My Camera Died in Barcelona

Unfortunately, when I visited Barcelona this weekend I was tragically unprepared and thus forgot to properly charge my camera. Needless to say, I snapped off about 10 pictures of surfers and a few of Sagrada Familia before it died. But I will steal my friend's pictures and *maybe* make a Flickr account to start posting everything...

But let's backtrack to the weekend of 8 Nov. As you already know, Mr. Obama was pronounced President-elect at approximately 5:00am GMT, so that was a late night for me on Wednesday. On Saturday, I had my first hockey game as a London Dragon @ Oxford. Grandma said "Oh well now you get to say you went to Oxford!" and while that is true, the game was at 11:00pm and it was pouring rain, so I didn't actually get to "see" Oxford, though I hope to make a trip out there sometime soon. The game went fairly well, but ended in a 10-8 loss, which I thought was an absurd hockey score until I saw that BC beat UNH this weekend 8-6, which isn't too far off. Anyway, the team is not too shabby. A little weak on the goaltending, and the defense needs some work, but this was apparently our toughest test of the season, and we have them coming back to our place for the last game of the season in February and I have no doubt we will stomp them when they do come. The real point I want to make though, is that this was my second super-late night of the week. The buses to Oxford only run every hour after 1:00am, and we missed the 2:10 bus, so we had to wait for the 3:10 bus. It was ridiculous, I got home at 5:30. BUT I LOVE HOCKEY SO I DON'T CARE! Seriously, it was worth it, even if we got a lot of dirty looks from people on the bus who were trying to sleep while we were having a grand time.

Then, Monday was my birthday, so I went out with the hockey team to the University of London Students Union pub, and then off to a classy establishment/club - Cheapskates. It was a good night, and though I've been drinking legally for over a month now in London, it still felt like 21, which was nice. I'm still amazed that the US is the only developed country in the world with a drinking age over 18.

Fast forward to the weekend - Friday evening I left for Barcelona with 4 friends, Anna Allie Lauren and Andrew, from LSE. It was a rather long trip because we took Ryanair and had to travel 45 minutes to Stansted Airport in London, and then another 1.5 hours from Girona airport in Spain to Barcelona, with the 1.5 hour flight in between, but we ended up getting to Barca at a reasonable time as far as the Spaniards are concerned: 11:00pm. Checked into the hostel (which was literally on the boardwalk) and went out to dinner which was surprisingly full. I ate seafood (and continued to all weekend) and we drank some delicious Sangria - really the way to go if you ever go to Spain (we later learned that the Spaniards don't eat dinner until 10, and don't go out until at least 12, so the nights are very long there). Friday night I called up my roommate Chris who is studying there and he took us to the Absinthe bar, but it was packed and had an hour wait, so we went to a different and really old bar that ended up being pretty fun. Saturday morning we woke up relatively early and I got to sit outside in the beautiful sunshine and clear blue skies in just a t-shirt (because it was 65 degrees) and watch the surfers ride shore break for a while. I really wanted to get out there, and the water was really warm, but I didn't pack a suit and we had an agenda.

The first thing on the above mentioned agenda was the Picasso museum, which didn't hold many of his most-famous works, but did have a lot of his stuff and was organised in a way that chronicled his life and the progression of his works, which was really interesting. Unfortunately all the captions of the paintings were in Catalan and Spanish, so I couldn't understand anything, but it was still cool. Next was the Museu de Xocholata - The Museum of Chocolate. It was amazing. They gave me a bar of chocolate when I walked in, and there were gigantic chocolate sculptures of all sorts of things, ranging from a gorilla to a model of Sagrada Familia, which I'll get to later. Anyways, it was delicious, and I bought a 90% pure cocoa chocolate bar which I plan to enjoy sometime soon.

