Barcelona

While Paris is tan & gray and Sevilla is white and yellow, Barcelona is Orange. It wins the awards for the best dressed street performers with the most variety and the most unique fashion sense.
Our hostel in Barcelona was the Youth Sound Hostel. It didn't have the best room situation but it had a great location, really close to Las Ramblas.
Getting to our hostel was tricky as always, this time due to the 50 Kilos of luggage we were dragging down metro steps. This was a low food budget trip. I had a falafel pita for dinner.
I'd say we had learned how to be savvy travelers by this point and we made what turned out to be a good decision- not to buy the unlimited metro pass. We were able to ride the metro 10 times for the low price of 7.7 euros and we walked a lot throughout the day, giving us time to take in the city and see things along the way. It was a big improvement to spending 45% of our day riding the metro from one major landmark to the next.

Friday. Today we started big and went to the sagrada familia. Like the Mona Lisa, I wonder why the world has picked this unfinished church to be the most famous landmark. It has a Christmas tree on top for goodness sakes! Look at that Christmas tree and then look me in the eye and tell me this church is serious. It probably wasn't worth paying to go in, seeing as it's really under construction. There is a museum that explains about Gaudi though. We walked to Casa Mila, the next Gaudi building. These are apartment buildings with a curvy front and an open middle. The fun part about this one is going on the roof. There are giant ice cream looking shapes and scary face chimneys. You can tour a floor of the house which is set up like an antique Spanish apartment. Casa Batllo was too expensive, so we just admired the dragon roof from outside. We went to Pans & Company for lunch and I enjoyed one of my last tortilla Espanol bocadillas.
We then took the metro up Mount Juic, the Jewish Mountain. There we find the 1992 Olympic Stadium, the Joan Miro museum, and several gardens. The museum had an awesome exhibition of murals which I loved. The Miro paintings usually consist of a stick person, a line, a star and a blue circle, for example, so they get a bet tiring towards the end. We walked around the mountain and saw some pretty gardens. Dinner was sandwiches and an orange. We saw the magic fountains. THEY REALLY ARE MAGIC. It was the best fountain show I've ever been too. The fountain is huge with so many layers and it has the ability to turn to mist. It goes from hot pink to orange like fire, to green and it even played Disney music in Spanish. I was enthralled.

Saturday: We left our hostel after a breakfast of cereal and bread to walk down Las Ramblas. There are people selling birds, flowers and paintings,as well as many dressed up street performers. Our first stop had been Palau Guell, a Gaudi mansion. Right now it's being redone so it's free and only the bottom floor is opened to the public. It wasn't that exciting but it does have very colorful chimneys. We walked to the Christopher Columbus monument and an outdoor antique market. We then went on a search to find our free walking tour. We went to the travel bar and they directed us to the travel office. By the time we found that, we were late and we ran through the streets of Barcelona trying to catch up, but without success. Out of breath, we walked to the top of the Gothic neighborhood to the Plaza of Cataluna. We went to the 4 Gats [4 cats] for lunch. It is an old cafe, famous for the fact that Picasso and other artists used to hang out there. It was very cute. Since it was a budget food trip, we only ordered ice cream and a plate of croquettes. Later we went to McDonalds where I got a yogurt parfait, which I think is better in Europe. Next we went to attempt the walking tour yet again. This time we were 30 minutes early, but at least we found the right place. The tour was very interesting, with a lot of history mixed in. We saw some of the oldest things in the center of Barcelona like the Cathedrals and the Roman ruins. In the evening, we took the metro to Parque Guell. This park was designed by Gaudi as a gated park community. He intended to build mansions there, but instead it turned out to be a public park. There is a famous pavilion of white benches with all types of mosaics.
For dinner we had some noodles.

Sunday. Sunday morning took us to the contemporary art museum of Barcelona. Not my favorite art museum. We then went to the Cathedral to find that the stories about community dances on Sunday mornings are absolutely true. There is a band in the plaza of the cathedral on Sunday mornings and the people come and place their coats and purses in the middle and then hold hands and dance in a circle. It looks like a Greek dance.
We went to mass in the cathedral instead of paying for a tour of it on Saturday. The really cool thing is that later in the day we went to a baptist evangelical church and we got to see first hand the differences. It's especially good to see what it's like to be protestant when you are absolutely against the norm. The evangelical church was way more excited to have American tourists since I'm sure tourists are a lot more common in the cathedral. Everyone in the little church came up to talk to us and invited us to sit right in the front. Then, they announced our names from the pulpit, complete with the spelling of Gia's name, which is a mystery to them all. The songs are so fun in Spanish and the church was very upbeat. The preacher spoke on the great commission and it was very easy to understand. I thought it was a great last experience in Spain.
Backtracking...Sunday we had lunch at Bocatta, another sandwich shop and I had my last tortilla de patatas bocadillo! So beautiful. We went to the Picasso museum, which was free on Sunday afternoons and to the Barcelona music hall to admire its architecture. We also walked through a large park and to the beach. We went to the travel bar for dinner, where they served us a plate of pasta for free with our purchase of a drink. Dinner.. 1.50 Euro. (Plus the price of a banana for snack)
Barcelona is shocking, original, quirky, and the home of the rebels of Spain.