It's time to do me!: A day of Barcelona sight-seeing.

February 19, 2011

This morning we decided to wake up early so we could do a hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city which started at 9 a.m. Yesterday we went to the grocery store down the street and bought granola bars and fruit for breakfast and snacks, so we wouldn’t be spending more money than necessary by getting breakfast at restaurants in the morning..it would also save us time as well. As we were eating our breakfast we were talking to the receptionist at the hostel about what we were going to do for the day and he showed us these packets for the tour bus company we wanted to go through and it had a 6 euro voucher in it as well as all of the maps and extra information we needed. I looked at the map on how to get to the main stop and we were off on our way! However, we ended up making two very important pit stops along the way to the bus stop…one at a bakery shop that had extremely promising pastries in the window, as well as at STARBUCKS! I got a chocolate filled flaky pastry with chocolate sprinkles on top, which was complimented extremely well by my mocha that I got at Starbucks. I don’t think I can express to you how excited I was to see a Starbucks…I haven’t really had coffee since I had been to Italy because their coffee is nothing like American coffee, and they also refuse to put Starbucks in their country. On top of my excitement of seeing that Starbucks so early in the morning, I think my love for Spain grew as the day progressed and we passed a Starbucks on almost every single main street in the city <3

Once we made it to the correct bus station we bought our ticket with our voucher and waited for the first bus to arrive. There were two different routes that the buses would take us…the red route and the blue route. The blue route was more spread out and further from our house so we decided to do that one first. The bus would take you to all of these stops and you were given a head set that played history and commentary along the way. If you wanted to actually walk around the sight you could get off the bus and walk around and once you were done other buses would circulate so within 15 minutes you would be able to get on another bus. On the blue route the main highlights were La Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, the Futbol stadium, and the Gaudi house. La Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell are big time impressive architectural places both designed by the artist Gaudi, both of which were so hard to photograph because the smallest details added to the beauty of the structures. La Sagrada Familia is actually a cathedral which is supposively as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside, but there was a line almost wrapping halfway around the building to get inside, and we weren’t really willing to wait or pay to go inside. When Gaudi made the plans for the cathedral he knew it would take years past his death to finish it, and still today there is construction on this massive and beautiful building. Parc Guell was a really open place plastered with mosaic and vibrant colors and provided a great look out over the city of Barcelona…it was relaxing and beautiful…I can’t quite applaud Gaudi enough or express to you the wonders that went through my mind being at these places.

Once we had finished the blue route we decided to get off at one of the stops that was a connecting stop to the red route, and thought we should try and get something for lunch. We walked around looking for just something little like a sandwich for lunch, and when we weren’t having much luck we rounded the corner and found a Subway and after much debate on if it was wrong to eat American food in another country, we decided to go in. I got a meatball sub and I’m used to putting spinach on my meatball subs, but the toppings they had to put on top were quite different than the toppings in America. I ended up getting corn and lettuce and Southwest sauce on my sub because she barely put any marinara sauce on the sub before she toasted it and wasn’t quite willing to put more of the sauce on top. After everyone had their fill of Subway (and cookies which came with our meal) we headed back out and onto one of the red buses.

The red route had like 3 times more stops than the blue route, but the stops were a lot closer to each other. Highlights along the red route was Montjuic which was the area of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the World Trade Center, Port Vell, the Historical Museum, the zoo, and many more. We actually rode the route 1 ½ times because Montjuic was in the earlier part of the tour and was the closest stop to our hostel, so we rode it around again and got off at Montjuic. It started to get chilly on top of the bus so Marissa and I wrapped our scarves around our heads and impressively we were quite warmer despite how ridiculous we looked. The Olympic Stadium was really cool and had different posters and pictures around the inside of the track. A part of Montjuic was also this huge building which I assumed to be an art museum, which had the Magic Fountain down lower in front of it. The Magic Fountain we were hoping to be able to go and see lit up at night because it only ran for certain hours on certain days. Once we were done walking around Montjuic it was getting late and we were all hungry for dinner, and for dinner we were on the hunt for Paella, a famous Spanish dish. Not too far from the building we found this small restaurant that had paella displayed in the window so we walked in and Marissa, Danielle, and I all ordered the chicken paella and Lauren ordered the vegetarian paella. We waited a little while and all of a sudden this girl comes out of the kitchen with this huge black pot and sat it in front of me…holy paella! It looked like it was enough food to serve like 4 people and was basically rice with chicken legs and beans…yummmmy! I ate every single morsel just like everything else I eat here, and everyone else was really impressed with my eating skills, but it was so delicious I wasn’t about to let it go to waste!

When we left the restaurant it was raining outside so we decided to make a quick walk back to the hostel. Well, after about 10 minutes of walking I was like “does this look familiar?” We stopped to look at the map and we ended up going in the wrong direction…whoops! We turned back around went back to the main center of the city which like 6 different streets stem from, found Parallel, and headed about 15 minutes down and realized this was definitely familiar territory, and found our hostel. Once back in the hostel I had asked the receptionist Danny if I would be able to find peanut butter in Barcelona because in Italy I can’t really and I’m starting to die without it. He told me of a place that I could most likely find peanut butter even though it was later than most grocery stores were open. Marissa, Danielle, and I all took off in search of this store which was a lot closer than the map depicted. However, once we got there I found NO PEANUT BUTTER! Danny steered us wrong! Although there was a little station of different bins of candies that Danielle and Marissa filled a bag with, which made them quite happy. We got back to the hostel, showered, and headed to bed…tomorrow would be another early morning, but I don’t even care…I LOVE SPAIN!