adios barcelona!

I think Barcelona is trying to tell us something.

It rained last night for the first time since we´ve been here.

And today, our plan was to go to the beach but the clouds in the sky seem to have other plans.

I think Barcelona might be kicking us out!

Regardless of what Barcelona has in mind for us, a taxi will be waiting for us outside of Rafaela´s house at 9am tomorrow morning. From there we take a train to Alicante, where Reghan has been studying for the past 4 weeks and where we´ll spend 10 days with her, my mom´s cousin Marie, and our family friend Carmen. Hopefully we´ll get to see Valencia or some other Spanish towns while we´re there too! It´s bittersweet, because I´m sad to let this time in Barcelona end, but I´m also looking forward to relaxing days on the beach and time spent with family in Alicante.

Tonight is our last dinner with Rafaela - I wonder what she´ll make us for our final feast. Last night I asked her if we could take a picture with her, but she told me we´d have to wait for tonight when she looked better. Can´t wait to show you all the picture! I´m going to miss her and our dinner conversations so much...I wonder if I can try to record tonight´s. We´ll see!

So, this is my last blog post from Barca! It´s been an amazing, unforgettable 5 weeks.

¡Adios Barcelona! ¡Hasta pronto!

xoxo
lorena

roma spelled backwards: amor

Coincidence? I think not!

Another weekend in another city has left me speechless. Rome lived up to and exceeded every expectation I had of it - everything everyone says about it is true.

Barcelona is great; it has its amazing architecture, beautiful beaches, and is a vibrant bustling city with lots to see and do.

But Rome is different.

Rome is an experience.

The entire city is like a huge history museum. The statues, the buildings, the roads - everything still looks the way I imagine it did hundreds and hundreds of years ago in ancient Rome. To walk out of a metro station and be face-to-face with the Coliseum, an icon I'd only ever seen in pictures, was unreal. I could go on and on and on, but simply put, the entire weekend was a surreal experience, and 3 days was not nearly enough time to soak up the city.

That being said, I'm pretty proud of us for fitting in as much as we did. We flew in late Friday and flew back to Barcelona at 8pm Monday, and between those two times we managed to:

- go to the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum
- climb the Spanish Steps
- toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain
- visit the Pantheon
- shop!
- go to Mass at San Clemente Basilica
- explore the amazing underground excavations at San Clemente
- go to Museo Baracco
- visit Piazza Navona, Campo de Fiore, and Trastevere
- tour the Vatican (the museums, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica)
- eat 3 delicious pizza lunches, 2 amazing pasta dinners, and take somewhere between 3 and 5 gelato breaks :)

I love that we got to see another country besides Spain (although I was a little bummed that they didn't stamp my passport!), and that I got to try my hand at speaking some Italian. I don't think I realized how much Spanish I knew until I realized how little Italian I knew!

My favorite part of the whole weekend? While I loved just about everything, the winner is a toss up between eating the best (I'm not exaggerating) gelato in Rome on Sunday afternoon and exploring Saint Peter's Basilica, the biggest church in the world, on Monday.

My least favorite part? The sore feet that resulted from LONG days on cobblestone streets with inadequate shoes! (But I'd put up with that again if it meant I got to go back!)

So while I'm thankful that I chose Barcelona as my study abroad locale for the summer (I think a month in Rome would have made me gain 15 pounds!), I wish we could have spent more time in the beautiful city. I guess that means I'll just have to go back! :)

Ciao!

Here are some pictures =]

Sightseeing - Part 1

Here’s a little description and some pictures of 3 of the Barcelona sites I’ve been to in the last week or two! I’ll post about more of them later =]

The Zoo

I was a little bit bummed that it cost 16 euro to get in, but I love animals and I love zoos, so I figured it would be worth it! For a relatively small zoo, there were a TON of exhibits and animals. On the downside, though, all of the animals were kept in really small cages or habitats. There didn’t seem to be nearly enough room for them to roam around, nor did their homes seem to be clean. That was a little bit disappointing, but it was still a good time and I’m glad I went. I liked that at every exhibit they listed the name of the animal in Catalan, Spanish, and English, and had a description of the animal in each language too.

