So first stop of my journey was Barcelona. I took an over night train from Granada which was hot, stuffy, and long, but I slept through a fair bit of it so it wasn't too bad. Although it was definitely before Valencia because I had 2 chairs to myself to stretch out on but around 3am we arrived in Valencia and a girl came and sat beside me, damn. Ohwell, I made it. Unfortunately my phone kind of fails and around 8:30am the battery completely died, I got into the station around 9:30 and then had to go running around looking for a place to charge my phone since I was CapeGirl was meeting me at the station. Eventually ran into McD's, was dying of heat since I was wearing like 3 layers of clothing and plugged in my phone, once I had enough battery I called CapeGirl, she had tried texting and calling me before that so felt rather bad but as it turns out she was waiting right near the McD's so we found each other easily after that.
We headed for her apartment so I could drop off my stuff and whatnot. She had just come back from Romania where she spent her christmas holidays and she had an absurd amount of Romanian food so we had an awesome little feast for breakfast/lunch. After I showered and was feeling more alive we went out for a walk. We wandered around the city and ended up down at the beach, we walked along the boardwalk for awhile and eventually sat down for awhile in the sand. It was a gorgeous day, probably around 22 degrees, I was in a t-shirt and jeans and was still feeling pretty hot, it was amazing. CapeGirl had class at 3pm so we wandered back into the main part of the city and eventually split ways. She headed for class and headed toward the Medieval/Gothic part of town. I wandered through the small streets for awhile, it's a beautiful little area, very authentic european, with a bunch of churches, museums, shops ,and cute little food places of course.
Eventually I wandered back towards the main area of town and found a little cafe with an outdoor patio, so I sat out there with a coffee and just chilling for awhile. Then I continued on my journey back in the direction of CapeGirl's apartment where there's a big park, I wandered through there for awhile, walked up the stairs of this big fountain/monument thing, may have written my name with a sharpie on the back of the main fountain statue and then kept wandering until I found a tree in one of the grassy areas to sit against for awhile and soak in some sun. Once CapeGirl's class was over we met up again and went for some food, by then I was starving since our Romanian brunch. We went to this awesome little hole-in-the-wall place that was a Champagneria -you can literally add -eria to the end of anything here in Europe. It was an awesome little place, very long and skinny, they had a big selection of sandwich type foods and a few other kind of things, but the best part was the champagne, you could get a glass of champagne for a euro or something or get a bottle for 4 euros, so we decided to get a bottle of rosé champagne, so good.
After that we met up with 2 of her friends, both who happen to be UBC people funny enough. I was a little red-faced by then but whatever. It was their version of Frosh week there and that night there was an event called Speed Friending aha yea yea, basically like speed dating but for making new friends instead. This seemed really fun at first, we all got a free drink and sat down at a table, there was 5 or 6 really long tables set up in the room, so you can imagine how many people were there. It was pretty fun at first, but eventually it got to be very tiring and repetitive, especially because I had to explain to every person that I wasn't actually going to school in Barcelona but was actually just visiting CapeGirl. I was sitting beside CapeGirl and Wittman who are both UBC-ers and Canadian, so each new person I talked to would be like 'wow, 3rd Canadian in a row! There's so many of you' yes, yes I know. To be honest it was pretty odd hanging with so many Canadians/UBC-ers, I haven't been with many of either in quite awhile. I also ran into another UBC-er (Jamóncito) there who I had Spanish Lit. with in 2nd year, was definitely a bit of a surprise to see him there. The event got pretty chaotic and eventually everyone just stopped moving and just found their own groups to chill with, it was good mingling time. We met a group of Argentineans who were pretty kool, we hung around with them for awhile and then kept mingling, met some Germans, Danish, Finnish, and Irish people who were all awesome too. Eventually we all started heading home, a lot of people lived in the same-ish direction as CapeGirl so we had a decent sized group to walk home with, was pretty entertaining.
