Today is my last official day in Barcelona. I took my last exam this morning, went to my favorite vegetarian establishment in the city for lunch with a friend, and did some last-minute souvenir shopping.
Now I'm almost totally packed. I'll be back in Barcelona on the 12th, but this is my last real, full day here. It's sad in many ways, and I know I'll miss the city, but right now I'm really anxious to get to the UK and see new things. I'm even more anxious to get home on the 14th!
Time to get packing.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
quatre dias
Today is the last Monday I'll ever spend in Barcelona (on this trip, anyway. I'm going to say that because I would like to come back to Europe someday, and visit Barcelona to see how it's changed). And it went pretty well, I'd say.
We went up to Tibidabo, this mountain that overlooks the city and which has an amusement park on top. We took a train, walked a fair ways, and then took a funicular (I guess we'd call it a cable car) to get all the way up. It was worth it--we had some fantastic views of the city. There were these middle-aged British women trying to find La Sagrada Família down below, and I spotted it and took a picture. Then I tried to show them where it was--I even got out my camera and showed them the picture--but they refused to believe me. They thought it was the Barcelona Catedral, which it definitely was not. Silly ladies.
This weekend was also a good way to wrap up the semester. Saturday during the day I took a short trip out to Sitges with a friend from my research class. Sitges is a beautiful beach town less than an hour from Barcelona, to which I wouldn't mind retiring someday (but on a teacher's salary, that's probably too much to wish for). It has nine beaches, and some of the finest, cleanest sand I've ever seen at a beach. We wandered around the city and just had a nice, relaxing time looking at the shops and eating gelato.
Saturday night I went with some people to see the fountain at Montjuïc, ate some freshly baked pizza for dinner, and then saw La Bella y la Bestia--the musical, live, in Spanish. The show was pretty fantastic--the costumes and set blew me away, and it was really interesting to hear Beauty and the Beast in Spanish and see where the translation differed from the original English. The guy who played Lumiere was really great, and "Be Our Guest" was pretty much exactly what it should be on stage.
Tomorrow I'm just going to hang out in the city center, get lunch, and give my final research presentation. My professor read over my draft of the complete paper and said it didn't need anything more, given the time constraints. That was pretty nice to hear. Check the research paper off the to-do list!
I still have two exams ahead of me, but I'm sort of kind of done caring. I'm having a good last week in Barcelona, and soon I'm going to England (where I'll meet up with my mom!) and Scotland. After that, it's HOME!
We went up to Tibidabo, this mountain that overlooks the city and which has an amusement park on top. We took a train, walked a fair ways, and then took a funicular (I guess we'd call it a cable car) to get all the way up. It was worth it--we had some fantastic views of the city. There were these middle-aged British women trying to find La Sagrada Família down below, and I spotted it and took a picture. Then I tried to show them where it was--I even got out my camera and showed them the picture--but they refused to believe me. They thought it was the Barcelona Catedral, which it definitely was not. Silly ladies.
This weekend was also a good way to wrap up the semester. Saturday during the day I took a short trip out to Sitges with a friend from my research class. Sitges is a beautiful beach town less than an hour from Barcelona, to which I wouldn't mind retiring someday (but on a teacher's salary, that's probably too much to wish for). It has nine beaches, and some of the finest, cleanest sand I've ever seen at a beach. We wandered around the city and just had a nice, relaxing time looking at the shops and eating gelato.
Saturday night I went with some people to see the fountain at Montjuïc, ate some freshly baked pizza for dinner, and then saw La Bella y la Bestia--the musical, live, in Spanish. The show was pretty fantastic--the costumes and set blew me away, and it was really interesting to hear Beauty and the Beast in Spanish and see where the translation differed from the original English. The guy who played Lumiere was really great, and "Be Our Guest" was pretty much exactly what it should be on stage.
Tomorrow I'm just going to hang out in the city center, get lunch, and give my final research presentation. My professor read over my draft of the complete paper and said it didn't need anything more, given the time constraints. That was pretty nice to hear. Check the research paper off the to-do list!
I still have two exams ahead of me, but I'm sort of kind of done caring. I'm having a good last week in Barcelona, and soon I'm going to England (where I'll meet up with my mom!) and Scotland. After that, it's HOME!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
and here we go.