There were even a few animals I’d never heard of or seen before, like the Capybara, the world’s largest rodent. (Interesting, right?!)

We got to go to a dolphin show at the zoo too, and while it was nothing compared to the shows I’ve seen at Hershey or Sea World, dolphin shows are always fun, and it was a new experience to try and understand what they were saying in Spanish.

After the zoo I came home and had dinner with Maggie (who opted to skip the zoo, which was probably a good choice considering the endless amounts of birds flying around there).

La Sagrada Familia

We finally made it to Barcelona’s most famous attraction – La Sagrada Familia. (translated to “The Holy Family” in English) It’s claim to fame is that it was designed by Gaudi, Barcelona’s most famous artist. It was begun sometime in 1882 and is STILL being built today! Crazy, right? The construction is done by private companies and is all funded through donations and entry fees to the church. It isn’t projected to be finished until at least 2026! I hope I can make it back here to see it when it’s finished!

We opted not to pay the 14 euro to go in because we’d heard that it wasn’t really worth it and that the outside was the part to see. (And when we got there and saw the enormous line of tourists standing in the sun waiting to go in, we were even surer of our decision!)

The church has 18 spires, each one representing one of the 12 apostles, the 4 evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ. There are 3 different sides, though 1 was under construction and hard to see. The original, famous side, which was completed while Gaudi was still alive, looks kind of like one of those drippy castles you make at the beach with wet sand. (Did I just compare Gaudi’s most prestigious work of art to a pile of wet sand? Oops. Sorry Gaudi!) However, once you see it close up, the detail and artistry of every single inch of the building is absolutely amazing. You realize why it’s taken so long when you see all of the intricate details in the cement. (Not to mention, the thing is HUGE!) This side was meant to represent the Nativity, or Christ’s birth.

The other main side is meant to represent the Passion, or Christ’s death and Resurrection. This side was built after Gaudi died, and although his designs were used in creating it, it looks MUCH different from the first side. It’s much more modern and severe, and doesn’t look like anything else I’ve seen of Gaudi.

He’s probably rolling over in his grave over it right now.

La Catedral

We ventured into Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter (Barri Gotic) to see La Catedral, a beautiful Catalan church built in the 1300’s. We tried to go a few days earlier but learned that you need to have your shoulders and knees covered, so we returned a few days later with the right clothing. The entire inside is edged with little chapels devoted to particular saints or events. There was a baptismal font, a confessional, and a huge choir loft. It kind of felt like a tourist trap though – you could pay to have your confession heard, every chapel had a donation box asking you to donate money, and then there was the gift shop (obviously).

It was still really beautiful, though, and I was glad we went to see it.

barcelovin'

hola!

it's been a while since I've blogged about just being in Barcelona, and while I have a blog entry all typed up about all of the famous sites we've seen, I think I'll save it for another day and just talk about some of the fun things I've been doing this week!

On Monday morning Maggie and I finally got the famous Spanish breakfast Churros con Chocolate. It felt kind of like eating dessert for breakfast, and while I had a stomach ache for a good part of the day, it was delicious and totally worth it! It's essentially just a coffee mug filled with hot, melted chocolate, and a plate of freshly cooked churros to dip into it. yummm!

I went into the Sephora here a few days ago to buy some new mascara, and I'm SO glad I did. They should put this store in all of the tourist books as one of Barcelona's top attractions! (That might be an exaggeration, but it was pretty cool!) You walk in on street level to what looks like a normal Sephora, but then when you go down the escalator, all of a sudden you're dropped onto a huge red carpet and into the biggest, most amazing Sephora I've ever seen!

