Oh wow. So I totally suck. It's been a month since my last post-yikes! Well, a lot has happened since then. I guess I'll provide some highlights!
Barcelona: Last weekend, Kendra, Natalie, and I spent 3 nights and 2 full days in Barca. It was AWESOME! The first day was spent seeing all (okay not all, that would've taken 3 full days) of Gaudí's works in Barca. Casa Mila, La Sagrada Familia, and Parc Guell. My favorite was the Sagrada Familia. Gaudí was so ahead of his time! One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was our lunch on Friday. We went to this Italian restaurant and had some AMAZING food. The best calzone I've ever eaten, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, and this dish of mushrooms wrapped in bacon. Seriously, it was some of the best food I've ever eaten. We also shared a pitcher of sangria, and it was all we needed to get a little silly :) After lunch we grabbed some gelato-- also mouthwatering!
Once we got back to our hostel room after the long day, we were greeted by two very good looking guys from California. Miles is studying in Italy, Josh outside of Paris, and they were also enjoying a weekend in Barca. They were really fun to talk to, and they definitely helped my first hostel experience become a great one :) That night we met up with Natalie's friend Becca who's studying in Barcelona and went to a bar and drank too much sangria. end of story. ;)
The next day we met up with our friend Angelina from our program, and her friend who lives in Barcelona. We went to Las Ramblas, a main street with a lot going on. My favorite part was definitely the market we visited. It had amaaazing chocolate stands and tons and tons of fresh fruit (I bought mango, strawberries, pineapple, raspberries, and kiwi). Then we went to the beach with our picnic! We lucked our hardcore with the weather, for sure! 70s and sunny the whole weekend! The beach was gorgeous and it was nice to get some sun.
Saturday night was... interesting... to say the least. First we went to 500 Chupitos (500 shots) where they literally have a wall full of 500 intriguing names of shots to choose from. We started off with a Boy Scout: the bartender lights the bar on fire, gives us marshmallows on sticks, we roast the marshmallows by setting fire to them and set out the fire by dunking them in the shot, take the shot, and then eat the marshmallow. Yum. Next was a Finding Nemo: A shot topped with a rather large dollop of whipped cream, in which an m&m is hidden inside somewhere. The goal is to find the m&m in the whipped cream and then take the shot before everyone else. Then there was the Pop Rocks shot: stick a handful of poprocks in your mouth, take a shot, swish around the poprocks, plug your ears and let the madness commence! Then I was the only one interested in the wasabi shot: lick a dollop of wasabi off your hand before taking a shot. I'm not kidding, it was delish. Kendra and I asked the bartender for a recommendation of another shot that involved fire so then came the Duende Verde (Green Goblin): you take the shot of green alcohol with a straw while it's still on fire! And last but most certainly not least came the Harry Potter shot: shotglasses topped with a slice of orange topped with a pile of sugar, all set on fire to make pretty colors, then you take the shot and eat the orange slice. absolutely delicious!
After 500 Chupitos we were going to go to Opium, a disco on the beach, but we heard it wasn't supposed to be "big" that night so we changed our destination to Elephant. mistake. BIG MISTAKE. Elephant turned out to be the Barca-Mom's idea of a crazy saturday night while still keeping it in the suburbs. It was definitely a cool idea for a club--lots of Buddha designs and an outside hookah bar with comfy booths underneath canopies--but the clientele was about 30 years too old. Still, we rocked it.
