Weekend Trip to Barcelona

This past weekend, as sort of a celebration of making it through our first week of classes, Heidi, Emily, and I jumped on a train to Barcelona, Spain. We left Friday afternoon after our last class and came back Sunday evening – it was so much fun! It took us about 3 hours to get from Montpellier to Barcelona, but that included several stops in major cities along the way. We found our seats on the second try with the help of one of the stewardesses, and I didn’t even realize the train was moving until we were well past the station. I couldn’t believe how smooth and quiet it was!

Once we had crossed the France/Spain border, the train pretty much gave up on speaking French, so we didn’t really know where our stop was. Our tickets gave us a time of arrival for Barcelona, but we also checked the maps on our phones to let us know where we were. When we finally reached the station (about 15 minutes late) French announcements returned, along with the addition of English ones. Several people we had talked to before we had left had told us we didn’t need to speak a word of English while we were in Barcelona – this turned out to be a lie within the first 5 minutes when we couldn’t find the metro station we needed to take. I don’t know any Spanish other than basic word like hola and gracias. I have never taken a Spanish class, even though I would like to, and neither had Heidi, so we were relying on Emily (who knew some Spanish) to get us around.

Walked out of the metro station to this – Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf.

When we arrived at the Barcelona train station we had to ask for directions to our house. The first person we asked (who worked at the train station) gave us the wrong directions, so we ended up asking for directions again from some members of the police force who were just outside of the station. To get near to where our house was, we needed to take the metro two stops down to Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf and then walk several minutes to our street. This sounds easy, but it was dark and we couldn’t find any street signs so we ended up having to backtrack a bit.

We rented our apartment through AirBNB, and since this was my first experience with AirBNB I had no idea what to expect. The property manager, Alejandro, opened up this ancient-looking door to reveal a series of ghetto stairs that had last seen some loving attention many, many years ago. Had the AirBNB pictures online lied to us? Was our apartment going to look the same? After one of the longest (and narrowest) four flights of stairs I think I’ve ever climbed, we finally arrived at our front door. Inside the place was very nice – which was such a relief after seeing the stairs! While it was on the small side, there was a living room, kitchen, bathroom, 2 bedrooms and 2 miniscule balconies.

Stairs, fourth floor.

View from one of our balconies.

The next morning we went to one of the local cafes on our street for breakfast. Not much was open, so we ended up eating at one of the bigger cafes on La Rambla. While on La Rambla we also made a quick visit to the Mercat de la Boqueria, which is a massive farmer’s market. (I forgot to take pictures but you can look at some here!) We didn’t spend much time on La Rambla because we had other plans for the day: the Barcelona Bus Turístic (tour buses) and some of the works of Antoni Gaudí. While the tickets for the bus were somewhat expensive (27€ for one day), the buses stopped at 44 different scenic location throughout the city and arrived about every 10 minutes, so they were definitely worth it.

Heidi, Emily, and I on the tour bus! I missed the sunglasses memo.

After we purchased our tickets we rode the bus to our first destination: Casa Milà (also known as La Pedrera), one of Gaudí‘s many feats of architecture. Like with the Arènes de Nîmes from last week, we had a guided audio tour of the house. The building was amazing – I had not known anything about Gaudí before Barcelona so it was really fun to explore the house and learn about his life and work.

Casa Milà.

My pictures will probably not do this place justice – parts of it seemed surreal (like the roof), parts seemed familiar (like the living areas), and the inspiration and explanations behind everything were just brilliant. Gaudí drew most of his inspiration from nature, which is probably why I enjoyed Casa Milà so much! Almost – if not all – of his work mimics the forms, structures, and functions of plants and animals in nature. How cool is that, for something that was considered very controversial when it was built (early 1900’s)?

One of the courtyards in Casa Milà.

Definitely not your average roof.

Hi Heidi! 🙂

Every structure on the roof served a purpose. From vents and skylights to chimneys and stairwells, Gaudí made sure nothing looked bland.

The attic.

On the left, Casa Batlló before Gaudí’s renovation. On the right, Casa Batlló after Gaudí’s renovation.

Tree branches: inspiration for the wire railings on each balcony of Casa Milà.

Python skeleton: inspiration for the attic of Casa Milà (go back and look at the arches – they are all spaced at different intervals, different thicknesses, and different heights!).

Several hours and many flights of stairs later we returned to the tour bus to go to Park Güell, also designed by Gaudí. This plot of land was originally intended to be sold off as plots for homes, but when the idea never quite took off it was turned into a park. There was a lot of construction while we were there, but we did manage to get several great pictures and fantastic views of the city and sea below us.

View from the top of Park Güell.

The three of us at the top of Park Güell. Still no sunglasses.

By this time it was nearing late afternoon, so we took the bus back to the stop near our house. On the way back we passed by La Sagrada Família, a massive Roman Catholic church (hasn’t made it to cathedral status yet) that Gaudí designed and has been in construction ever since. The church was started in 1882 and has a projected completion of 2026, which is when I will be returning to Barcelona so I can tour it. 😉

La Sagrada Família and the only picture I managed to get without major distortion from the bus window. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Once we finally got back to our house we got dressed up to go out to a fancy dinner. We took a taxi down to the waterfront and decided to eat at the restaurant Agua, which was RIGHT on the beach. Dinner was delicious – I had this roast duck with vegetables (including pumpkin!) that was cooked in this amazing glaze.

Dinner! Sorry it’s so blurry – perfect lighting in restaurants does not translate well into photos on phones.

After dinner we wanted to go out to a bar. In Montpellier bars close early, in Barcelona bars don’t really open until 12:30 A.M. In one of the hundreds of brochures we had managed to accumulate throughout the day there had been an advertisement for an ice bar near our restaurant. Since an ice bar sounded really cool (ha! I make myself laugh sometimes…), and since they provided jackets and gloves, we decided to check it out. The ice bar was fun, but we got cold pretty fast so as soon as we were done with our drinks we left to warm up outside. Since most other bars and clubs were still not open, we returned to the restaurant we had dinner at and got dessert. After dessert we ended up at this club called Opium, which we weren’t sure about (hello…) but the bouncer convinced us to go inside. It turned out to have great dancing, so we spent several hours there and finally returned to our house via taxi pretty early in the morning.

Ice bar!

Sunday morning after a late breakfast we walked to our last major destination: the Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia (the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia). This cathedral was gorgeous, and we all made comments on how we wish there were things like this in the States. We had arrived mid-morning, which happened to be the perfect timing to attend Mass. This area is roped off to all visitors, but Emily asked the guard if we could go through for Mass. The guard let us through, so we sat near the front and sat through part of Mass. It was an incredible experience, even though I understood a grand total of four words. We didn’t take any pictures while we were in that area, but the entire cathedral was stunning.

The cathedral. SO PRETTY.

Inside the cathedral, near the main entrance.

On our way back from the cathedral we made a quick stop where I was FINALLY able to buy a pair of cheap sunglasses! I was fortunate enough to leave my sunglasses in my car before I left, and I had been trying to find a cheap pair ever since (you would think they would be easy to find…). I am incredibly glad to have a pair now, since most of our weather has been cold but very sunny.

After a little more shopping we had to grab our bags out of our apartment so that we could catch our train back to Montpellier. On our way back to the station we made sure to stop by the Arc de Triomf again so that we could see it during daylight. It sure was pretty! We had a great time traveling and exploring Barcelona – I can’t wait for more weekends like this!

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Arc de Triomf right before it started raining (we had perfect timing).

05 Feb This entry was published on February 5, 2015 at 8:38 PM. It’s filed under Study Abroad 2015 and tagged Spain. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.