Barcelona

Wow! Finally here in Barcelona. AND WOW!!! YOU HAVE TO BE HERE. Google Barcelona and you will see how beautiful it is here. Ive never been some place with such a rich culture. I mean everything from the museums to the food to the streets to the buildings are so nice. It would be something to live here.

Anyway its day 3 here in Barcelona. I’ve done a lot – so excited to be here but at the same time sad to be going tm = ( tonight’s the last night.

 

Day 1

Ok., So going into a foreign county is really something if you ve never done it before. I never really got the “culture shock” but I certainly got confused and overwhelmed. You would think they speak a little English, but they don’t- just Spanish. And my spanish is horrid.. On top of that their street and architectural design of the city is laid out so differently, transit is tough, and there is SO MUCH TO DO.

So what I did was I went on a “City Orientation”. Man it was cool. I went with my friend Jill Anderson. Great girl and a cutie. Then there was my “extended family” on the tour which is a family that I got paired up with to interact the students and family on board. The family has a member that teaches on the boat- talk about a family vacation huh! Back to the point- we went everywhere. We went up the mountain to see the view of the whole city of Barcelone. Gorgeous- google it. We saw the old Olympic sites and this “shopping center”. Called the Poble Espanyol. The reason its in quotes is because it was NOTHING like the US. Of course it was beautiful and architecturally artsy. The center was outside and the “stores “stood next  to each other that sold handmade thinngs like hand maid stained glass, handmade metal sculptures, paintings, etc. From there we went to flaca de Sant Juame, a eating center, Place Reial, Temple de la Sagrada Familia and then the santa maria del mar (Gothic Church). Let me tell you it was breathtaking. You can’t even compare it to the cathedrals in New York or at Saint Joe’s .

 

Another thing about traveling… be flexible. It was and still is SO hard to communicate without a cell phone. Im doing fine now but at first It was IMPOSSIBLE. First we didn’t know the language, second we didn’t know where anything was. How would we be able to find anything never mind meeting up with someone. There were a lot of meet ups that went unsuccessful. This was my night..

 

Aimlessly walking around to fine a cheap place was an experience, a painful one. Waiting for literally 30 minutes at a not so busy place for a waiter to even come  out of the back. Never go to eat when your hugry, go a little before. But that must have been a bad experience because I haven’t had much trouble lately. So we walked around “site seeing”  or “trying to find our friends / Ice bar”… whatever you want to call it. “Porto Olypico” was the area that it was at. However there was also a villa Olympica, and this olympica, and that Olympico- so many moderations with the word Olympico. So … funny thing .. when we asked someone where “Porto Olympico” they would point us left. Then I would go left for 2 seconds and then verify by asking another person which way is “Porto Olympico”. They pointed right- that pattern happed for the whole night 8 – 12 am = ( we finally gave up. Night one = unsuccessful . Still a great day. And the people we were supposed to meet up with on this Journey (Anna and Mitchell) never wound up going. That’s great.

Ohh I forgot to mention how the night started off.  After my tour my feet were about to fall off but I still managed to get to the teachers’ lounge on the boat  (more like a reception area its really nice) to go to this event I was invited to. It was like a “donor’s dinner” for people who invest and donate money to Semester at Sea (SAS). I got invited through my friend John, only 3 students were there. The rest were teachers and doners. John’s grandfather has been doing these trips for over 10 years as a medical doctor! Wow- so Chris knows a lot of the facilty and he was asked to make a speech at this reception. Just a little about him and his grandfather’s involvement / impact with SAS. Chris brought John and myself. It was great- all of these donors were loaded! There just so happened to be a ship called “The World” docked next to us in Barcelona. My gosh- that ship goes AROUND the world 24-7-365! People live on it! An apartment costs like 1 mill a year or something rediculous like that. I don’t know about you but I love to network. So I talked it up with a lot with the donors and made some connections- great way to start off what turned up to be an OK night.

Day 2

Hmmm Day 2. Seemed like this happened 2 hours ago. Sleep has been rare on this ship but its getting better. I went on another tour at 9 am (bummer not a morning person) with the same cutie Jill. Just so happened that we were next to each other when signing up for the field programs… and there were hardly any left soo that’s the way the the ball rolled. But this tour I hung out with this nice girl name Kait. We went to the Picasso Musuem- mind you I had learned a lot from the first day. 1. ) bought a map 2. ) did not talk (as much- you know me) so I could here what the tour guide was saying. Hmm I think I actually learned a lot ! 3.) Have food on hand 4.) STAY CLOSE TO THE TOUR GUIDE. My god they travel fast. Never mind us trying to take pictures and absorb every moment of that site and being aware of the infamous pick pocketers we had to stay unbelievable close to the tour guide. Hated that buttt she did have a lot of good stuff to say. The Picasso museum was awesome. I never thought there were so many artifacts/ painting that were gathered for him. Fascinating guy with some crazy thoughts. There were papers of his sketches and little articles of his mentality. Each room describe a different “era of picasso” . You could really see the transformation.

Anyway – we went to a chocolate “café”. They have a Lot of these – they are basically like starbucks surprisingly they don’t sell to much chocolate, mainly just coffee snacks and ice cream. We went back to the Santa Maria del Mar Gothic Church- again I was amazed. We walked around a little bit then I met up with John and Chris. We were sick of doing nothing so we ventured on our second voyage to find the Gandola ride. It was called the Releferic de Montjuic. It went from the top of the mountain across to this fortress on the top of a desolate mountain called Castell de Montjuic. The view was spectacular – you could see the whole city of Barcelona from up there – WOW! Breathtaking. You got on the gondola and you can turn 360 around and see all of the houses next to each other then the famous buildings and monuments like the Monestat, the  Temple de la Sagrade Familia, The mirar de colomn, everything! The fort was awesome it had a draw bridge that went acroos beautiful gardens down below. We walked up stairs to see the Greatest view of Barcelona. The ocean was glisteng with a beatiful blue, unlike the Jersey Shore, then there were many scattered sail boats and cruise ships. There was historic stuff from the old fortress used to protect spain back in the 1800. They are going to change it into a war museaum in a few years. I can go on but that would bore, it was REALLY NICE. Haha

 

That night- curious. Spain vs Chile was on , the city was going CRAZY! Funny thing is we didn’t watch it ! Insead Chris, John, Abby, Brenedett, Anna, Michelle, and I were on the beach. Mingling and enjoying each others conversations. We did peak our heads in every once in while to see the score and watch. THEY Went absolutely bezerk when they scored OMG. They would even do cheers to “Rally Back” when they got scored on. They set off fire works like every 10 minutes- it was nNUTs. Lastly we went to this club at 12 – 4. There was some great music – we danced from 12 -4 mann we had a blast. I even wipped out the fist pump which was unfamiliar to them. Haha