This past weekend was one that I had been looking forward to for a very long time; I got to go to Barcelona to visit my absolute best friend in the whole wide world!! Sidney goes to school at Georgia Tech and is doing a 3 month summer program through her university in Barcelona.
Yes, we’ve known each other for a while. Note the braces.
After the usual long day of travel with Ryan Air (bus to Madrid -> flight to Girona (a city an hour outside of Barcelona) -> bus to Barcelona) I was finally with the girl who has been my best friend since our pre-teen years. Giggling, squealing and tears were included in our reunion, naturally. She showed me around her small, but very functional apartment and introduced me to her friends who are also on her program. We explored around the town by night a bit but mostly just enjoyed each other’s presence.
Reunited and it feels so good!
Friday Sidney had class, so I got to sleep in. I bought a metro pass and explored the town a little bit, heading down La Rambla, a street where there are lots of vendors for things like flowers, post cards and Barcelona nick-nacks and also street performers.
La Rambla filled with people around 4:30 PM.
Once out of class, we met back up and hit the super market. As most of you know, I’ve been fed 3 meals a day by my host mom for the past almost 5 months. I love this, but I also love and miss cooking very much. Also vegetables. We cooked up some veggie fajitas accompanied by black beans and guacamole. At last!!
Veggies sizzling, wild rice boiling and beans. Yum.
Saturday morning we got up and headed to see the sights. Having only been in Spain about a week, Sidney hadn’t seen any of the “touristy” stuff yet. We went to La Sagrada Familia, which is Antonio Gaudí’s incredible work in progress of a cathedral. It is a project that was started in 1882 and is projected to be finished in 2020. Getting off the metro stop and seeing this famous building was breathtaking. I had a feeling much similar to when I saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence. Mostly just uttering a whole lot of “wow”s. Sidney and I took our time making our way all around the building, but decided against waiting in a 1 hour+ line and paying the 12 euros to enter.
Sidney and me in front of La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous cathedral.
Next on the list was Parc Güell, which is a plot of land that was origionally intended to be a housing development but is now a “municipal garden”. Gaudí’s house is located in the park along with the one other house that made it in before the project was called off.
Excited to be in Parc Güell
Much of the park’s structures were designed by Gaudí, so as you can imagine it’s a very funky place to spend some time! Sidney and I walked up to the top of the park where you can see all of Barcelona and the Mediteranean Sea.
We spent a total of about two hours exploring around, enjoying the nice weather and deciding who spoke English so we could ask them to get a picture of us together.
This is illegal. Whoops.
We made sure we got our tourist picture with the dragon at the bottom of the park, which was taken by a nice woman from Kentucky! Of course she gave us a little grief for being from Tennessee, gotta love those southern football rivalries!
The famous dragon at the bottom of Parc Güell
Saturday night was spent hanging out like old times, minus the fact that we were in Spain; TOGETHER, sharing study abroad stories, getting educated on good new music from the USA, skyping with Sidney’s mom and doing avocado face masks. Sunday morning rolled around too soon, I didn’t want to leave but duty calls- studying for finals- and I’ll be back with Sidney soon. I’m so happy I got to spend the weekend in this incredible with my best friend, what a lucky kid I am!
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