Traveling Alone

Well..not really alone, but this was my first experience travling somewhere without AIFS.  I have to say I was a bit nervous at first...but I almost like it better than traveling in a group with organized events.  Don´t get me wrong, I loved traveling with AIFS because they showed us a lot of the important things and we got tours of stuff that I probably wouldn´t have done if I were on my own.  But it´s very busy when you´re traveling with a group, there are schedules, and you´re constantly running.  When our organized trip to Madrid was finally done I was ready to travel on my own and explore Barcelona unhindered by schedules.

My hostel! My bunk was the bottom bunk on the left

So I woke up at around 3:30 A.M to catch our cab we called to the airport.  Our flight left at around 7 or so in the morning, so naturally, as the overacheivers we all were, we arrived at the airport at like 5, haha.  What we didn´t realize is how much faster you go through everything when you don´t have to check a bag, and when there is no one in line for security.  We all only had our little carry on bags, so we didn´t have to wait in any lines.  While it was awesome, it also meant waiting in the ariport for about 2 hours when we could have slept longer...oh well...better to be safe than sorry.  There were about 10 or so of us on the same flight to Barcelona so we all eventually met up in the terminal, and after a rather uneventful flight to Barcelon (only about 50 min) we arrived!!  From there we split up, some of us went to the hostel right away to drop off our stuff, and others went off and meandered around until it was time to check in.  I went to the hostel right away because I wanted to explore and get to know the area better before my full day of adventures the next day.

Getting to the hostel was an interesting experience.  We had to take a shuttle bus to the train station, take a small train to the metro station and then take the metro to the right metro stop, and then walk around a bit until we found our hostel.  Everything went smoothly, no one got pickpocket, or backpack pocketed :P And we finally arrive at the hostel.  We arrived a bit early but they let us leave our stuff in the lockers they provided us.  By the time the group of us had settled into the hostel the rest of the group arrived, so we all waited around for each other and then went off in smaller groups.  A number of people had friends in Barcelona, so some went off with friends from school.  I went off with my friends Abby and Jessy and we went to explore the area near us a bit.

We were walking around and we came upon this cute little church.  I was just looking through the streets while walking and went "oh!, pretty, let´s to check it out!"  So we did.  It was a really pretty little church with statues inside, and after a pretty eventful  morning I took some time to myself as well.  After that we just meandered around, we found a really cool bit market off La Rambla.  It was basically just a bunch of food shops, meats, candy, fruit, everything you can think of.  All the food looked really yummy, and only made me even more hungry.

Jamon Iberico! (At the Market)

So from there we decided to grab some grub.  We found this cute little place that had paella, and me and my friends shared a seafood paella with squid, squid ink, black rice, muscles and something else.  That might sound gross, but believe me, it wasn´t.  It was delicious and we ate it all up.  It was even the perfect size for three of us to share.  Yummmmm.  After that we decided to just meander around and go find Gaudi´s cool house, and we stopped by La Sagrada Familia.  I´m covering these so briefly because the next day I took a full Gaudí tour and saw these in much more detail.  So for now I´ll provide very quick photos and tell you allll about these things in my next post.  But we briefly stopped by these wonderful pieces of art and then made our way back home because it was literally freezing and we were cold.

Gaudi Designed house

After our day of being outside we decided to relax for a bit in the hostel.  Obviously it was a youth hostel so there were a ton of college students, or kids around our age travling and staying there.  We met some really cool people, chatted with them for a bit out in the common room and share stories and stuff.  It was really nice.  The hostel provided computers, and a common area, tour guide books, art supplies and a t.v, so it was a great area to hang out in.  We weren´t hungry until around 8, yay that means we´re adjusting to Spanish dinner time!, and so at that time me and a few others decided to go find a little bar close by and just try to find some tapas and a drink.  Unfortunately, everyone else you have to pay for your tapas...so I wasn´t too keen on that idea, but we managed to find a little place. 

La Sagrada Famila

Funny thing, we found a place called Travel Bar.  We were looking for some place to sit down, and every other place that had people was packed, so figures we ended up a travel bar where there are a ton of foriegners.  Oh well, we squeezed our way through and "found" a table.  When I saw "found" I really mean, we saw it but there were drinks there, and then the lovely drunk Scottish men decided to move their drinks and give us the table...and there started our interesting night.  The drinks were good, the burgers were amazing.  We got two burgers to share, and I´m not a burger person but that burger was downright awesome, probably because of all the spices it had in it.  Abby and I got the drink specials, and then for the rest of the night "enjoyed" the very drunk Scottish men hitting on us allll night long.  Thankfully I was on the inside, but poor Abby got the brunt of it.  She hit on multiple times, and they even bought us flowers from these stupid Gypsy people that walk through the bars with flowers.  They finally found some other ladies to harrass for the rest of the night and we enjoyed our night peacefully, but that was certainly an experience.

Jessy, Abby, Me, Jen enjoing our delicious pastries!

We left the bar around 10:30 and headed to this cute little pastry shop we saw on the way to the bar.  We stopped in there and decided we deserved some chocolate after that experience.  We each got two little pastries, which were only like 1.30 euros.  Then we headed back to the hostel to see everyone else.  We got back, shared our hiliarious story and ate our amazing chocolate pastries.  Everyone else was getting ready to go out to the discoteca but I really wasn´t feeling braving Barcelona at night...so I stayed in and got a good night´s rest to ready myself for the next day.  The chocolate pastries were heaven on earth, and I was able to just relax the rest of the night, while the rest of the hostel was out partying.  But it was a very good first day in Barcelona.

Next stop....¡GAUDÍ!







Love you all