchup, but what they gave me was definitely not ketchup. The burger was still good, and that is all that can matter. Then we went out again. We got some drinks at one bar and were happy, and were planning on going to another bar, but we were all tired and went home and went to bed.
I locked the cat outside the room, so I slept peacefully for the first time that night. The cat knew what I did and gave me a look in the morning. I left early Sunday morning because I wanted to see the Gaudi Apartments and more of the city before meeting my friends at La Sagrada Famiglia. I saw the apartments and found some protests too. But then I got hungry, and I met my friends at a rooftop bar overlooking the basilica. I ate a prosciutto and tomato sandwich that was good and then had Sangria, which I had several glasses of, all while looking at La Sagrada Famiglia, one of the largest and prettiest churches in the world. Then we took a train to Camp Nou, where the soccer team FC Barcelona plays, and I got a jersey. We walked back into the city, saw some more protests, saw some more pretty buildings, got dinner near the water, and then I headed back to the apartment, as I had an early morning to catch my flight back to Florence for school
