Spain Day 3: Barcelona

The trip to Montserrat was wonderful, but it meant that our time in the city of Barcelona was cut short to just Saturday. Since we were leaving early Sunday morning, it was our only day to do
and see all that we wanted to before we left.

Barca street 

First Stop: Picasso Museum

The Picasso museum was great, even as someone who is not a fanatic about museums I really loved it. At the end of the tour Matt and I bought postcards and a small picture for ourselves, and I promptly left them at stop 2 on today's journey so sorry Mom, Dad, Katie and Bean but part of your gift is somewhere floating around Spain...oops! 

Second Stop: Park Guell 

This park was designed by Gaudi and is made up of beautiful mosaic tiles in the midst of the natural landscape of sun and palm trees.

Gaudi's house at the entrance to the park

The grand entryway

Examples of his mosaic work

One section of the park

(*note this spot is where America's Next Top Model filmed one of their season finale catwalks, through these caves!)

Matt and I in the entryway, he was nice enough to oblige my jumping photo

There was a hole in one of the walls and Seton and I fit inside!

The second section of the park, it holds the famous mosaic bench that wraps around this space

Matt and I trying to take a photo in the sunniest spot ever....

Take #1

Take #2

Third time's the charm!

Caitlin, Seton and Me at the top most peak of the park

Stop Three: Sagrada Familia

This is Gaudi's most prominent work in the form of this cathedral. It has never been finished, and this was very evident with the vast amount of construction that was going on.  There was an extremely long line to climb to the top, and in the interest of saving time to do more we opted not to wait. However, this is definitely one of the tallest structures I have ever seen. 

Stop Four: The Beach

Barcelona is right on the water and even though it was January, and not beach weather, we were excited to feel as though it was not the dead of winter. The weather was a lot milder the whole time we were there, staying around mid 50s to low 60s which was essentially tropical to all of us New Englander's where the alternative was temperatures in the teens. 

We made it to the pier around early evening, a beautiful time 

Beachside promenade

 Many beautiful sand structures along the way

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant alongside the beach overlooking the water. We had been walking so much that at this point we were all ready to drop just about anywhere.  This ended up being a good choice because earlier in the day we had made reservations to go to the Ice Bar and it turned out we had stopped for dinner at a place only a few doors down from our next, and final, destination. 

Stop Four: Icebarcelona 

The Ice Bar is something that has become very popular in Europe and since Caitlin and I had not yet been to one, we thought it would be fun to try it out with all of our visitors.  It is a bar in which the whole room, and everything in it is made up entirely of ice. You are given very puffy, eskemo-esque coats and gloves and you enjoy your drinks from ice glasses that rest on an ice bar. 

 IceBarcelona

(if you notice the red numbers they say -06 which is the temperature, in celsius, of the room)

Me, Seton and Caitlin

Our Group: Allegra, Me, Seton, Caitlin, Anne

Matt and Bobby (Anne's boyfriend who joined us for a small part of our trip)

Matt and I "getting warm" 

Matt taking a quick nap on the ice bed

Caitlin and I peaking around the ice corner

We had a lot of fun goofing around taking funny photos and sitting on the ice, but we only lasted just shy of an hour.  We left the room and warmed up outside using their space heaters until we were properly de-thawed.  After this we were all pleasantly exhausted, and could do no more so we called it a night.  Barcelona had treated us well but unfortunately it was time to get ready to come home. 

Never Thought I Would Say This....But I Love Montserrat

On Friday our group got up early and headed off to the train station to make a day trip.  For those of you who know Holy Cross, you know that as freshman we all have to take a seminar called Montserrat.  It is a mandatory year long course in which you have little say in the matter of choosing, and it determines your housing for freshman year as well; needless to say, it is a big part of your life at Holy Cross.

The class is titled Montserrat because this is the site where St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, decided to put away his bad boy behavior and dedicate his life to the church.

To my embarrassment, I had no idea that Montserrat was near Barcelona, let alone accessible, until Caitlin mentioned it briefly on Tuesday night when we were discussing possibilities for our trip.  Upon hearing this, we immediately looked into it because the idea of going to visit Montserrat, after the name had been so prominent in our lives for so long, was appealing to six Crusaders.

The trip ended up being only an hour away by train with easy on and off access points and so it was a no brainer, we were going to Montserrat.

Immediately upon arriving you are walk up to this edge and peer upon one of the most massive mountain ranges I have ever seen.  There is a relatively thin cable that runs from above your head to nearly the tip of that mountain, and then you realize that that is how you are getting up to the top.

Seton and Me in front of Montserrat

The ride in the cable car up the mountain

 The view along the way

Matt and Me at the top

It is astonishing to me that anyone could get up this mountain before the days of technology, but not only did people do it, and frequently, but they built a small village at the top.  There were numerous buildings, and statues, and the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen, called the Santa Maria de Montserrat.

The Statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Facade of the Santa Maria de Montserrat

Inside the Chapel

If you look closely at the dome there is a statue on a higher level. There is a staircase on the side of the church that takes you up to the second story of the Chapel.  From here, you can go behind the dome to a second, smaller chapel, or through the opening to rub the statue and make a wish. 

The statue is in the center above the hanging Jesus

Chapel on the second level

Matt rubbing the statue

This picture was taken when I was standing where Matt was above ^ but facing the chapel instead of the statue

We spent a few hours at the top of Montserrat, exploring both the Cathedral and the small town.  After awhile we had to head back down so that we could catch the last train back to Barcelona.  This was the most unexpected part of our trip, but definitely my favorite. It was breathtakingly beautiful and an added bonus that Montserrat had previously been such a big part of my life.

Upon arriving back in Barcelona we immediately went in search of food.  Caitlin's older sister Carolyn had recommended a restaurant she went to when she had visited that was a great hit with everyone.  It is a restaurant run by chef's in training so you are getting high quality food at low prices.   This is where I decided to try Spain's signature dish, seafood paella.

Seton and I shared this dish

After dinner we headed out to our last destination of the day.  We went to the Dow Jones Bar where all of the drink prices are based off of their popularity.  So as one drink, such as Budweiser, is bought more frequently than the others the price rises, with the same happening in the opposite direction.  It makes choosing and buying a drink seem strategic, especially when you factor in the "crashes" that happen a few times during the night when all of the drink prices fall at the same time until people rush back in and start buying to restart the process. 

Dow Jones Barcelona Drink Price Board

We finally arrived home late that night and very exhausted from a wonderful day.  We hit the pillow and all of us were out in minutes.

Spain Day 1: Barcelona

We arrived in Spain around 10am, and arrived at our hostel shortly after at 11am.  We checked in, dropped our stuff off and quickly went in search of lunch.  We had woken up that morning at 4am, and had only gotten a few hours of sleep so we were really dragging.  After finishing our meal we realized that we were so tired we had hardly spoke.  We went back to the hostel to grab a little sleep so that we could stay up for the big event later that night....the soccer game!

This is a photo I snapped of Matt, this was two seconds after his head the pillow 

After a nap we went out in search of more food.  For dinner we embraced the new culture and Seton and I shared a bunch of tapas. We were eating on a normal schedule, so we were there at 7pm, but in Spanish time that is really early, so we had the place to ourselves. 

Our dinner:

Manchego cheese

Chorizo sausages 

Mushrooms

Ham and Chicken Croquettes 

Potato pancake

While dinner was delicious, and a lot of fun, we were all very excited for what was coming next.  The night before Matt couldn't fall asleep and was looking up times to tour Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium, and found that there was a home cup game being played Thursday night.  We couldn't believe our luck! We quickly grabbed the cheapest seats we could find, and in less than 24 hours we were arriving at the stadium for the game. 

 Matt and Me in front of the stadium 

Inside the stadium

Before going inside Seton found a vendor outside and bought a scarf, it was a fun souvenir but also helped because it was a chilly night

Even though FC Barcelona was significantly better than the team they were playing, Elche, we got to see all the big name stars play! And because they were so much better we saw them all score goals. The final score was 5-0 but they still played Messi, Neymar, and many more that Matt told me about but I have forgotten. 

 FC Barcelona warming up

The game started at 10pm so we didn't get back to our hostel until around 1:30am and decided to go right to bed.  We had a private room in the hostel with Caitlin, Allegra and Anne who returned shortly after us.  They had taken a later flight and didn't arrive until the evening and then had gone to meet up with some of the Holy Cross students studying abroad in Spain.  Even though we were all excited to be in Spain we went to bed early so that we could have a productive day on Friday.