Next we made our way towards the Temple de Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's most famous (and still ongoing) project. Gaudi was really a revolutionary in construction and design, and all of his works in some way mimic something in nature - animals, plants growing, beehives, etc. I would say, if there is any cathedral you NEED to see before you die, this is the one. Unfortunately it is not finished, even though it begun in 1882, but it is still some serious architecture. They just finished the front facade, which is a sculpture of the Passion of the Christ, and the back was finished just after Gaudi died in 1928, which is a depiction of the Nativity Scene. It's clearly got Gothic elements to the overall construction, but the design is one of a kind. If it's finished before I die, I will most certainly return - the main part, the Facade of Glory - is to be 170 metres tall. For comparison, the St. Louis Arch is 192 metres tall, and the spires currently in place at Sagrada Familia are 100 metres. I'm doubtful that they'll finish anytime soon, perhaps not even in another 100 years, but there were a ton of cranes and it looked like they were getting a lot done, so keep your fingers crossed!

That night while the girls shopped, Andrew and I walked back to the hostel by way of Las Ramblas, the touristy part of town. It was packed with people, and we were encountered by a great number of whack-job mimes(ish?) dressed up in silly costumes, painted skin and faces, and lots of them were making weird noises. One guy had a figure of a man dressed and painted in all silver sitting on a chair, but no head, and next to it was a big box with a man's head sticking out, also painted silver, and he was making really weird high pitched noises at everyone. Really crazy stuff. Also they sold live chickens and birds on the street. Weird. But we did make it back to the hostel and ended up playing drinking games with a bunch of Kiwis who were going on a grand European adventure of their own. They were all really nice and a lot of fun to hang out with, and they said they will be in London later this month so hopefully they'll give me a call. Afterwards, we met up with Chris again and he took us to a Tapas restaurant (sans kiwis) that was fabulous, and then to another bar where we stayed and chatted until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day, again woke up early and watched the surfers, and then proceeded to the Catedral de Barcelona, an older Gothic cathedral, which was actually holding a service when we got there so we couldn't go all the way into it and check it out. Also, there was scaffolding over the entire front of the place, so it didn't look as grand as it might have. The service was in Catalan, so it wasn't even worth sitting down to watch the priests speak on the jumbotron because we were so far back (the place is huge and they wanted everyone to be able to see what was going on apparently). Next we made the best decision of the weekend, which I'll attribute to Anna, and rented bikes for three hours. Not only did it let us rest our walking muscles, but we were able to cover a whole lot more ground in very little time, and made our way through the Arc de Triumf (the Spanish version of le Arc du Triomphe in Paris) and up to Park Guell - one of the many parks in the city. It is situated literally on the peak of a hill and has many Gaudi buildings and architecture, but the best part was at the very top after a long climb: a view of the entire city and beyond. It was amazing, you could see literally every building and then some, and the Mediterranean Sea in the background. Sagrada Familia was especially cool, and you can tell already that it is the centerpiece, biggest, and most extravagant building in Barcelona even though it is not finished. We could see in the distance where our tiny hostel was, and it was really a breathtaking picturesque view. This was not the only time I cursed myself for not charging my camera.

After Park Guell, we rode our bikes (this time downhill - the ride up was a difficult and sweaty one) rather leisurely and went for a ride through the Park Zoologicia which was where they held the World Exposition in 1898 which was pretty cool. And from there, returned the bikes, ate some more seafood, and headed home for dark, unsunny, freezing (literally, 1 degree Celsius), foggy Londontown.

It was a great adventure and an awesome (and sunny!) trip. I would definitely recommend Barcelona to anyone and everyone, even if only to experience some legitimate sun and warmth while getting away from crap weather. But luckily we decided to forgo sleep in favor of being able to do as much as possible in 2 days, and I'm really glad we did.

I hope I didn't bore anyone during this obnoxiously long post. Really it was just a reason for me to procrastinate reading for my Foreign Policy Analysis paper this week. Ugh.

I have a hockey game again this week, and I've recently started trying to figure out what to do with my life this summer, so maybe another post is in order for this week, but no promises!

Muchas gracias amigos, adios!