I've purposefully tried to leave out what I've been doing at night here so that I don't worry any parents who may be reading this (you're welcome!). But the other night, we realized that there are some really cool bars in Barcelona that we hadn't seen yet, so a few friends and I set out to check them out. This one was called 4 Gats (like cuatro gatos, or 4 cats) and was the bar where Picasso was discovered! Apparently he and his friends used to hang here when they were 16 or so, and Picasso was asked to design the menu. It's a bar and a restaurant, but we didn't venture back to the restaurant. It was sooo cute and quaint and all of the waiters were wearing suits! It was a nice change of pace from the usual Barcelona nightlife.

Other than these things we've just been exploring and loving Barcelona. Life with Rafaela has been great as well. We finally started gossiping with her tonight - she wanted the scoop on everyone else's homestay's. I love a good gossip sesh...ISA must have known that when they paired me up with Rafaela! She pulled out the list of everyone in the program and where they lived and proceeded to give us commentary on all of their neighborhoods, and loving every second of some of the horror stories we told her about our friend's senoras. We told her we were lucky to have been paired with her, and she replied by telling me I should tell ISA how much I love her house. She asked me to tell them every 2 minutes for the rest of dinner. Oh, Rafaela!

Tomorrow (Friday) we leave for Rome for the weekend! I'm going with Maggie, and our friends Morgan and Mallory, two sisters from Texas. AND, even more exciting than that, Reghan is meeting us in Rome! I can't wait to see her, can't wait to eat pizza and pasta and gelato, and to experience "the eternal city!"

weekend in Costa Brava

For the first time since I’ve started this blog, I’m having a serious case of writer’s block. (Is that what you call it when you’re blogging? Typer’s block? Blogger’s block?) Anyways, I think the reason why I’m at a loss for words is because I just got back from the most beautiful, relaxing, amazing weekend, and I’m worried that there are no words to do it justice. I’m hoping that I can illustrate it well enough with my words and some pictures, but Costa Brava might just be one of those places you have to see for yourself to really understand what I’m talking about.

The weekend sort of reminds me of one of those plot lines that they teach you to make in second grade (sorry, the elementary ed major in me is coming out). You know, a beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion. It just kept getting better until finally we had to get on the bus to come back to Barcelona.

We left Barcelona by bus at 8am on Saturday, and arrived at Empuries, an archeological site with ancient Greek and Roman ruins from 600 BC. I can appreciate how amazing it is that something that old still exists and that I get to see it, but they were less-than-breathtaking (to put it nicely), as the ruins were, well, ruined.

You couldn’t really tell what anything was, so it was up to our tour guide (a woman dressed as an ancient Roman who thought she was much funnier than she actually was) to create the scene in our minds. She didn’t do a very good job, and it was SO hot, so we all kind of wanted to get out of there and get to a beach. Thankfully the tour only lasted an hour, and then we had 4 beautiful hours to relax on the beach. For the last hour we rented this paddleboat shaped like a car that had a slide on top of it, and had a great time in the water.

From there we went to our hotel in the cutest little town called Roses. All of the houses were built into the mountains, and reminded me a lot of what the scenery looks like in Greece (not that I’ve ever been to Greece – I just know what the scenery looked like in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so I’m going with that picture in my head). Our hotel was up on a hill and had the most breathtaking views of the Mediterranean and of the town below. The actual hotel was a little bit underwhelming – they must have thought that with such great views from the balcony of every room, there was no need for things like air conditioning, comfortable beds, travel size toiletries in the bathroom, or more than one key per room. But in the grand scheme of things, none of that mattered because I got to wake up to this in the morning:

We had a great dinner in Roses and got to walk around the town for a little while. My favorite moment might have been earlier than that though, after my shower –clean and wrapped in a towel, sitting on our little balcony and reading my book. There was a nice breeze, the view was amazing, and I think it was the most relaxed I’ve been since I’ve been in Spain; maybe even the most relaxed I’ve been all year.

