España!

Wow!  Back from an *A*M*A*Z*I*N*G* week in Spain!  My friend Ellie and I went to Barcelona and Sevilla for our winter break (and yes, we get a two week spring break later in April!).

Please bear with me as this trip might take several posts.  To put it in perspective, I took about 600 pictures.

DAY 1: 

We left Montpellier for Barcelona by bus (eurolines.com very easy and inexpensive) at 8:30-ish and arrived in Barcelona around one.  It took us probably another hour to get to our hostel because we got off at the wrong station in Barcelona.  Not a big deal, but we did have to re-orient ourselves.  We stayed at Itaca hostel and it was really great - the people at the desk were super helpful, free wine and chips on Friday and Saturday nights so that people could meet each other, free breakfast.  Ellie and I had a private double bed with a shared bathroom (shared with three other doubles) and everything was really clean. 

So after getting settled, Ellie and I set out for the day (which turned out to be kind of on the short side because we were both tired from the long bus ride).  Barcelona is a pretty large metropolitan city.  There is a super efficient metro (literally every 2-4 minutes, really clean and modern, and the train spans the entire length of the platform so it's never that crowded) which is great for getting to some of the farther monuments or just for saving some time.  

We started at La Catedral because it was right next to our hostel.  It was really pretty with super tall columns, arcing ceilings, and TONS of gold everywhere!  And we got to go onto the roof and see the city. 

After La Catedral, we took a stroll down by the Mediterranean and just kind of hung out at the beach.  Before dinner we went back to the hostel for the wine and chips and met some really nice girls from Cornell and talked for a bit before dinner.

 

Dinner was awesome!  We went to kind of the Spanish equivalent of a diner, but it was just good, basic food that fit our budget.  We each ordered paella.  Ellie ordered typical paella (rice, seafood, meat, some veggies, in a kind of tomato-y based sauce) and I ordered paella with black rice.  Now when I got my meal, I was terrified because it looked like I was about to eat tar, but I kind of closed my eyes (and ignored the fact that parts of my meal had eyes) and dug in.  Oh my god it was delicious!  It tasted like seafood (duh) but it didn't have that super salty taste.  So delicious!

We decided not to go out but to just go to bed because we knew that there would be a lot of touring ahead of us.

Stay tuned for: Saturday must mean Gaudí

Click on the paella to see more pictures from Day 1: