October 25, 2009

October 25, 2009

We are headed home to Florence after a great weekend in Barcelona!

After arriving Friday afternoon Jillian and I went to see the huge cathedral called La Sagrada Familia in the city. It is huge and looks like a giant sand castle! It was pretty amazing! We then met up with Jeff who we met in Madrid. We went with him to the really famous park by artist Gaudi called Guell Park. It was really funky and decorated with multi-colored tiles and had really unique structures throughout the park. It also has the world’s largest bench in it! We ended up going to dinner and enjoying a few pitchers of sangria with Jeff then went to this beautiful water show called “The Magic Fountain.” It was beautiful and choreographed to music like the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Various songs played for the whole fifteen minute show and were all American songs! It was just so fun to think that we were in Barcelona, Spain experiencing it! After getting drinks and going out to a really fun club on the beach, we ended up spending all afternoon and night with Jeff…well at least until 4 am! We had so much fun and it felt so much safer having a guy with us!

Exhausted Saturday morning we met up with one of our best friends Kayla at our hostel and spent the day with her. We went to La Mercat de la Boqueria, which is like a huge farmers market indoors. They had vendors with fresh fruit juices, breads, seafood, meats, eggs, chocolates, etc. It was located off of the main street in Barcelona called Las Ramblas. Since Barcelona is a beach city we walked down the boardwalk and soaked in every bit of the beautifully perfect mid-70 degree weather! It reminded me of being in Newport! We were so lucky to have amazing weather our whole time there! It was so fun to meet up with Kayla for the day too because she had opted to go to Paris by herself for the whole first part of the trip. We grabbed lunch at a café near the marina. The girls ordered paella, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it…so I stuck with chicken J We all took a siesta then for the rest of the night Jillian and I wandered around the streets of Barcelona. It’s an amazing city, I really liked it a lot. We had been seriously warned about pick pockets in the city, so other than being paranoid we enjoyed every second!

Today (Sunday) we got to go to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, which was so interesting! The collection is organized by year so you can really see all the creative stages Picasso went through and how drastically his artistic style changed over his lifetime.

This has been a truly amazing trip, but I must say I’m so excited to go home to Florence! I really loved Spain and definitely want to travel within it more in the future! I loved using my Spanish too! Every city we visited was so unique and had beauties and wonderful things of its own!

Jillian was the perfect travel partner, I was so blessed to have made her friendship and had her company this week! We have so much fun together and share so many qualities that make us great friends and ideal travelers!

Overall…AMAZING trip J

Con amor,

K