Baaarrrcellloooona!

If you want to finally hear this song from the movie we keep mentioning, follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDxq9HZxek
The YouTube video not only plays the song, but also shows a picture slide show of Barcelona, so you can see what it looks like!

Well hey there everyone!

We're back, and we are now in Barcelona: the city of Gaudí! and by the sea! and lots of other things...

We got in on Sunday, exhausted, but happy to be moving back into an apartment after a weekend of hostel-ing with all our stuff. Our apartment is in a super old building...maybe hundreds of years old. But it's spacious and decorated nicely. The only thing we wish could be better is our bug problem. We didn't realize until a few days in that we had a BIG cockroach problem here...which is kind of unavoidable because of the age of the building, but VERY UNPLEASANT, let me tell you. Right before I started writing this post, a medium-sized one crawled up my leg as I was cleaning the kitchen. You can guess my reaction!!!

Anyway, Sunday afternoon we got settled in and slept. Stephanie was exhausted to say the least after her last night out in Lisbon, so we took it easy.

Since Stephanie's family visited Barcelona last summer, and I've never been here before, I got the guided tour courtesy of my lovely roommate on Monday. We walked all over our neighborhood, known as El Borne, and throughout the more popular areas of the city. Near the Cathedral of Barcelona I saw a huge sign that said Gaudí, so I already had one place to check out for my research.

Steph also showed me Barcelona's most famous street, Las Ramblas. It's a big, wide boulevard that runs from Plaça Catalunya all the way down to the beach. It's also famous for its pickpocket-ers, so we didn't stay there for long!

On Tuesday, while Steph took a practice LSAT, I went on a bike tour to help get my bearings in the city. A lot of the cities sights are spread out over a large area, so this was the best way for me to learn my way around, and see what I wanted to come back and visit later. I went on a tour with the Fat Tire Bike Tour Company. We met in Plaça Jaume, which was the original center of Barcelona, back when it was a Roman city. What? Rome? I'll never escape! Anyway, Barcelona was a walled city, and was expanded a total of 3 times. There were about 43 of us that showed up for the bike tour that day (must be popular), so we were split into three smaller groups. My group of 16 was led by Buster, an expatriate from London. Buster led us through the old city-center area, known as Barri Gotic and showed us the Plaça del Rei, and/or Royal Palace, where Queen Isabella of Castille lived. Yes, that Isabella, you know, the one who Christopher Columbus begged for money to go on an exploration and sail to the new world. Apparently, we saw the steps that Christopher Columbus walked up to go knock on the Queen's door.

Then we stopped by the Barcelona Cathedral, known as La Seu in some cases. We mostly talked about how it has been under restoration/construction forever, as everything else in Barcelona seems to be.

The next stop on our tour was the Palau de la Música Catalana, a Modernist-designed orchestra hall. It was gorgeous! I decided to definitely come back and go inside that one.

After that, we biked up to the Arc del Triomf. I swear every city has one, I don't know why Paris gets all the credit. This one was built when the world exposition was held here in 1888. It's also just about a block away from our apartment, how cool is that?

We rode down the long plaza in front of the Arc until we reached the Parc de la Ciutadella. It's a large, green park that also houses the Barcelona Zoo.

From the park, we headed up to the Sagrada Familia. This church, still under construction, is by and large Gaudí's masterpiece, and is a huge reason I'm here doing on-site research in Barcelona. I'll probably spend a whole day visiting this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

From the Sagrada Familia, we bicycled down to the BEACH! We passed through the portal formed by two large skyscrapers built built to house the athletes for the 1992 Summer Olympics. We rode down the boardwalk of the Barceloneta beach, where we hopped off and parked our bikes in front of a beach-front café-bar. We sat in lounge chairs on the sand and ate lunch. It was kind of awesome...well, until I caught a full-frontal view of a topless woman playing beach volleyball...awkward, but that's Europe for you. After lunch we rode back up through an area known as Ciutat Vella to get back to the bike shop.

Overall, it was a great 4-hour introduction to Barcelona. Except for the sunburn that came with it...ouch!

That's all for now, come back soon for more news!