Barcelona -- best city ever!

Spain
August 18 - Barcelona, Spain
We arrived in the late afternoon at Girona airport. It was a beautiful and modern airport. We got into the city and settled in our hostel. It was a very nice and modern one! We shared it with 2 other girls from South America. The pictures shown are of the hallway to our hostel and the outside of the hostel (the tall building that looks like rectangular tiles of different shades of grey).

After we were all settled and had dinner, it was already getting late. We decided to take it easy and see only one sight by night. We walked over to the Sagrada Familia -- the church started by Architect Antonio Gaudi. Apparently he spent 40 years of his life working on this project. It has since been under the lead of various architects. It is scheduled to be finished in 2026, while portions of it will be open to the public for worship and tours by September 2010. It is one of the weirdest buildings I have ever seen. In the dark, it looked very gloomy and pretty creepy. By daylight, you could stand there for hours admiring the intricacies of his work. It is just so unique from all of the other churches I had seen in Europe so far. I'd love to go back to Barcelona to see the finished product. After walking back to the hostel, we used some internet and went to bed. The next morning, there were some errands to take care of. I was out of cash! I needed to go to the bank to switch the Swiss Francs I had. After a wild goose chase around different banks with different rates of exchange, services etc., I found Caixa Catalunya. It was here that I had one of the most unforgettable realizations. The man at the bank greeted me and I spoke in Spanish, explaining what I wanted. He proceeded to ask a few routine questions and then asked for my ID. I offered my passport to him. He gathered all of the information that he had and was confused: Chinese girl by visual inspection, surrendering a Canadian passport, who speaks Spanish fluently, requiring Swiss Francs to be switched to Euros. I laughed as I realized that this was who I am, or who I hoped to be -- the traveler. We had a conversation about my roots and how I came to be at his bank switching Swiss Francs to Euros. The bank offered a good enough exchange rate. After all was said and done, I was about to leave when he called me by name and stopped me in my tracks. He waved me back to give me a pen with the bank logo. Needless to say, that pen has sentimental value now.

Since I had gone to the bank alone (and was gone for awhile because of the wild goose chase), Joey got angry at me because he was worried. =S We cooked our lunch of pasta and whatever ingredients we had left over from the previous night.

Finally we were able to start our sightseeing for the day. We headed off to see the Sagrada by daylight, as well as the Hospital de la Santa Creu. The hospital is quite a unique site and still fully functioning today. It was built in the early 1900s.
The picture doesn't do it justice, but I don't have the skills to do a panorama from the center of the courtyard. It felt kind of weird to be at a hospital, so we didn't stay long. We walked out again, looking for a pharmacy so that I could buy some contact solution and Joey could buy fresh wraps for his ankle. Contact solution was ridiculously expensive in the pharmacies. Small travel size bottles are $2 in Canada -- in the Spanish pharmacies, they were 6 Euros! (Later, I found an optic shop that sold a travel size for 3 Euros and bought that instead.) After Joey changed his wraps, we hopped onto the metro to visit the Parc Guell. We found something that we've never seen in Canada -- outdoor escalators!
The climb to the park was pretty long, but well worth it! It was absolutely stunning at the top. You could see the whole city from there! I love coastal cities because I love water! Anyway, we walked around the park, completely designed by Gaudi. I love his work -- it's so unique! Here are some pictures of the park:

One of the highest peaks in the park, where we enjoyed a panoramic view of the city.

A view of the city: Sagrada Familia to the left, las Ramblas in the center, and the beach in the far distance!
World's longest bench!
Close up of the details in the bench -- also designed by Gaudi.

The two buildings at the entrance of the park.

That's just a few of the highlights. I loved this park! (Well, I loved Barcelona in general! =P) After the adventure in the park, we were quite tired, so we made our way back to the hostel. We went to the Carrefour mall and supermarket to pick up groceries for our picnic at the beach the next day.

August 19 - Barcelona cont'd
The next morning we hopped on a RENFE train to Costa Brava. We just asked some random girls who looked like they were going to the beach to recommend a nice strip of beach. They just told us to get off when they did. So we did, and it was quite nice. It wasn't as out of the city as we thought it'd be -- maybe a 20 min train ride? We got off at Mongota Nord station, and simply picked our spot. It wasn't very busy yet, as it was early in the morning. There were tons of beach chairs, but we later learned we had to pay to rent them. =[ So I pulled out my handy-dandy beachwear cloth-thing to sit on.

A view of the city in the far off distance from the beach.

After our picnic lunch, a few dips in the ocean, and some tanning, we headed back to the hostel to get cleaned up. We also decided to check out Carrefour Mall to find a salon. Joey really wanted a haircut. We made an appointment, went to the supermarket to buy more stuff, then waited for Joey to get his haircut. His stylist was pretty cool and tried to talk to Joey through it all through his broken English as I was told afterward. I later learned he was from Zaragoza and was telling us about some cool festival going on there. Too bad we already had tickets to Madrid! People from Barcelona had really cool hair -- especially the girls. This hairstyle where the top was short (up to the chin-ish), but the bottom layers were longer (past the shoulders). It was pretty cool! After Joey was satisfied with his haircut, we went back on the Metro to go to the other Gaudi-designed buildings: La Pedrera and La manzana de discordia (Casa Batllo). Simply amazing. We continued walking down this street, where all of the expensive boutiques were (LV, Chanel etc.) and reached Las Ramblas. It was a unique experience, with tons of buskers on the street performing for money. There were some awesome shows (magic, fire-play, sword-swallowing etc.) and amazing costumes. We made it down to the Olympic port and decided to have an Italian dinner. Joey tried some Spanish beer and I had some flan. Mmm! The Olympic port seemed to contain a couple of night clubs as well. However, we were not in club attire, nor in the mood for clubbing so we tried to find our way back to the hostel. It was quite frustrating with the night buses, but we finally found one that took us home. We also discovered that on a ramp nearby the hostel, was a prostitutes' pick-up area.

August 20 - Barcelona cont'd
The next morning, we decided to head back to Las Ramblas because we hadn't had enough. We found the market (St. Joseph -- La Boqueria). So many sights and smells and yummy snacks! Since we already ate and weren't hungry, we tried some fresh fruit juice and left.
We then continued on to the statue of Colombus and the Olympic port. I wanted to see a gallery, but it was closed. So we later found ourselves sitting on the docks for awhile, admiring the fish that were swimming beneath our feet. Since we had already seen what we wanted to see, we decided to go to the Aquarium. The ISIC card got me half off ;) I paid for our tickets, and we went into the aquarium. I was in a bad mood, but let's not get into that. I was still nonetheless amazed by some of the sights I saw. The most memorable experience was standing on the conveyor belt, going under the tunnel where sting rays, sharks and crazy fish swim around me.
After that, we got back to the hostel to gather our stuff and head off to the bus station. We embarked on a 9 hour night journey to Madrid! Wow, that was a long post, but well worth it. Barcelona is one of my favourite cities in all of Europe!