Alright, time for the second part of spring break... Madrid and Barcelona. We had to take a bus from our hostel in Paris to the airport and then an early morning flight. This time it was only me, Elyse, Jonathan, and Marc. We landed in Madrid on Saturday morning, and I was bound and determined to wear a strapless dress and flip flops all day long. A little on the optimistic side, but much better weather than in CPH or Wisconsin. We checked all of our luggage and were on our way to see Madrid for a day. We found a restaurant with outside seating and ordered Paella, it was so nice to be able to sit outside and eat in the sun. For the most part we had a relaxing day, a little wondering in and out of shops and saw the Reina Sofia museum. The first store the guys came in with us (Miss Sixty) we were in for all of 30 seconds before leaving and as we were leaving Jonathan set off the security alarm and had to be searched.. it was HILARIOUS!!!!!!!! We had to catch a night train to Barcelona so we headed back to the train station, gathered our stuff, and were on our way...

The night train is quite an experience in itself. It definitely makes you value faster and more comfortable modes of transportation a lot more. There were cabins that housed 8 people (4 people per side) with seats the size of very very very small airplane seats, maybe like a car bucket seat I would say. In my cabin, there was a mother/daughter from Madrid, a soccer player from Argentina, and an American girl studying in Spain. The daughter was 20yrs old and even through our language barriers her and I got along pretty well. It was interesting to hear the mother/daughter speak to the American student, I took Spanish for a few years so I could listen and somewhat understand what they were talking about.

When we got to Barcelona, we found our hostel (Saint Jordi) but couldnt check in for a few hours. Luckily the lobby/reception area had some couches so we just killed time there before showering and getting ready for the day. Our first stop in Barcelona was the Hard Rock Cafe...haha, totally an American thing to do. Then.. Sagrada Familia, which is a famous (huge) church, still under construction, designed by Gaudi. It was amazing how huge it really was. I liked all of the intricate details throughout the outside of the church, but when we went inside it looked like a regular construction site. We decided to wait in line and take an elevator to the very top, it was such a good view of the city! On our way down there were little alley ways we could go through and see outside, it was nice because it gave you another view of the city as well as an up close look at the architecture.

A nap was definitely in order after the lack of sleep from the overnight train. After about a 4 hour nap we decided to wake up and go try and find the Badger basketball game. We wondered to Las Ramblas (popular street in Barcelona) and found a place called Sport Bar. As we were watching highlights from the game, I wanted to reformat my picture settings on my camera so I would have enough room for the rest of our trip. Well, that failed miserably. I accidentally pressed something wrong and ended up deleting ALL of my pictures I had taken up until that point!!!!!!!!! Ahhh, talk about a crappy way to start Barcelona...

Day 2 in Barcelona---Decided to start at Park Guell, which is a park unlike any I have ever seen before. A lot of the designs were by Guadi and it was HUGE. Many different peak points to look out at the city from, along with a big open area with a ceramic bench surrounding the whole place. Luckily it was a beautiful day, I think if the weather was crappy it wouldn't have been so nice. After spending a good chunk of time there, we got some souvenirs and were out of the park. About a half block later, I was going to buy postcards from a street vendor and my wallet was gone. We searched everywhere and it was nowhere to be found (I just had it at the souvenir shop outside the park), so with about 99% certainty I can say it was definitely stolen. The rest of the day was more or less dedicated to solving that problem.. Marc's friend Tessa (who works in Barcelona) met us and helped me figure out what to do about getting everything fixed. She had just gotten her wallet stolen a few months back so she was a great help. I had to go to the police station and everything. Thankfully I got all of my credit/debit cards stopped and reissued, and mom was coming in only a few days so she brought the new cards for me. It just sucks... I had SOOO much stuff in that wallet! Besides it being a really nice wallet (leather, Fossil wallet), I had my drivers license, 3 student ids, gift cards, 40 euros ($60), ticket stubs from everything from a year or more, my Danish CPR card (similar to a social security card, but much less valuable/important), and other stuff I don't even remember.

