Saturday:
As I said in the last post, I slept for 12 hours the night before, so I woke up feeling awesome. I watched a Spanish tourism documentary while getting ready, which mostly focused on Mallorca. It was a really cool video. It showed before the boom and after the boom and also tons of drunk 20 something year olds on the beaches in Mallorca yelling about how much they love Mallorca. This made me a little homesick for Palma. We decided to go to a monastery/small town on a mountaintop about an hour outside of Barcelona, called Montserrat. It ended up taking about 2 hours to get there, so we were ready to explore by the time we got there. We had to take a funicular train (which means a train that can go up a steep slope) up the mountain, which was pretty awesome. It was quite exciting seeing a rock wall super close on one side, and on the other side, looking straight down a cliff. We went in the basilica there and took some photos (which I later found out was prohibited even though everyone was taking photos). We went to a really nice restaurant inside the one hotel there for lunch. I had cannelloni, olive bread, and champagne. It was amazing!! The bread literally had black olives cooked into it.. I think it might be my favorite bread ever. After our delicious meal, we walked around the little are a a bit more and took tons more pictures. We headed back to Barcelona pretty soon, though, to prepare for our grand football (soccer) adventure.
We made our way to Camp Nou, the legendary football stadium in Barcelona. There were thousands of people all over the streets waiting for the players to drive in to the stadium. Hannah and I purchased FC Barcelona scarves to wear at the game. Out of pure luck, our seats were inside the first gate we came across, which was soooo nice. We literally didn't have to search for our gate at all, because we just walked straight up to it. We were definitely two of the first 50 people let in, which was amazing. When we reached our seats in the uppermost section, the entire stadium was empty, except for about 10 other people. We got some great pictures of the stadium, including the yellow lettering ("Mes que un club" and "Barcelona") that was soon covered up by spectators. We had seats in the front row of our section, which was amazing! We got some food before it started (I got a hot dog, and it was incredible!! I was expecting it to be horrible, but it was on delicious bread and also about a foot long for only 4 euros) and settled in to our seats. The commentator only spoke in Catalan, which was fun to try to translate what he was saying. The game was quite unexciting, as I am not a huge soccer fan (as in, that was the first full soccer game I have ever watched, and I know none of the rules). Barcelona scored one goal and basically had possession the whole game. It was fun just being there in the crowd. They played some good dance songs and also some Native American sounding songs, which was interesting. The people are very well-mannered; it is very different than American football. When they get mad at the calls, they remain seated and shake their fists. We literally saw a sea of fists moving at the same time when they didn't like the call. They don't stand up during the game unless they score. It was a very polite game. I was expecting drunk people standing, dancing, fighting, screaming, and throwing things like American football, but it was quite the opposite. After the game, we searched for the train station to go back to Las Ramblas to check out the Carnaval festivities. [Yes, it was Carnaval that weekend, and we didn't even know it until we were there.] After a tricky maneuver on the train which involved taking the elevator to skip the line to go the opposite way on the train for one stop then switching trains to go the correct way in order to get seats and get ahead of the endlessly long line at the nearest train station, we headed back to the main part of town. A lady dressed like a tree yelled something in Catalan at me on the train... I must have had the most confused look on my face, because I was. She finally realized that I don't speak Catalan and asked me in Castellano who won the football game. (This was really funny, because literally everywhere we went, everyone spoke English to me. It was really frustrating, and at one point, when someone told me "2 minutes until the train leaves" I said, "Hablo español, señor!!" So it was funny that a lady thought that I would know Catalan when no one in Barcelona thought I could even understand Castellano.)We arrived at Las Ramblas, looked around at all the people, refused buying a beer from a guy with a 6-pack, and got back on the train to go home. We were soooo exhausted.
Sunday:
It was quite an uneventful day. We headed to the airport pretty early (even earlier for me since my flight was 2 hours later than Hannah's), dealing with yet another stupid Barcelona transportation fail. We had to pay 5 euros and 5 cents for a 20 minute bus ride to the airport, and they wouldn't let us use our bus cards. What a ripoff. I really don't think I will ever go back to Barcelona. It was fun to see the sites, but there's nothing else I want to do there. Everything is so expensive just to ripoff tourists, and it feels a lot less Spanish than Palma. By Saturday afternoon, I was already missing Palma. I had a lot of time to kill at the Barcelona airport, but lucky for me, the airport is amazing. It has a mall and tons of restaurants in it. I had some tapas and wine at a little tapas bar and spent a lot of time browsing the shops. The only thing I bought was a giant plastic Kinder egg man holding a banner that says "I heart Barcelona!" which also has 7 Kinder eggs inside. Pretty awesome souvenir, right? I headed back to my beloved Palma and couldn't be any happier to return there. I rode the bus back to my street and was really just so happy to be back. I missed it and wasn't a huge fan of Barcelona. As soon as I got home, my host madre made me a huge meal, which I ate all of. I am forever appreciative of having warm meals when I come home. I did some homework and slept.. a lot.
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