April 18th, 2008

I realize this is long overdue, but I've been spending most of my time recently working on my ISP and any free time I have is been devoted to doing anything BUT typing. However, last night I finished the full first draft of my paper and so I'm feeling like updating today.

So I was in Barcelona last weekend?!?!

I left Thursday afternoon and got in around 5pm. Took a half hour bus ride to the center of the city and met Jena at Placa de Catalunya. The city was unbelievable. My first impression was, woah, there are a lot of people here. Guess that comes with living in a village with 2000 people for 4 months. The city does not have the old, historical feeling that many European cities (Paris, Geneva, Brussels) have. The city is fairly modern. Another impression - there are no people between the ages of 30-60 in the city. Everybody is either old spanish or young students.

Thursday we hung around in Jena's apt for a while with Mandy, and then went out to get some dinner in the neighborhood of La Gracia. After dinner we went over to Shana's apt and hung out for a bit there. Then we met back up with Mandy and went to a few bars. We were in a cool bar with good music and lots of Spaniards but the electricity kept going on and off randomly. We called it a night around 2 or so.

Jena and I woke up early(ish) on Friday to go start exploring. We walked from her apt which is near La Sagrada Familia (crazy Gaudi Church) to Placa de Catalunya and grabbed a quick pastry for breakfast. Next we headed down Las Ramblas, this cool touristy pedestrian mall with performers and little booths that sold any kind of animal you could want (including pheasants!). Also, two of Gaudi's famous houses are located on this street. Gaudi is known for his INSANE architecture. We walked around Jena's favorite food market where you could literally buy anything you could possibly want. Then, we headed straight down to the pier.

Barcelona is sweet because its a huge city, but its situation right between the sea and the mountains. So, we walked from the pier to the beach! It was really nice out and even a bit hot! So much nicer than Geneva's decision to be 40 degrees and rainy for all of April. We chilled on the beach for a while, then headed to a cool restaurant to meet Mandy for a good lunch. After we headed back to prepare for one of the craziest nights of my life.

Friday night we drank a bit in Jena's apt after gettin some really good Tapas. We headed out to meet Jena's friends at this awesome old Absinthe bar where supposedly Hemmingway and Picasso used to frequent. At about 2 am, we headed to this insane club called Pacha. The club was really cool and fun and there was even a live violinist and guitarist playing over the DJ. We left around 6 am and passed out in Jena's apt finally.

Sat morning/afternoon (hahah) we woke up and headed out to El Borne, a sweet shopping area with cool boutiques and stuff. I got many gifts for various people and spent far too much money (as always with Europe). After, Jena and I grabbed some lunch and headed to her favorite park, Parc de Ciutadella. There were tons of young people outside and it was beautiful and we just chilled for hours catching up. After, we headed home and made some plans for the night.

Sat night, Jena and I got excellent Mexican food and then walked around El Borne and found some really cool bars. After, we went to another club, Mary's Place (I think named after the Bruce song), where the DJs were awesome and everybody was having a really good time. Around 4:30am, or so, we headed home

We woke up on Sunday and Jena really wanted to show me Gaudi's Park, called Parc Guille (pronounced Wheel). It overlooks the city and is HUGE. It has amazing architecture because, according to Jena, he was obsessed with making nature look like art. We walked around and took pictures for a few hours and then headed back down into the city. Jena took me to a really sweetly designed hospital near la sagrada familia and we got some lunch along one of the streets near it. After we came back and chilled at her apt, then got some dinner at a really cool restaurant (Princesa 23 I think). Then Jena took me to a really cool backpacker's bar where they had excellent Sangria. Jena wasn't feeling too hot though, so we left earlyish. Got up on Monday morning early and headed to the airport - muy triste!

It was amazing to see how much life the city had. No matter what time, or where we were, there were always tons of people out. People were really friendly and didn't seem to have a care in the world. It was an incredibly happy city, I think there is no way else to describe it. I had a great weekend and it was great to see Jena again. Oh also, it was fairly entertaining because from Friday on, Jena had no voice (for a change) and so communicating was fun. Also, Catalan is a crazy language, a near dead mix of French and Spanish. ANNNNDD turns out I remember a lot of Spanish which was a nice surprise.


The rest of this week has been kinda shitty. Geneva in April sucks - its constantly raining/snowing and has been fairly chilly. I spent most of the week getting interviews, getting annoyed at my ISP/professors. They haven't been really clear about what exactly they want until this point and now we have limited time left to fufil the requirements. Regardless, I have a draft complete so I'm much happier now than I was the rest of the week. Time to go put in my edits....