Start of Spring Break- Barcelona

After a stressful last week with my first midterm, I was super excited for it to be spring break. I am traveling throughout Spain with Nicky, AJ, and Jacob for most of the week. But the first weekend of spring break was Barcelona with Frash, Greer, and Jessa. Frash and I flew to Barcelona together from Budapest on Friday. Nothing too exciting there although we flew through Paris and I found in my first visit to Western Europe after living in Eastern Europe for over 2 months a lot of differences between Eastern and Western Europe. Western Europe is much more fashion conscious. People dress so differently! It was really fun people watching. I also absolutely love the sound of the French language and was able to understand some French through reading, which is good since I took French for like 6 years! It was a super long travel day- we left my apartment at 9:30 AM and got to our hostel around 9:30 PM. Flights with layovers and taking public transportation to and from airports will do that...

Frash and I were staying in the hostel without Greer and Jessa the first night (they both came in Saturday morning) and I was totally intimidated by the hostel the first night. It was a 20 bed dorm room, much bigger than anything I´ve stayed in before and I had not traveled in a small group and without guys before. We walk into the lobby to check in and it was a smokey, intimidating bar with drunken people yelling "Chug, chug, chug!" My exhausted, hungry self was not pleased at this point in time... We walk into the room and it just felt like everyone was watching us walk in and I mean, it was a room with 20 beds! After some cheap falafel (yes, I found cheap falafel in Spain after being there for only about an hour!), we went back to the hostel bar and ended up meeting some Portuguese guys. We hung out with them that evening and ended up having a great time. Of course, we made friends with the noisiest people in the room. They stayed out later than us on Friday night and woke us up to talk to us when they came in at 4 AM and then this other group of Americans decided to have a shouting conversation at 5 AM so my first night in Barcelona did not involve much sleep...

Greer and Jessa arrived the next morning and it was so great just being us. We walked to the beach and caught up over some tea and coffee in a cafe. Barcelona had all these cute little stands with beautiful jewelry and clothes and other various things all over. There were also all these artistic statues which were really awesome. We went out to dinner in this vegetarian organic restaurant where I had some great paella. The food and ambience there was absolutely awesome. After that, we went back to the hostel bar and hung out just us and with the Portuguese guys again. Another really fun night. My two nights in Barcelona were both super fun and the closest to the stereotypical "spring break" nights I´ve ever had.

Sunday morning we finally went to do some touristy things and saw a church (Segrada Familia or something like that) and this park that is basically this artistic architectural structure (Gaull park I believe). It was really beautiful and impressive. We then had some more falafel and basically just made fun of each other and acted like us for a bit longer. After that Frash and I traveled on to Madrid where I met back up with Jacob, AJ, and Nicky who I am with for the rest of the week.

Well this internet place is closing now so I will post more later... well when more happens as well... Enjoy spring break for everyone else who is on it!