Hey everyone! I'm sorry I've been such a sporadic updater lately. Things have been pretty crazy with midterms, my research project, and (of course) spring break. I also took a trip to Granada the weekend of 27th, which was one of the coolest trips I've taken yet this semester (although to be fair, most of them have been pretty amazing).
Granada is a wonderful city. I loved it for its small(ish) size and the atmosphere--it's very different from the style-conscious city that is Barcelona. I felt more at home there, if only because people weren't dressed to the nines while walking down the street. It seems like a really nice university town, and I found myself sort of wishing I'd studied there for the semester. But Barcelona has many of its own charms, so that wish wasn't too strong. After arriving via overnight train on Friday, I spent most of the day just exploring the city. I wandered around the Albaicin (an old, windy, and beautiful neighborhood in the city) for a while.
View of the Albaicin and the Muralla Arabe (Arab Wall)
I spent a ton of time at the Alhambra, an Arabic palace and fortress with some beautiful gardens in the same complex. I booked a ticket for Saturday and spent six hours just walking around, enjoying the views of everything. But since six hours just wasn't enough, I ended going back on Sunday--I was actually trying to find a park that a friend recommended I visit, but since it was closed and I was near the Alhambra anyway, I went in again. Here are a couple pictures:
Patio de los Arrayanes in the Palacio Nazaries
Palacio del Partal
Me next to the Palacio del Partal (which you can't see, but is to my right), with the gorgeous view of the Albaicin in the background
There are more Granada pictures here and here.
After Granada was a stressful week in which I tried to get a lot of work done on my research project. I managed to get two interviews done, even though I didn't have enough money for the train fares to and from the school where I did the interviews. But that's another story.
On April 3rd I left Barcelona for Italy. I flew into Venice and spent one night and one day there until John met me on Saturday the 4th, when we went to Rome. We spent three and a half days in Rome, and it was incredibly surreal the whole time to be visiting places like the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, and the ruins of this one old Roman port city called Ostia Antica. Rome itself is full of fun things to do (and tourists doing all of those things), and it was really cool to see all kinds of stuff that fascinated me when I learned about them in my high school World History class. We also saw some amazing art and ancient artifacts in museums (the Vatican museum has a sweet collection of ancient Egyptian stuff!).
From Rome we went to Cinque Terre, a beautiful series of five villages on the northwestern coast. We hiked quite a bit the one full day we were there; we went from the first village (where we were staying) all the way to the last village--a hike of around 9km! It was challenging, but a lot of fun. There were some beautiful views of the coast and the different villages from the path, and fortunately I didn't fall off the cliff-like paths like this one poor guy who was on my program...
After Cinque Terre, we headed off to Florence for a quick visit and ended up seeing some really cool stuff. I wanted to see Dante's house (which is actually just a house near where he probably lived) because of the Medieval Lit seminar I took last semester in which we read the Divine Comedy and learned about Dante's obsession with Florence, his hometown, but the museum turned out to be not-so-great. We did see a lot of really cool things, though, and I had the best pastries of my life for breakfast one morning. So that was nice.
Our last stop was Venice (again), since we were both flying out of the Venice airport. Those few days were cool; we saw some nice, quiet neighborhoods away from the claustrophobia-inducing crowds of tourists, ate some delicious (and cheap) pizza, went to the Correr Museum, and saw St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace (at the Palace I learned a lot about Venetian history). I looked hard for the Basel Bank on St. Mark's Square, but I don't think it actually exists (it was featured in Casino Royale, and was kind of the main reason I wanted to go to Venice...).
Here's a picture of the Grand Canal in Venice, taken from the Accademia Bridge the day I spent alone in Venice:
One cool thing about Italy was that I could generally speak to people in half-Spanish and they would understand me. I even understood a lot of Italian--knowing a little bit of Catalan in addition to my Spanish really helped with that. It makes me want to study languages forever and ever. Too bad I don't have time for more language classes at Grinnell...
All in all, Spring Break 2009 was a great success. We ate a ton of delicious food, and for once I wasn't forced to eat a million tortilla española sandwiches! I took over 800 pictures, which will all be up on my Picasa account at some point in the near future.
Now it's back to the grind of getting all my work done for finals and my research project--all of which will be over by May 1st. It's incredible to think that I only have 17 more days here (I have a countdown). There is so much to do on top of all the work--things I haven't seen or experienced in Barcelona yet. And then after that, it's off to London and Scotland until May 12th. I'll be home on May 14th! Weird!