After that episode, it was time for some authentic Spanish food. Tessa took us to a real tapas restaurant. In case you don't know what tapas are, they are like little hors devours (or however you spell it..) that we picked from a buffet line. The ones I tried were very good, but expensive. After dinner we walked around the old/gothic part of town and saw the architecture and went inside one of the main churches. The church had an open courtyard with a fish pond in the middle! It was definitely not what I would have expected from a church. Next up on our guided tour (w/Tessa as our guide..) was a walk along the beach and boardwalk area. This is where a lot of the clubs and restaurants are, and it was a really nice night out. So much better than snow!!! Later that night we went to a club down on that strip called Shoko, free entrance and drinks til 1 or 2am. We had sangria from a box before going out, probably not as classy as the regular sangria but good none the less.

The next morning was the first without the boys. They had gone their own way (to Seville) and we still had two more days in Barcelona. We slept in and then when I got up Elyse was still sleeping so I decided to go exploring on my own for awhile. It was the first time I ate by myself in a restaurant (sub shop, but still) I think in my entire life. I usually want to cry and accompany people if I ever see someone eating alone but it actually wasn't too bad. I had my books and maps to plan out my strategy and got to take as long as I wanted to plan whatever I wanted to do. I walked down La Ramblas and found a food market right off from it. It smelled like fish but had a lot of variety of foods. Next on my agenda was to find "the up and coming new popular street" Playa de Royal. I found it, but I didn't see anything thing very new or popular, just a regular road with men who talked too much to me. I went back down to the beach and walked there for awhile, and ended up finding this free Catalan region museum. The Catalan is the region that Barcelona is in, people there spoke their own language (as well as Spanish) but it is a very independent region. The museum was obviously pretty new and had a lot of 3D displays, a good deal for being free. After my jaunt alone, I met up with everyone for dinner. It was only me, Chris, Elyse, and Marie left. We went back by Sagrada Familia to an italian restaurant. I was glad because I got to take more pictures after erasing mine from earlier. After dinner we went to their hostel, HelloBCN, to hang out at the bar there. It was a pretty nice hostel, much bigger than ours and had a bar inside of it with 3euro pints of beer or sangria. Not too many people were there though so it ended up being a pretty quiet night.

The next morning (our last in BCN), I met Marie for coffee at La Vaca Paca while Elyse and Chris went to the Gaudi apartment. When we met up again, Elyse and I decided to go to the Olympic Stadium from the 1992 olympics. It was up on a huge hill and wasn't what I had expected. I assumed it would be one or two large venues but there were stadiums and tracks everywhere. One of the doors to the track was open so we got to run on it (probably legal..).

Our last activity in Barcelona was to visit the shopping mall right on the water. We had lunch at Fresco Buffet, which had only fresh/healthy food. There was tons of fruit, vegetable, whole wheat stuff, fresh veggie pizza with no tomato sauce, and a bunch of other foods. There was even frozen yogurt, but I think it wasn't even the traditional frozen yogurt, probably just slightly flavored ice with a little skim milk. Either way it was good and I ate about three bowls. We did a little shopping but didn't have too much time because we needed to catch another night train.

This night train was slightly better than the last, but not much. More like an airplane (seats and set up) but yeesh.. still uncomfortable. I got a little studying done, but that's about all. When we got back to Madrid, we were still sooo tired. When we found our hostel, it creeped us out. It was on 3rd floor and as we were walking up the stairs there was a guy in the hallway. And he wasn't standing or moving. I thought we had just found a dead body, we were so freaked out we ran out with our luggage and didn't ever want to go back. We decided to ring the front desk and the receptionist went down and kicked the homeless (allegedly not dead) guy out and came and got us. We couldn't check in for a few more hours so we went to a coffee shop and then to an internet cafe. When I checked my email there was one from mom with an attachment to a news article about Osama Bin Laden's new video and how he talked about the Danish cartoonist's controversial drawing. It was scary to read about the place I've been living being talked about by such a complete psychotic creep. There was even talk about me coming home, but I don't think that will happen until after my program. When we finally got into our room we slept for hours. Our room was so nice because it was only a 2 bed room, almost exactly like a hotel room. When we woke up, we walked around Madrid and saw it in its prime hour--late night. Dinner time is normally between 9 or 10 pm so we were right on time for being out and about. The streets were filled with people and noise (such a change from cph), everything lit up.. ahh it was so nice to feel some sort of pulse in a city.