My Life in London: February 2011

Well this past weekend I took my first weekend trip of the semester. I traveled to the beautiful city of Barcelona. It was gorgeous and slightly warmer than London. Palm trees lined the streets and it reminded me of home. On the first day we went to the Park Guell which has some Gaudi architecture stuff and a really pretty view of the city. It was interesting walking around Spain and hearing people that I could actually understand even though they weren't speaking English. I was glad that my knowledge of Spanish finally kicked in. Although in Barcelona they technically speak Catalan which is a combo language of French and Spanish. One of my friends walked around asking people "hables ingles?" It was very entertaining because it was her first trip and she kept thinking we were lost. On Friday night I got to meet up with one of my friends from back home who was studying in Barcelona. She took us to a tapas bar and ordered everything for us. It was so nice to have a translator. I got to try some very Spanish foods including fried calamaris and sangria. It was good but it wasn't a lot of food. Apparently in Spain they eat a big lunch and a small dinner, very foreign idea to me. Later that night we went and got churros con chocolate that were delicious- probably my favorite food of the trip. The next day we went to the Sagrada Familia and took a bunch of tourist pictures and then we wandered over to the beach. Oh how we loved the beach. It made us all miss Malibu. We then ate paella by the bay and there was not a cloud in the sky! One of the coolest things about the trip was seeing one of the Gaudi houses though. I had studied it in my high school art history class and my hostel was just two blocks away from it. It was amazing to see the beautiful architecture of the houses and buildings just along the streets.