Granada is a wonderful city. I loved it for its small(ish) size and the atmosphere--it's very different from the style-conscious city that is Barcelona. I felt more at home there, if only because people weren't dressed to the nines while walking down the street. It seems like a really nice university town, and I found myself sort of wishing I'd studied there for the semester. But Barcelona has many of its own charms, so that wish wasn't too strong. After arriving via overnight train on Friday, I spent most of the day just exploring the city. I wandered around the Albaicin (an old, windy, and beautiful neighborhood in the city) for a while.
View of the Albaicin and the Muralla Arabe (Arab Wall)
I spent a ton of time at the Alhambra, an Arabic palace and fortress with some beautiful gardens in the same complex. I booked a ticket for Saturday and spent six hours just walking around, enjoying the views of everything. But since six hours just wasn't enough, I ended going back on Sunday--I was actually trying to find a park that a friend recommended I visit, but since it was closed and I was near the Alhambra anyway, I went in again. Here are a couple pictures:
Patio de los Arrayanes in the Palacio Nazaries
Palacio del Partal
Me next to the Palacio del Partal (which you can't see, but is to my right), with the gorgeous view of the Albaicin in the background
There are more Granada pictures here and here.
After Granada was a stressful week in which I tried to get a lot of work done on my research project. I managed to get two interviews done, even though I didn't have enough money for the train fares to and from the school where I did the interviews. But that's another story.
On April 3rd I left Barcelona for Italy. I flew into Venice and spent one night and one day there until John met me on Saturday the 4th, when we went to Rome. We spent three and a half days in Rome, and it was incredibly surreal the whole time to be visiting places like the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, and the ruins of this one old Roman port city called Ostia Antica. Rome itself is full of fun things to do (and tourists doing all of those things), and it was really cool to see all kinds of stuff that fascinated me when I learned about them in my high school World History class. We also saw some amazing art and ancient artifacts in museums (the Vatican museum has a sweet collection of ancient Egyptian stuff!).
From Rome we went to Cinque Terre, a beautiful series of five villages on the northwestern coast. We hiked quite a bit the one full day we were there; we went from the first village (where we were staying) all the way to the last village--a hike of around 9km! It was challenging, but a lot of fun. There were some beautiful views of the coast and the different villages from the path, and fortunately I didn't fall off the cliff-like paths like this one poor guy who was on my program...
After Cinque Terre, we headed off to Florence for a quick visit and ended up seeing some really cool stuff. I wanted to see Dante's house (which is actually just a house near where he probably lived) because of the Medieval Lit seminar I took last semester in which we read the Divine Comedy and learned about Dante's obsession with Florence, his hometown, but the museum turned out to be not-so-great. We did see a lot of really cool things, though, and I had the best pastries of my life for breakfast one morning. So that was nice.
Our last stop was Venice (again), since we were both flying out of the Venice airport. Those few days were cool; we saw some nice, quiet neighborhoods away from the claustrophobia-inducing crowds of tourists, ate some delicious (and cheap) pizza, went to the Correr Museum, and saw St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace (at the Palace I learned a lot about Venetian history). I looked hard for the Basel Bank on St. Mark's Square, but I don't think it actually exists (it was featured in Casino Royale, and was kind of the main reason I wanted to go to Venice...).
Here's a picture of the Grand Canal in Venice, taken from the Accademia Bridge the day I spent alone in Venice:
One cool thing about Italy was that I could generally speak to people in half-Spanish and they would understand me. I even understood a lot of Italian--knowing a little bit of Catalan in addition to my Spanish really helped with that. It makes me want to study languages forever and ever. Too bad I don't have time for more language classes at Grinnell...
All in all, Spring Break 2009 was a great success. We ate a ton of delicious food, and for once I wasn't forced to eat a million tortilla española sandwiches! I took over 800 pictures, which will all be up on my Picasa account at some point in the near future.
Now it's back to the grind of getting all my work done for finals and my research project--all of which will be over by May 1st. It's incredible to think that I only have 17 more days here (I have a countdown). There is so much to do on top of all the work--things I haven't seen or experienced in Barcelona yet. And then after that, it's off to London and Scotland until May 12th. I'll be home on May 14th! Weird!
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