Barcelona

Last weekend my program went to Barcelona! And yes, it has taken me a whole week to get to writing this - but in my defense I had a midterm and work and sleep to do. Anyway, Barcelona was absolutely amazing and the warm weather was wonderful.

Inside the Sagrada Familia

When we first arrived, we took a quick bus tour through the city and drove up Montjuic (it means Jewish Mountain because that's where the Jewish population had to live when the catholic kings decided they weren't cool with other religions being around) and had a great view looking out over the city and the harbor. We then went to the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral designed and built mostly by Gaudi. My professor joked that most Spaniards think Gaudi was on acid - and then explained to us that he wasn't joking. Either way, I think this was the first cathedral we've visited where we didn't want to leave after five minutes - this place is amazing. The outside was really interesting, but my favorite part was the rainbow stained glass inside.
After touring the cathedral, a few of my friends and I got a pizza for lunch and had a picnic in front of the Sagrada Familia and our group headed over to Park Güell - which is a whole park designed by Gaudi. An amusing point about our first day is that we saw two great places by Gaudi - which are also considered his biggest failures. He never finished the Sagrada Familia (they're still working on it) and Park Güell was originally intended to be a housing project designed by Gaudi for the aristocracy, but he only ended up building 2 houses because no one wanted to live so far away from the social center of the city.

Dali Museum

Mediterranean!

The next day we got on the bus to go to the Dali museum, which is outside of Barcelona. The museum doesn't actually have a lot of Dali's masterpieces because they're in bigger museums (like the Prado in Madrid) but it was still a really cool place. Dali himself bought the old theater and converted it into a museum for his works. Afterwards, we drove to the beach :) although it was too cold to go swimming I did touch the Mediterranean for the first time and found some pretty awesome sea glass. Back in Barcelona, I went with some friends to see the fountains in front of the palace which light up and are set to music before going to dinner at Las Ramblas (the main road that leads from downtown Barcelona to the harbor) with the whole group.

Our last day in Barcelona, we went to the gothic area of the city to walk around, saw the old gothic cathedral, and got to hear the band that plays on the steps to the cathedral on Sundays and see people dancing the Sardana. Our professor then told us to put our bags in a pile in the center and join hands because we were going to learn the dance too :) We ended the trip by going to the Picasso museum getting lunch near las ramblas, and walking down near the harbor before heading to the airport.

Fountains <3