Barcelona - the trip of my life!

I've been thoroughly pestered for this post for the last two weeks. Here it is folks, the latest and greatest outside-of-Germany-adventure for the books.

This was undoubtedly the best trip of my life. Five whole days of total, complete, utter awesomeness that I won't be forgetting for a very very looooonng time.

I don't even really have anything very interesting to write about... I went to the beach, I saw some crazy Gaudi architecture, partied a lot, took some siestas to make up for the partying a lot, met a ton of super fun cool crazy people.... You get the idea.

I met more cool/crazy/fun people than I knew what to do with. The Kabul hostel was the best.. The atmosphere was like no other place. It had it's own bar with cheap beer served in liter sized plastic cups, free breakfast and dinner... People just chilled and sat at the tables and got to know each other (in some cases even a little too much), played cards and drinking games, usually until the hostel bar closed at 2ish and headed out to a club.

Most clubs don't even open until 1 or 2 in the morning in Spain.

When we arrived we walked down Las Ramblas, the most famous street in Barcelona where there is never a dull moment. There are a ton of cool little shops, street performers everywhere, I saw Michael Jackson (or what he'd look like if he were still black) and watched a crazy man swallow a sword. We stopped at a restaurant and had some tapas, which are basically appetizers, but are really popular there to just sit around and eat. I had squid and something called a bikini and some sangria, which I promptly spilled all over my shirt. Then we walked along the harbour until we found the beach.

There were some super big waves going on, surfers everywhere.

The Mediterranean was COLD. I tried to take one of those pictures standing in the water with the waves washing around my feet. But because it's my life, after a couple of nice gentle waves a big one came out of nowhere and washed right over me, completely taking me by surprise.

Alright so then I had to go in, I was already wet right? The waves totally kicked my ass, twice knocking me on my face and washing me up on the beach. I had to spend some time getting all the sand out of my bikini, that day was just not my day to be graceful and beautiful.

That evening we napped from midnight until one and then got up, got a drink at the pub and headed to a place called catwalk. I've never been a nap person, but I think we did our best to totally immerse ourselves in the Spanish culture for the 5 days we were there. I napped every day and partied until the early hours of the morning every night. By early hours of the morning I'm talking like, 5 or 6 or so.

Catwalk was hip hop upstairs and house downstairs and amazing! Cover was 15 euros but it included a drink. Mixed drinks in Spain are STRONG, they don't mess around. At least half alcohol. This place was a total sausagefest however. I couldn't walk from one side of the bar to the other without somebody taking hold of my hand and trying to dance with me. One guy made me a paper flower out of the napkin. It was fun, but I was well aware that I was only a hot item because the ratio was probably somewhere around 10:1.

We stayed out until 5 that night.

Next day, Saturday. We did some sight-seeing, mostly Gaudi architecture, which is phenomenal. First stop, La Sagrada Familia, or something like that. It's a church they've been building for over a hundred years already, and isn't due for completion until 2026. I climbed 350 stairs resembling the inside of a sectioned seashell to the top for a view of the city.

We also went to the hospital where Gaudi died. He was throwing himself into his work so much that he looked pretty disheveled, so when he got hit by a bus nobody recognized him and he went to the 'poor person's' hospital where he died 3 days later. Another architect designed 8 little buildings here, and they were just too cute. Crazy shapes, beautiful mosaics everywhere.... there's really nothing like the architecture in Spain.

Ate some paellas, which is a popular rice and seafood dish. I even tried some that is mixed with black squid ink. I didn't even know you could eat squid ink.

Tried lobster for my first time ever here.

Saturday night is where my social life really took off. There's a pub crawl that comes through the hostel to pick people up and it was ridiculous. They took us to 4 bars and 1 club out on the docks on the Mediterranean. It was 15 euros which included entrance at all the places, a free drink at each place, and free beer or sangria for the first hour at the first bar we went to. I met so many people that night, and had more fun than I care to elaborate on right now.

Sunday when we made it out of bed we went to Park Guell which was designed by Gaudi. It was pretty gorgeous, and the longest bench in the world is here. How intensely exciting is that? We checked out another one of his crazy casa's where the walls were all wavy and the chimneys on the roof were all crazy twisted statues. We finished the day off with another walk along the harbour and the beach.

Sunday night began with short game of Kings followed by a long, all revealing game of 'Never have I ever...' with a couple of Australians, some Brits, Americans, Canadians, and at least one Polish girl. After the bar closed we moved to a new one and hit up the wicked club on the pier again. Minimal sleeping occurred.

Monday, I woke up late, the Spanish way, and went to the beach with 3 other cool Canadians I just met. FUN. I fell asleep on the beach, got a nice little burn. Happy hour started at 6:30, more Kings with the Canadians, a couple of Croatians, and another Australian. I spilled my chicken swarma all over my sweater, and one of the Canadians pulled out his Tide bleach pen and saved my life. I also won the beer lottery that night. At the hostel you bought a ticket for everything at this machine, then took it to the bar to get your drink or food or whatever. I put in a 20 and got 17 euros in change in DIMES. This crazy machine was spitting out money for 5 minutes straight while everybody cheered. The people at the bar gave me a cup for my winnings.

Apparently Monday is the one night in Spain when the night life is not hopping. We tried to find a bar but they were mostly all closed, and I'm exhausted from my many days of mega partying and minimal sleeping. I chilled with Australia and 2 Brits who looked like Sam and Pippen (hobbits) and a Canadian we just called 'Corn Nuts'.

Tuesday Morning we miss our flight, buy a shiny new expensive one to Cologne, chill there and in Bonn with Michelle, and then took an expensive train home to Stuttgart. We were also lucky enough to fly with a pilot who'd never flown a plane in his life and almost crashed this one. That was fun.

So this post is a little dry, I realize that. But this trip actually felt like a proper vacation. Palm trees, the beach, partying... I can really only try so hard to make that interesting, and I don't think it's going to happen today.

Blogger.com is being dumb and not letting me upload pics, but check them out here, you can see how much fun I had :)