Spring Break: BARCELONA

Thursday was departure day, layed around Ryan's apartment for a majority of the day, packing and getting ready for a busy weekend in Barcelona! We to Porta Nova, Verona's main train station, and from there took a train to Bergamo and a bus to the airport in Milan. The kids studying in Verona have to go through so much effort just to get to the airport, makes me appreciate living in a large city like Dublin, where I can just jump on a bus that goes straight to the airport every half hour. We had some mishaps along the way, there was an accident on the train tracks ahead of our train, so we had to get off at a random station and Trenitalia had coach buses there to take us to yet another train station. While they were very organized, it was pretty confusing for us, since we dont speak a word of Italian.

We landed in Barcelona around 11pm and made our way to our hostel, just in time to head out for the night. We went to a bar in the city that was known for allowing its customers to pour their own drinks. It was a great time at first, celebrating a girl we were traveling with's 21st birthday. However, we began to realize that we could make our drinks very very strong, and our night took a turn towards interesting, as we made our way to a club that was outerspace themed and may or may not have been a gay bar. Oh well.

The next morning, Friday, we woke up pretty early and spent the morning travelling to our new hostel and meeting up with more people from U of I. A handful of girls had come over from Champaign for their spring break, but there were also people from Paris, Verona, and Rome. Our hostel had the best location ever, literally on the beach along Port Vell, filled with restaurants and the marina.

We headed over to La Rambla, which is a huge pedestrian street in the heart of the city, and made our way to this amazing market, St. Josep Boqueria. This place was HUGE and put any other market I had been to to shame. Filled with chocolates, fruits, fish, candy, this place had it all. We all got freshly squeezed juice.

After the market and come more casual sightseeing, we all headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap and shower, to get ready for a night out at Chupitos. The bar only serves shots and they are all 2€. But these are not ordinary shots. There is a lot of fire, even more creativity. They have a big board of 200 different shots and they don’t tell you what is in any of them so there is a big sense of mystery in each one that you get. It was a lot of fun. Most shots came on fire, one of which involved inhaling the gas of a shot after it was lit. All interesting stuff in Barcelona, definitely was not in Guinness territory anymore!

My Favorites:

Finding Nemo: a blue shot with an orange m&m in the bottom, topped off with whipped cream

Willy Wonka: chocolate shot with sprinkles, m&m's and whipped cream on top

The Torch: a vodka shot in a shot glass, with an orange resting on top filled with a tequila shot. The bartender then proceeds to cover the entire bar in alcohol and lights it all on fire :) She then gave us straws to take the tequila shot, and instructed us to squeeze the orange into the vodka shot and take it.

The next day, Ryan and I decided to go off on our own and explore some sights. First we started off with La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi’s insane cathedral is still being built even though work started before 1900. It is not expected to be completed for another 20-30 years. Imagine the level of detail for a modern construction project taking that long.

After that, we headed over to Parc Guell. Parc Guell is an extremely cool park located on a hill overlooking the city of Barcelona. It is another work of Antoni Gaudi and is full of random sculptures, buildings, and other various structures. The views were great and the setting was awesome, a must see if you come to Barca.

After a LOT of walking, we decided to just jump on the Metro to our hostel, and take yet another much needed nap. We met up with everyone else, and decided to get Bo de B again for dinner lol That night we decided to meet up with a guy from Ryan's fraternity that graduated a couple of years ago and now lives in Barcelona. 

He took us out to a small absinthe bar where Ernest Hemingway himself would frequent. The place looks like it was picked up in those days and simply placed into the 21st century. The ceiling was peeling from smoke, and bottles sitting on shelves covered in dust and cobwebs, not having been moved since before the Civil War. 

Absinthe was definitely a once in a lifetime experience for me. I hate black licorice, but still tried it. Preparing your drink takes about as long as actually drinking it. When you order, the bartender hands you a tray with a glass of alcohol, a small fork, a sugar cube, and a bottle of water. We had to rest our forks on the rims of our glasses, place the sugar cube on the fork, and squeeze water onto the sugar until it melted into the drink.

Due to my 7am flight, I had to catch a 4:30am bus to the airport, so I bid everyone goodbye as they left to go to a club that night. Getting to the airport that early in the morning was definitely a struggle having had no sleep and quite a bit of absinthe, definitely something that Ive only done here in Europe. Somehow, everything went smoothly, and I came home to Ireland in one piece with a very warm welcome.