On Wednesday, Daniela and I decided that we wanted to explore our neighborhood some more. So, instead of heading down to the Plaza Catalunya area for lunch, we took a walk around the area that we live in and found a really cute little restaurant called Isabella's. It was very local and the people there were very friendly. We enjoyed gourmet pizza and pasta with salmon, along with some vino tinto (red wine). We spent the afternoon like the Spaniards do, spending almost 3 hours at lunch, talking, laughing, and enjoying our meal. It was really nice!!
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| Lunch at Isabella's |
After our relaxing afternoon, I had a meeting about my trip that I'm taking to Morocco with IES in November. I learned that I will be living with a family while I'm there, and spending my days with students studying English in the area. All of the music, markets, and experiences that past students described made me really excited for the trip. Later that night, I ate dinner with Angeles, and our neighborhood RA, Ana. We had tortilla espanola, which is one of my favorite Spanish dishes. It also known as a Spanish omlette, or a potato omlette.
Thursday continued with class at 9. Afterward, I had cafe con leche y un croissant with some classmates. We then walked in and out of some stores on Passeig de Gracia and I met up with people for lunch later that afternoon. I hadn't been feeling too well lately, so I set up a doctor's appointment at a local office and headed back to my house for a nap. Angeles made French Onion soup for dinner, which was delicious.
On Friday, I had class at 9, once again. I then made my way to the doctor's office. I was already feeling much better than I had been, but I'd been feeling sick for about a week, so I decided it was best that I still go to my appointment. Everything turned out okay, I was just given some antibiotics to help clear up my sore throat. I then met up with some girls at a local ATM, because this is the most common way to buy tickets to the soccer games. We planned on buying tickets to the FC Barcelona game on Saturday night, but it was impossible to find seats together, so we ended up not being able to go to this game. Hopefully, more seats will be available at later games! We than returned home for a nap before dinner. After dinner, we got ready to head out for the night! We had a great night, but someone at the club that we went to dropped a glass on the floor. Daniela ended up stepping on some broken glass, and needing stitches. So, our night ended in the hospital. It was so weird to see that the club was not concerned that there was broken glass, nonetheless blood, on the dance floor. It was an interesting experience, but everything turned out okay!
We took it easy on Saturday, but did want to see the local celebrations for Diada. Diada is the national day of Catalunya, the region where Barcelona is located. All of the stores were closed and there were Catalunyan flags everywhere. Some people in Catalunya want to be separate from the rest of Spain. So, today, there are several riots throughout the city expressing this opinion. It was interesting to see this, but we kept our distance.
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| Riot! |
We found a local bar that was playing the FC Barcelona game that we had planned on attending, so we had some tapas and a glass of wine while watching the game. Its a good thing that we didn't go...Barca ended up losing 2-0 to a team that they should have beaten. The paper the next day said that it was the worst that they had played! After the disappointing game, we walked around Barrio Gotico. There was so much going on in the streets because of the holiday. We saw opera, street dancers, and more in different alleyways. I wanted to buy a scarf from a local vendor. As I was holding the scarf that I was thinking about buying, the man pulled up all of his merchandise and ran! The police had shown up, and I ended up with a free scarf!
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| Opera in the street |
On Sunday, we decided to do some more sightseeing. After a late breakfast with Angeles, we headed to Casa Batllo. I had already seen the outside, but I had heard that the inside of the house was one of the best attractions in Barcelona. Everything inside was so awesome! Gaudi had designed the house without using straight lines. The sea inspired many of his designs, and I loved the blues and greens were used to show this. We were able to go all throughout the house, including the roof! It was interesting to hear how everything about the house was for a purpose. All of the designs not only were fun to look at, but were very practical, for lighting, airflow, etc. The entrance fee for this house is much more than many places in the city, but very worth it!!
After seeing Casa Batllo, we took the metro to Plaza de Espana. Here we were able to see a bull ring, "Las Arenas." It was under a lot of construction, but still very cool to see. We then walked to Palau Nacional, or the National Palace. Now, this building is used as the National Museum of Catalonian Art. We weren't able to go inside because it was closed on Sunday, but the area around it was beautiful. We continued walking and found the Estadio Olimpic de Montjuic, or the Olympic Stadium. That was also fun to see. We plan on going back to the Montjuic area, because there is sooo much more to see! After a long day, we headed back home.
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