The next day CapeGirl had class at 9am so I got to sleep in a bit. She came back around 11:30 and we had some breaky, more awesome Romanian food. She was changing her classes around and ended up having another class at 12:30 so that meant I was going to be on my own till about 3 which t'was fine. I took the metro over to Plaza Espanya -Catalan is so weird, especially when it comes to spelling- and roamed around there for awhile. The biggest attraction at Plaza Espanya is the big art gallery on top of a small hill on the far side of the plaza, I wandered over that way and climbed up all the stairs to the top, although weirdly enough there was escalators that you could take most of the way up..I decided to use my own legs. It kinda wrecked the antique-ness. Anyways, the view from up there was awesome, and there was a guitar player playing a mixture of classical and popular music on his amplified classical guitar, I sat up there for awhile and listened, could have gone into the museum but decided not to, too much money and not enough time before I had to meet up with CapeGirl. After that I went back to the plaza and went wandering around in the mall like thing, it used to be an old plaza de toro or something of the sort so was a kool dome shape but of course totally new and modern on the inside. It was 6 floors, the top 3 were a movie theatre, restaurants and then an roof top walkway with some restaurants a 360 outdoor view of the city. I wandered around most of the levels and around 3:15pm I was starting to wonder where CapeGirl was, she said she'd give me a call at 3pm when she finished class. I kept wandering around for awhile and then sent her a text, only then did I realize that my texts weren't sending, neither were my whatsapp messages...wtf! Seemingly my phone wasn't working, so I took out the battery and reset it, of course once I turned my phone back on I got a message saying I had 3 missed calls and immediately called CapeGirl, I felt so bad since yet again I had a phone fail. At least this time she had just gone home and was working on stuff while waiting to here from me. I got a hold of her and apologized for my piece of shit phone and we agreed to meet in the mall where I was at. While I was waiting for her I stumbled upon this Short Film Festival screening they were playing for free on the movie theatre level so I just sat and watched that for awhile, they were all pretty random little films.
Eventually we found each other and then we headed for Park Guell. I love Park Guell, it's such an interesting place, Gaudi was one crazy architect. We wandered through the park and climbed up the hillside, we sat up there for awhile and talked while simultaneously people watching, of course. It was around sunset and the sky was absolutely beautiful, the view of the city was pretty nice too. A group of loud americans rolled up so we decided it was time to start heading back. That night there was another big first week event which was an international dinner in one of the big.. auditorium or library or study hall rooms in the university..I'm not really sure what it was, but it was a big empty room and they had a bunch of long tables set up in there with different country flags along the sides. Everyone was suppose to bring some sort of food from their country, CapeGirl brought a bunch of her grandma's Romanian food which was a big hit. She actually won an 'award' for it. The Canadian food was kind of a fail, burgers, potato chips, and some sparkling wine..yeah. Then again what could you bring for Canadian food really? Besides maybe poutine and maple syrup -good luck finding that in Spain.
It was an awesome event, tried lots of interesting/yummy foods, met lots of kool people, too bad I probably won't see most of them again. One of the groups had made some 'sangria'..I'm not really sure what it actually was but they said we didn't want to know what was in it when we asked. It looks like it started out as sangria and then they added whatever alcohol they had in their house into it as well. Aha ohman. After that we all headed for this bar not too far from the school, it was a massive bar, American themed too which was kinda weird. It was kool tho, we got some beers and chilled around with a bunch of random people, met another Canadian guy from Calgary, so many Canadians! It was super crowded in there so it was kinda hard to find people, we kinda just stuck in our own little corner for awhile. Eventually I kind of got bored of standing around there so me and Jamóncito went to go find other people we knew. We ran into a bunch of south americans who we had talked to before and jammed with them for awhile, eventually our other friends came and found us too and we had a good spanish music singing sess. T'was quite fun. Around 2am we all headed to a club called Razzmatazz which was literally right around the corner from the bar. It was a pretty kool club, although the music was a lot of top 40 north american pop crap but whatever, we had a good time, around 4:30am we decided to go home since we were planning on getting up early to go to Sagrada Familia. Saying goodbye to all the awesome people I had just met was kinda sucky, but who knows, perhaps I'll see them again sometime. A few of them had plans to head down my way later in the year so you never know, plus I'll probably stop in Barca on the way back to Granada anyways.
So our plan to get up early to go see Sagrada kinda failed. We ended up sleeping in till about 12, which meant that CapeGirl wasn't going to make it to her 12:30 class and we weren't going to have time to do the tour. Well so much for that. Ohwell, we had a chill morning, had some breakfast (more like lunch at that point) and then headed down to Sagrada Familia. We did our own little walking tower around the outside, checking out all the facades and reading about them on CapeGirl's mobile wikipedia. But alas, it was time for me to head to the airport, we metro'd over to the plaza where all the airport buses were and said goodbye.
It was a great trip, definitely had fun crashing the first week events and meeting new people! Kind of wish it was longer but alas, one only has so much time. Time for Italia!
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