Barc(th)elona

At about 11am on Thursday morning, we arrived in Barcelona. We were sad to leave Sevilla so soon…but excited to see our friend Sam and explore Barcelona.

In Bar(th)elona, they pronounce “s” sounds with what sounds like a “th” sound, and if you have learned or heard Spanish, it sounds like they have a Spanish lisp. In Sevilla, we also heard it, but I suppose we began to notice it much more once we were in Barcelona.

An interesting fact about Barcelona that we learned is that it is in the Catalan region, and they consider themselves Catalan more so than Spanish. It almost seems they are proud to be Catalan and distinguish themselves from the rest of Spain. In that, they also speak a different language that is definitely different than Spanish called Catalan. It is a language of Spanish and French mixed, so some word spelling and sounds are very similar to Spanish. We didn’t have much trouble with this since the majority of people speak both Spanish and Catalan. Another interesting point was that in the Catalan region, they do not like bullfights, so we were thankful to have attended one in Sevilla.

The city and overall culture of Barcelona was so different than Sevilla and the southern region of Spain! There was a huge population of young people in the city, many with dreadlocks, flip flops and more casual clothing like T-shirts and shorts, and there was somewhat of a carefree/hippie vibe. The day we got there, we walked around our hotel, and in the first few hours, were not impressed with the city overall. It just looked like a regular big city with lots of people, but later in the afternoon, we walked around more and saw that there was much more than what we had seen.

Barcelona is a city situated in between 2 mountains and a beach. On one of the mountains, there is a huge park that overlooks the city with an old Spanish fort at the top-it was called Montjuic Park. On the other, there are just houses and a monastery at the top. We took a metro and then walked to the top and saw the Spanish fort. They even had a teleferico or a tram lift thing that took you to the top if you didn’t want to walk. But we walked to save money and enjoy the outdoors. The view was great, we could see everything, and we discovered that Barcelona has a huge port with gigantic cargo ships going in and out. From the fort, we walked to another side of Montjuic Park and saw the stadium where the 1992 Olympics were held in Barcelona. It seemed really small to have hosted the Olympics! We both agreed that the Hokie stadium seemed bigger J That night, we walked to Las Ramblas, which is one of the most famous streets in Spain. It is a huge sidewalk in the middle of two streets with tons of shops, restaurants, tourists, and strange street entertainers trying to make a living.

The next day, we walked around Las Ramblas and an area of the city that was called “Barri Gotic” or Gothic neighborhood. We saw a couple beautiful old cathedrals and elaborate architecture. Afterwards, we walked down to the beach and it was awesome! The weather was not too hot, not too cold, there was a long boardwalk with ice cream and restaurants, people playing volleyball and fishing, people tanning (so decided to spend all day there the following day). Then we went to the Temple of the Sagrada Familia (a huge very different looking cathedral made by the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi). The cathedral was a very big project, and he actually died in 1926, in the middle of it’s construction, so other architects took on the project and it’s still under construction. They expect it to be done within the next 5-10 years. It was really cool from the outside, but on the inside, it was just all construction, nothing really to see. We got some great pictures of the outside, but regretted spending money to enter. That evening, we did some laundry and met up with our friend, Sam Faith, who is going to graduate school studying Tropical Medicine at one of the universities for a year. He took us to a great Spanish dinner. We ate around 11pm and enjoyed talking so much that they had to kick us out to close the restaurant! It was so fun catching up and talking about what is going on in our lives. What a blessing to be able to hang out with an old friend far from home! We got to bed around 2am that night.

It’s funny to think about our eating schedule. We have become accustomed to eating breakfast around 11am, lunch around 2:30 or 3pm, and dinner around 9 or 10pm. A late dinner is much more typical for a European, so it does work well.

On a vacation like this, it’s a little difficult because you feel overwhelmed with how much you want to see and soak in from each individual place, but you don’t want to run yourself ragged. Afterall, it is a vacation. So, we have made a point to sleep in and not set an alarm unless we have to catch a plane, and we also have taken breaks, like laying out at the beach for a day, in between seeing museums and historical monuments.

So our third day in Barcelona, we slept in late, grabbed lunch to go, and relaxed at the beach. It was in the high 70s-great to lay out, but the water in the Mediterranean was freezing! Before we left the beach, we ate ice cream and watch intense volleyball players. There was this one volleyball game going on, two guys versus two guys, and they were not using any hands-only bodyparts like their heads, feet, chest, back. It was pretty awesome to watch them. That night we walked around Las Ramblas and took pictures of this really neat marketplace. It was like a huge outdoor grocery store, people selling ALL kinds of fresh fruits, meats, sea creatures like octopus and fish (there were even live lobsters sitting on ice!), cheeses, nuts, homemade candies, and just about anything you can imagine. Bryce and I marveled at all of the fresh fruits, many of which we had never seen. We had our last dinner in Spain at this cool restaurant near Las Ramblas. We finally tried the famous Spanish ham “Iberico de Bellota.” Sam recommended it. In Spain, they are crazy about their cured ham. Specifically, the Iberico de Bellota is the best ham cut from a leg of pig-but specifically, they feed the pigs only acorns, and they watch over the pigs. Whatever leg they sleep on is the one with more fat in it (and we’re told it’s the good kind of fat like unsaturated I think), which is the one with best tasting sliced ham. We ate it on toasted bread and it was delicious. Ordering tapas was really fun in Spain, because you can get maybe 3 or 4 tapas, and everyone can share and have some bites of everything. It is totally normal eating off of plates together and sharing food. It was great for us because we got to try more things. I also really liked the bread they served-they would toast it and then sprinkle olive oil and salt, sometimes vinegar, and they would rub tomato on it, or just put tomatoes pureed on it.

That night, the Barcelona team played Real Madrid in soccer and won 6-2, which meant that Barcelona would probably win the league this year. Spaniards are crazy about their soccer, so we heard honks all night and people singing the Barcelona team song on the metro.

Another thing we loved about Barcelona: the metro!! It was the cleanest and most modern metro we have seen on our trip, better than both NYC and Washington DC. There were flat screen televisions, air conditioned, very easily navigable, maps everywhere, and just very clean and organized.

Our last day in Barcelona, we woke up and checked our of our hostel and left our bags to go sightseeing one last time. Hostal Barcelona was great and we’d definitely recommend it-they were very helpful, it was close to Las Ramblas, and we had our own bathroom. We meandered around one of the main streets to see a couple houses (Casa Mila and Casa Battlo) by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi-he is actually one of the most famous aspects of Barcelona. Then we ate a sandwich lunch in a pretty park and headed back to the hostel to grab our bags and go to the airport.