View from the Park de Montjuic (Sagrada Família is visible in the background)
Today is my third full day in Barcelona! I arrived on Saturday at 6:30 in the evening and half of my luggage had been lost (it was delivered yesterday and I found out that it hadn't even made it on my first flight from LAX to London!). I was definitely frustrated but knew that there was really nothing I could do – and had to meet up with Miri as soon as possible. She had bought tickets for the FC Barcelona game that night. My cab driver into town was awesome (I always seem to have the best conversations with cab drivers). He told me so much about the city during my 10 minute ride into the city. He pointed out the harbor, statues, and the cemetery along the hillside. He was very, very jealous that I was going to the game. As soon as I got to the hostel and dropped off my bag we were off again, jumping in another cab to get to the stadium. The match we watched was a final game - FCB was playing Sevilla at their home field for a trophy. Sevilla had previously beaten Barcelona 3-1, so Barcelona had to win by at least 2 goals to take the trophy. Everyone was very tense until Barcelona started scoring (the first goal was actual a deflection off of one of Sevilla's defenders!) Barcelona ended up winning 4-0, everyone was cheering and clapping. While at the game I looked around and noticed that people of every single age were at the game, and there were a lot of people- the stadium holds 110,000! Soccer (I should really say fùtbol) is all-important here... after Messi scored his third goal everyone stood up and bowed to him. After the game the spectators took the streets – there wasn’t any room for cars at all. People were shouting “BARCA! BARCA!” It was quite an experience…I’ve never been to any sporting event that could compare.
Barcelona is spectacular. The architecture is beautiful, little tiny details that barely catch your eye are everywhere. Miri and I walked around yesterday for a couple hours (I didn’t wake up til 3pm major jet-lag) and saw beautiful churches, lampposts…everything has so much detail and craftsmanship. Below is a photo of mosaic work outside of the Museo de la Música.
We are staying at a youth hostel and there are people here from all over the world. There is a large common area where we have breakfast and dinner. We’ve had quite a few power outages but they only last about 15 minutes.
Days are really stretched out here – dinner is commonly around 10 or 11 at night. This is something that I’m not really used to. Here in Barcelona it’s perfectly normal to see an older couple walking their dog at midnight. I suppose the heat might have something to do with that though…
The weather has been insanely hot (when I flew in at 6pm it was 30 degrees/90 degrees) – after spending a very cool summer in Santa Barbara I am really not used to this. I’m hoping that traveling north into France we have cooler weather. But I’m really not complaining.
Today Miri and I did some more tourist-y things like visit Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. It was so spectacular, breathtaking really. Construction has been going on for 120 years and they are still working on it today. It was taller than I expected, I had to strain my neck back to be able to see all of it. The architecture is very earthy, the front of the building almost looks like a drip-castle that I made at the beach as a kid. The huge winding towers are decorated with colorful fruits.
Tomorrow we are off to Aix-en-Provence!!
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