Sunday morning after we had breakfast and checked out, we drove down to the port and boarded a double-decker boat to take a trip to a town called Cadaques, most famous for being home to Salvador Dali for many years. The boat ride was absolutely amazing. The water was clear, the cliffs were surrounding us – it was breathtaking. At one point the boat stopped and they let everyone slide down the back and swim in the sea. I opted to hang on the top of the boat, soak up some sun and take pictures of the swimmers. It was so much fun to be on the top of the boat with all of my friends here, listening to music, taking pictures, and having a good time.

I thought Roses was the cutest town I’d ever seen until the boat docked in Cadaques. This town looked even more Greek, with the white houses built on the windy roads up endless hills. We walked along the road on the coast and shopped a little before stopping to eat lunch at a cute little outdoor restaurant. I had my first seafood of the trip – spaghetti with clams! It was delish. After lunch and a little more exploring, Maggie, Morgan, Mallory (do all my friend’s names begin with m?) and I found a little bit of shade on the edge of a cliff and sat there for an hour or so just talking and taking in the amazing views. After a stop for gelato (obviously) we boarded the boat again. I put my towel down on the top of the boat and took the best ½ hour nap in the sun while the boat took us back to the port, where our bus was waiting to take us back to Barcelona. The perfect ending to the perfect weekend.

I hope you get the idea of how amazing this place was. But the good news is, if you don’t, I’m pretty sure my wedding will be in Cadaques, and you’re all invited!

Bucket List

On our first night in Barcelona, Maggie and I made a “Spain Bucket List” of things that we knew we had to do while we were here. We pooled all of the info we’d gotten from friends who had been here before, literature from ISA, word of mouth, and guide books to compile the list. Most of the things are Barcelona-specific, but some are just in reference to our entire trip. I thought I’d share it with you and show you what good progress we’re making!

SPAIN BUCKET LIST

Visit La Sagrada Familia

Go to the beach twice a week ü

Visit Las Ramblas ü

Master the metro ü

Go to a bullfight

Visit another country

Hike Montserrat ü

Go to the Magic Fountain ü

Walk down Passeig de Gracia ü

Go to Parc Guell ü

Go to Parc Ciutadella

Get a fruit smoothie at La Boqueria ü

Visit each neighborhood of Barcelona at least once

With a little more than two weeks left in Barcelona, and 4 weeks left in Spain, I’d say we’re doing a pretty good job of getting done all of the “must-do’s"!!

Hiking Montserrat

On Tuesday, we took an hour-long train ride to Montserrat, a beautiful old monastery set atop a beautiful mountain just outside of Barcelona. We heard it was a “must-see” while we were here, and that it was a full day trip, so we decided to take a day off class to go visit. In addition to the monastery, there’s a hiking trail that you can take to go all the way to the top of the mountain. So, we put on our sneakers and gym shorts and ventured up Montserrat. From the train station, we took a cable car up to the monastery. From there, it was a 2-hour hike to the very top of the mountain [we opted out of taking a train half way up to make it only a one hour hike, and it hindsight that was probably a bad idea!]

Before I go on, let’s just acknowledge the fact that I’m not exactly athletic, and hiking isn’t something I would normally choose to do. But, I figured it was a tourist thing, and that it would be a nice 2 hour walk up some windy, paved walkways with beautiful scenery, benches to rest on, and water fountains, and that a little exercise wouldn’t kill me.

As it turns out, it was the opposite. A “little exercise” was actually a 2-hour HIKE up steep (I’m not kidding….like really steep) hills, on rocky paths, in the 80-something degree heat with no water in sight. There were multiple times where I seriously contemplated turning around and going back. Thank goodness for the beautiful scenery and the good friends who slowed down the pace for their out-of-shape companion =].

Now that I’ve caught my breath, taken a shower, and chugged some water, I realize I’m being a little bit dramatic. Except for a scary couple of minutes where I actually thought I couldn’t breathe anymore, it turned out to be a great experience and I’m proud of myself for doing as much as I did. It was a really nice break from all of the noise and craziness of the city. At one point, it was just the three of us standing on the edge of this mountain without a single other person or sign of civilization around – no noise, no nothing, just mountains all around us and a view that went on forever. It was really beautiful. Check out these pictures!

