Barcelona

Me waiting to get off our Ryanair flight

Let me start by saying this: I'm sorry, guys. I totally stopped blogging after Barcelona. I don't know what it was. I was too heartbroken or I just didn't have time. I don't know. I'm leaning towards heartbreak. My pictures and journal entries were a very important part of maintaining my blogs and after Barcelona I didn't have either of those anymore. But here I am, sitting at home, looking at my half blog. I will not be a blog failure. So, one blog at a time, I will tell you about the rest of our trip, starting with Barcelona.

We flew Ryanair in to Barcelona, Spain from Rome, Italy. We had heard stories of this particular airline but I never thought it would be the way that it was. Ryanair is the airline with the cheapest flights we could find. They're known for being as cheap as possible. They don't provide anything during the flight except maybe drinks. Throughout the whole flight the attendants are walking up and down the aisles selling perfumes and watches. When the flight finally lands and it is on time the celebratory sound of a trumpets plays over the speaker, everyone cheers, and an announcer comes on with information on how many safe on time landings Ryanair has accomplished. Our flight was full of young Spaniards and Italians going to Barcelona, creating quite the party bus.

We found our hostel easily. It was an awesome place. Every night they had some sort of event going on in the bar downstairs. Our first night there was a big game day - Barcelona vs Real Madrid. Kind of a big deal. Check out the link to see why. So they were showing the game in the TV room and offered free sangria to anyone who wanted it. During our stay they also had a free tapas night, a beach party, and a free cheese night. The only issue we had was with people coming back from parties at 6 or 7 in the morning and making a lot of noise. It was worse than the Brits in Amsterdam. Spain really knows how to party. Only problem was, we weren't there to party! So drunk kids being drug into our room at 6am wasn't working out very well for us. We actually ended up asking for a room change which made our last couple of nights much better for us.

The Barcelona nation flag is just the stripes. The blue triangle
and star are the flag of the Catalan state - a move for independence.
Pic from: This site

Barcelona was amazing, my friends. It was super hot and humid but it was still awesome. Not as bad as Rome but still icky. We did our usual free walking tour that we did in most big cities we went to and learned a lot about their history and what they have going on today. Just for a little background - Barcelona is in a part of Spain called Catalonia. It used to be its own territory but Spain slowly enveloped it through various ways throughout the years. The people of Catalonia have a lot of Catalan pride. They want their own full independence back and so far what they have gained is the level of "autonomous community," which means that they have their own basic laws and control but, ultimately, they are still under the power of Spain. They've been taking steps to separate themselves from Spain and regain their own cultural identity. A recent decision was to outlaw bull fighting because that is a Spaniard tradition. Their arenas are now a shopping mall and an historical landmark. During  the Franco Era, 1939–1975 when Spain was under the dictatorship run by Francisco Franco, any identity marker of Barcelona was outlawed. They were no longer allowed to be their own people. Their language was outlawed along with any traditions they held. Since Franco's death they have been allowed to regain what they have lost. Looking around Barcelona there is graffiti everywhere. I know I've talked about the awesome art of graffiti or the age of graffiti throughout my posts, but I think Barcelona had my favorite. I wish I had the pictures to show you. It's all over the place and more than half of it is political.

I wish I could say what I enjoyed most about Barcelona, but I just can't put it all in order. So, this post is going to seem a bit disjointed. For that, I apologize. A discovery I will never forget is Gaudi. I love the man. He was an architect, but also an artist. Right now they're working on a church that he had a big hand in designing. The church is the Sagrada Familia. It is massively huge and my most favorite church in all of our travels. It's not the usual gold and silver rich jeweled church that we were used to. Gaudi put so much thought into making this a place of true worship. I wish that I still had the pictures to show you. I'm sure you could find them online somewhere. When you walk in you feel like you're walking into a clearing in a dense forest. The pillars all reach up looking like trunks of trees and branching off as they reach the ceiling which has been decorated with what look like giant flowers. There is colored stain glass all over that let it the lights of blues and greens and yellows creating such a bright interior of all natural light. Everything that has been put into place has some sort of meaning set forth by Gaudi himself. Each pillar, each stained glass, each level, has been put there for a reason. The building of the church began in 1882 and it still has 20 to 30 years to go. It's come across some troubles during its time - wars and financial difficulties. Gaudi died in the '20s and will never be able to see the completion of his masterpiece. We hope to go back when it has been completed so that we can see the amazing structure that it is expected to become.

