This past weekend three girls in my program and I ventured to Barcelona. Our journey began at 3:30 am last Friday morning as we trekked across the city, past trench-coat wearing prostitutes and schizophrenic bag ladies, drag queens and pimps, to catch our shuttle to the airport. Our flight was at 7 in the morning and it was still dark outside when our plane left Milan. We arrived, yawning and incoherent, at the Barcelona airport and by 9:30 or so we arrived, sweaty messes, at our hostel and very eager to check in and shower. However, our room wasn't ready until 1 p.m. so we dropped our stuff off and went to find breakfast and Starbucks. Starbucks might be my favorite part of traveling outside Italy because that venti Pike's Place roast seems to be the only thing to adequately caffeinate me...or at least satisfy some inkling of homesickness. Our hostel was located near the University of Barcelona and the Museum of Contemporary Art. After breakfast we went to the museum which was just as pretentious and confusing as any contemporary art museum maybe. The really exciting part, for me at least, was to see a Lucio Fontana painting. According to my modern art history professor, Lucio Fonatana is THE defining artist of the Italian spatial concept movement/explorartion. I had just had an entire 2 hour lecture on this one dude the previous day so it was pretty neat to just stumble upon one of his canvases with holes poked into it.
Finally it was time for us to check into the hostel. Oh, this hostel was a trip. The door person was really late for check-in and there was a group of probably 10 of us waiting for him to come back. We were really exhausted since we had woken up a little before 3:30 am and dying for a nap and a shower. Finally we made it to our room where there was a Finnish dude on his computer. We introduced ourselves and he told us he was a chef at a restraunt and hadn't found an apartment in Barcelona yet. Good thing he introduced himself as a chef because about 15 minutes later, while we're all lying on our beds contemplating sleep, he pulls out a set of knives and begins sharpening them. SCARY. I mean, I know he's a chef and all but couldn't he have gone in to work early to sharpen his knives? I mean four young girls had just walked into the room. Needless to say, I couldn't fall asleep until after he had left for work.
Later that afternoon we walked down La Rambla which is the big shopping and tourist street with postcard/souveiner stands, performance artists, and McDonalds. After oggling the performance artists ability to be perfectly still until someone gives them money and clasping our purses tightly to ensure our wallets' return to Milan, we took the metro to Guell Park. Guell Park is the park designed by Gaudi with the longest bench in the world!!! I had gone here with my mother and brother when we biked through Catalonia when I was 16 but I really liked this park so it was nice to come back. Unfortunately the day was rather overcast. We walked/climbed around for a bit, took lots of pictures, goofed off, etc and around 7 or so we headed back to try and find tapas for dinner. We went to a little place near our hostel and unfortunately vegetarian tapas are pretty limited, at least at the more inexpensive places. I ended up eating a lot of potatos and Spanish omlettes all weekend. But the sangria was soooo delicious. I think I would go back to Spain just for the sangria. And probably to see the Alhambra.
On Saturday, we got up and left at 10 to check out of our hostel. We still stored our stuff there and then I split off from my travel companions. They had signed up for a bike tour but hadn't told me until after I had packed up and arrived at their apartment Thursday night before our early flight Friday and all I had packed were skirts and dresses. Not my favorite biking attire. So they went off on their bike tour and, after my venti Pike's Place roast, I went to the National Museum of Catalan Art. I saw a huge amount of Romansque pieces, room after room of gold and Jesus and Mary and tryptichs (sp?) and pre-linear perspective scenes. But I also got to see some of Picasso's cubist portraits and I got to see a portrait by Goya. I think this might have been the first time I saw a Goya in person. I'm glad I went. Afterwards, I tried to find the Miro museum but got kind of lost and ended up wandering through some beautiful gardens and ran out of time. It was really nice to go around on my own, however. It gave me a chance to think and decompress and just be myself without having to worry about all that stuff I worry about when I'm with other people. The previous week had been really crazy and especially Thursday and travelling had been really rushed and thus rather stressful. After the museum, I met back up with my travel companions and we went to retrieve our stuff from the hostel, got dinner, and caught a train to Reus.
We had booked our outbound plane from Reus because it had been a less expensive flight but what we didn't realize was just how far Barcelona and Reus are from each other. So we caught an 8:00 train to Reus in order to spend the night there and catch our early plane. Reus is a very, very small town and there isn't much going on. Around 11 or so we ventured out to try and explore and we found a piazza with some restraunts. Two of my travel compananions ordered paella and I got some more potato based tapas and we split some delicious sangria.
I really like Barcelona, I really love the organic and flowing Gaudi architecture. It was so nice to be able to speak Spanish instead of Italian, although I definately started to confuse the two due to their similiarities. I wish I had gotten to visit more of the Gaudi architecture I saw my first trip to Barcelona with my family and I wish I had been able to go to the Miro museum because I really like Miro. However, the biggest challenge of any overnight trip is saving money. Eeek.
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