Oh, and P.S….for a more upbeat, athletic, and enjoyable perspective of our trip to Montserrat, check out Maggie’s blog! (www.mkyelencsics.blogspot.com)

Girona and Figueres

On Saturday I went on one of the ISA day trips to Girona, a town about an hour 1/2 north west of Barcelona. The city was built by the Romans in 100 BC (aka a REALLY long time ago) and was built with walls surrounding the town. It's the first main city that nomads would travel through coming from the north, so as time went on the city started spilling over the original walls, and in 1500, new walls were built around the city which still stand today. It was such a beautiful little city - it was pretty cool to see physical walls define city lines - I'd never seen anything like that. You cross one of 6 or 7 bridges across the river that surrounds the city, and then pass through the gate into the center.

This statue sits at the main entrance to Girona. The legend was that if you tried to get into the city at night after the gates had been locked, you could kiss the lionness and she would know whether or not you belonged there, and if you were truly from Girona, she would unlock the gate and let you in. The legend continued that if you were new to the city, you had to be "baptized" by kissing the lion, and also if you were a visitor but wanted to return to Girona, you had to kiss the lion. (Our tour guide told us that last year during the swine flu scare, they took away the stairs to reach the lion statue so no one could kiss it and spread germs!)

Everywhere in the city were these beautifully colored houses. We learned that when the city was remodeled after some war, they had to rebuild the houses with an ugly type of rock, so the builders were given a choice of 6 or 7 paint colors to choose from. No two houses on a block could be painted the same color, and that was how you told people where you lived (I live in the orange house between this and that street!)

Girona also had a large Jewish community at one point and we walked through that section of town. When the Jews did live there, they were highly valued because they spoke Arabic, and since the Muslims played a huge part in building much of the city, they were used at translators. Our tour guide noted that there are no remarkable buildings or distinctions that separate the Jewish quarters from the rest of the city, except for these markings on the doorways where the mezuzah was once placed.

After we walked around and saw the city, we stopped for lunch and some shopping, and then we headed to Figueres, the town where Salvador Dali was born, and where his museum, Teatro Museu Dali, is located.

I don't know how to describe the museum other than wonderfully strange. If you've never seen Dali's art, you really should - it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. Every single thing in the museum was weird and strange and beautiful all at the same time. You could stare at a single piece of his art for an hour and still find something new about it. Here's a little taste, but the rest of my pictures from the museum are on facebook!

(This piece of art takes up an entire room. The "eyes" are two pictures hanging on the wall, the "nose" is a fire place, and the "lips" are a sofa. You have to climb a flight of stares and stare through a special glass to get this view of the entire face.)

This was the second of 3 ISA sponsored trips. Next weekend we go to Costa Brava for an overnight. It's supposed to be beautiful!

This week Maggie and I have a little itinerary planned out, because we began to realize that we're running out of time in this beautiful city and we need to make sure we see everything!

Here's the plan for the rest of the week:

Tuesday (tomorrow) : Montserrat

Wednesday: beach day

Thursday: La Sagrada Familia and the Gothic quarter

Friday: Montbau (a farther, less tourist-y, more beautiful beach)

Saturday-Sunday: Costa Brava

What a week! Can't wait =]

xoxo

Lauren

campeones del mundo!

How lucky am I to have been in Spain on the night they won the World Cup for the first time in history?! What a crazy night!

It was a looong 117 minutes with no score, squished in between tens of thousands of people in Plaza Espanya, where the city had set up huge screens for us to watch the game on. But it was allll worth it when that goal was scored! The crowd went crazy - I've never seen anything like it.And then, when it was clear that we won, the craziness continued-screaming, dancing, crying, fireworks,horns blowing...it was insane. People were climbing the statues, scaling walls, standing on the roofs of bus and metro stops. I'll never be able to do it justice with words, and I'm writing this post from my phone, so pictures will have to come later! (For a frame of reference though, think of Philly after the world series win times 4, or Maryland after the Duke game times 15!!)

