July 27, 2019 - July 30, 2019
Sup guysss. It's been a minute. After my first program ended, there was a 10 day break before my new program started. I decided to go to Barcelona for the first half of the break and Paris the second half! I didn't bring my laptop when I left Oviedo, so I couldn't really post anything!
I left Oviedo for Barcelona on the 27th of July. I traveled with Maddie, a friend I met on the program, and we stayed in an airbnb! The flight from Oviedo to Barcelona was only about 2 hours, it was not bad at all; the flight was also really affordable. I had forgotten my noise-cancelling headphones in Oviedo, so of course I was seated next to a mom and her baby who was crying the entire flight lol. He was super cute though at least, so I didn't mind. Our flight was pretty early in the morning, so we had about 3 full days in Barcelona!
Our airbnb was really cute and in a great location. We were only about a 5 minute walk away from a metro station where we could basically go anywhere around town. We had a free tour of the gothic quarter set up for our first day at 4pm, but we were late and missed it. The meeting point was on Las Ramblas, which is the street with the famous market: La Boquería. We ended up just walking around, and very quickly found the two places we spent most of our time in: Nike and the NBA Cafe. I didn't even know the NBA cafe was a thing. We spent so long in there because we thought it was the coolest place. We were fan-girling for about an hour. It's apparently the only NBA cafe in all of Europe, so of course we had to get some merch. We ended up spending like an hour in the cafe, but it was honestly a little bit too long because we started noticing everything they did wrong with the place. Moral of the story is, they need my help to make the place look way cooler.
After spending some time walking around the Las Ramblas area and La Boquería market, we met up with Maddie's sister Dom because she was in Barcelona too for the weekend with her school program! We went on a hunt to find boba because Maddie and I had been deprived of it for about a month because they don't know what Asian food really is here; especially in the North of Spain where we had been for the past month. We then went to sushi afterwards, which was 100x better than the sushi Maddie and I had tried in Oviedo. Once we had finished dinner, Maddie and I decided to head back to our airbnb because we were exhausted.
The next day, we met up with Dom in the morning to get breakfast/brunch at Brunch and Cake. It was a really cute restaurant and catered to every dietary need you could think of. The presentation of the food was also super aesthetic. Maddie and I had bought tickets to Park Güell and La Sagrada Familia in advance for that day so we headed to Park Güell after breakfast. I don't wanna disappoint anyone, but we were so underwhelmed with the park lol. A lot of it was under construction and it was super crowded. We also felt like we had seen so many pictures and videos of it that made it look really amazing, so our expectations were really high. The architecture was really cool and the story of Gaudí and his work in Catalonia is really interesting, but the park was just not what I thought it would be haha.
After Park Güell, we decided to go a rooftop bar on top of a hotel that had a view of La Sagrada Familia, before going to tour it.
La Sagrada Familia was amazing inside and outside. It isn't supposed to be fully complete until 2026, but still incredible. We got an audio guide tour, which definitely helps you appreciate the church in its entirety, and the history that comes with it. Our ticket also got us access to the Nativity tower. You pick which tower you want to visit when you purchase your ticket. We got taken up to the top of the tower in an elevator. While we were in the elevator, the lady that was working the elevator decided to tell us that we had 400 steps to climb down, and we couldn't take the elevator once we were done looking which we didn't know lmao. It was so funny. She was like "also anyone who is scared of heights or claustrophobic tell me now," as we were at the top, and then she just left us there. So yea once we were done looking at the views from the Nativity tower, we made the trek all the way down to the bottom. What the lady failed to tell us all was that the staircase was a constant spiral and it was dark af in the tower. By the time we were at the bottom we were both hella dizzy and our legs were legit shaking 😂
On Monday, the 29th, I started my day by going to Nike to pick up a few items I had seen the first day we were in Barcelona that I HAD to get. It was my last full day, before my 7am flight the next morning. After Nike on Las Ramblas, I took the metro to Hammock Juice Station. It was a really cute smoothie, breakfast type place. They have hammocks to sit in, hence why it's called hammock juice station.
After spending some solid time there I decided to head back to the airbnb. I figured out the metro system and used it the whole day, it was really convenient.
Once I got home, I had a few hours to relax before my Camp Nou tour at 5pm. Maddie and her brother met me at Camp Nou and we did the tour together. The stadium is the largest stadium in Europe and it was pretty incredible. Seeing the stadium empty was really cool, and now I wanna go back to watch an actual game! It was built a really long time ago, so it was so old in comparison to the stadiums we are used to. We almost couldn't believe that such a well-known team plays in that stadium. I feel like people would be shocked to tour Autzen Stadium, or just other college stadiums we have around the U.S. once they've gone to Camp Nou because Autzen and other college stadiums are just so much nicer and obviously newer, but I was surprised they didn't really update their facilities. The VIP section barely looked like VIP, it was so interesting. The history of the team and all the trophies and memorabilia were super cool to see though. The official FC Barcelona store they had on-site was also insane. It was basically a 3 level Nike store with only FC Barca gear. Once we finished at Camp Nou, we decided to head back to the area around La Sagrada Familia where we just hung out and walked around before I decided to head back since I had to leave at 5 in the morning the next day to catch my flight! I hope to visit Barcelona again soon because there are still things I want to do that I just didn't have time for! Everyone needs to gooooo.
Picture Details:
1. A view of Barcelona from the Nativity tower at La Sagrada Familia
2. The interior of La Sagrada Familia. Gaudí focused on la naturaleza (nature) and wanted the church to feel like you were walking through a forest.
3. Our meals at Brunch n Cake! I got French toast :)
4. Jersey wall at the NBA Cafe!
5. Camp Nou
6. Rooftop bar
7. Hammock Juice Station!
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