This is not my picture. It's the inside of the Sagrada Familia. This construction wasn't up when we were there. But I wanted to give you an idea of what it looked like. Do some image searches to find out more. Pic used from this site.

We also saw a couple of houses that Gaudi designed and his park and home which is now a museum. All of it is amazingly beautiful and it breaks my heart to no longer have those pictures.

Food was amazing. I had heard a lot about tapas before we went and I never really knew what it was. It's like going to a sushi bar and just pulling off a plate of this and a plate of that. Except that there's no train going through the place... Although, they should institute that. It would be a hit! We loved all of the little sandwiches and meats and cheeses. It felt absolutely amazing to be able to communicate with people in Spanish again and to be able to read the menus and to know exactly what we were ordering. We made a few friends over food which always seems to be the way things worked during our travels. We would sit in a restaurant or at our hostel and start chatting it up with anyone and next thing we know, we're friending each other on Facebook and hanging out for a few hours after!

Pic from this site. Check it out. They have a lot of great pictures.

We made one day during our stay a relaxing beach day. A little history about the Barcelona beach: it's fake. The beach area actually used to be all shanty towns and industrial buildings. In 1992 Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics and they suddenly needed to make their borders pretty for all of the international guests who would be coming to visit. So they cleared out all of the shanty towns and imported sand from Africa and palm trees from anywhere that had palm trees, including Hawaii, and now they have a big beautiful beach that everyone loves! It's amazing what the Olympics can do for an area. Turns out we actually picked one of the coolest days of our stay. But it was still ok. The water was warm and we had a blast.

If you're not up with the news, you're probably wondering, "Why does she keep talking about a broken heart and lost pictures?" Well, it's the part of my blog where I tell you such information. We knew going into it that Barcelona is the capitol for all pickpockets. That's where their numbers are dense and they are good at what they do. We made it to our last day when we were waiting for time to load up on our train. We decided to settle down and relax in a little plaza where a couple guys were playing nice mellow music. My bags were hurting my so I took them off and put them on the ground in front of the step we were sitting on. My purse was pushed against the step and my backpack was pushed against my purse. Brandon was laying his head on my lap and we were sitting there enjoying the sun and the music. A few guys came into the plaza. One guy sat at the end of Brandon's feet. At some point he dropped some change. When he dropped his change another guy came by to talk to the woman sitting next to me. After she told him she wasn't going to give him any money both men left. Two seconds later I found my purse was gone. We were duped.

What pisses me off the most is that I knew something was up the whole time. When we sat down, all I could think was that I should be pulling my bags closer to my person. When the first guy came and sat at Brandon's feet I noticed that he was really antsy and jumpy. I was watching him the whole time, until the other guy came and started spouting stuff at the lady. By that point it was too late and they were both gone. They got my camera with all of our Rome and Barcelona pictures. Luckily I had to change out the memory card so I had the one from the first part of our trip still in my backpack. They got my travel journal that was absolutely amazing. They got my new phone. And then they also got other various things that were a nuisance to miss. I'm so angry. So here's a lesson to you, my friends: Don't ever ignore your instincts. I knew that I should have grabbed my back the moment we sat down. For some reason I didn't. That's my own bad.

So there's the end of our trip. We went to police office and filed a report, went to store and bought some booze, meats, cheeses, and olives, then went and got on our overnight train to Paris. You can read about how I handled all my missing stuff in my Paris blog. I'll be working on that one next and I'll get it out as soon as I can. So, until next time, my friends!