I called Reghan in Alicante while we were celebrating to see what she was doing to celebrate, and it sounded like she was having an equally amazing time.It was then that it occurred to me how cool the world cup really is. The fact that the ENTIRE country of Spain was celebrating the win, that everyone is so passionate about futbol and was able to see their team win the cup - when else does that ever happen? The only other world wide competition I can think of are the Olympics. I mean the olympics are cool and all, but there aren't exactly riots in the streets of an entire country when their basketball team wins the gold.

Basically I guess what I'm trying to say is that this was truly a once in a lifetime experience. I'm so happy I was a part of it. I feel like it's really connected me to Barcelona and to Spain...for at least one night I didn't feel like a COMPLETE tourist. :)

That's all for now - blogging via phone isn't the easiest thing in the world. Hopefully I'll get to an internet cafe later today to post pictures from last night, and also to tell you about my day trip to Girona and the Salvador Dali museum on Saturday!

What a weekend!
Adios for now!
Xoxo
Lorena

Day to Day

In all of this blogging about the trips and things I've been up to in Barcelona, I realized that I left out the details of all the things that I do everyday! So, here's a little run down of a typical day in Barcelona...

La Casa de Rafaela

Rafaela, our host mom, is really great. I think she's really starting to open up, and she treats us more like her family and less like strangers in her house. She loves to see the clothes that we buy when we shop and to see what we're wearing before we go out at night. She's started to correct our Spanish and won't let us go on until we've said it again the right way. She jokes and pokes fun at us - although, since I only catch every third word, I can only tell if she's joking when she winks at me.

Every morning Maggie and I have breakfast waiting for us on a little table in her kitchen. It's usually cornflakes, milk, orange juice, toast and jam.

When we come home for dinner, the three of us eat together in her dining room. She guilt trips us into eating everything she's made, and when we don't eat the whole thing she goes "what?! you don't like it!?" Thankfully her food has been delicious thus far. We've had some typical Spanish food (like spanish tortilla), a night of Mexican fajitas, and a night where she made pizza (after Maggie made it really clear on the first night that she REALLY likes pizza. Rafaela got a kick out of that!)

We share a little room with twin beds, and have our own bathroom. Here are some pictures :)

It's not glamorous, but it works! (For the most part... I can't wait to shower without having to turn the water off in between shampooing and rinsing my hair). Those signs next to the toilet are reminding us to turn off the lights and not use too much water.

La Escuela

Every day Maggie and I take a bus to our class, which starts at 10 am. It's a Spanish Language and Culture class. We spend the morning doing Spanish language work, have a break for lunch, and then spend the afternoon going over different cultural aspects of Spanish life. Our teacher is great. She has a great sense of humor and loves to hear about our lives in the United States. Even though I'd rather not be in a classroom for 5 hours of my day while I'm here, I really do like the class and the people in it (and it is nice to be in air conditioning for 5 hours a day as well!) Look at how beautiful the school building is - I feel like I'm in a museum or something.

The World Cup

As I'm sure you know, Spain is going to be in the World Cup Final game on Sunday! Obviously we've been watching all of the games here. Usually we go to a restaurant/bar where we can go early to eat dinner and then have a spot to watch the game. Everywhere in the city is PACKED for the games - so we always try to go early enough to have a seat.

I bought a Spain jersey, and finally think I have a grasp of the game of soccer and some the Spanish players (who are very cute by the way :) ). Maybe I'll even call myself a soccer (oops, I mean futbol) fan by the end of this trip!

The past few days have been great. We've explored the city some more - including a trip to to Parc Laberint. It's a beautiful park and garden with a labyrinth maze inside, as well as little waterfalls, running water, and beautiful plants and trees. It was a nice break from the pace of the city!

I think that's all for now! This weekend I'm going on an ISA excursion to the city of Girona and Figueres, and on Sunday night ... Spain vs. Holland for the final game! Can't wait!

xoxo

Lauren