A good motto for Rome would be, “Another day, another protest”. Today, I walked out of the hotel to find people lining the intersections of the streets and refusing to let traffic through. They weren’t wearing matching shirts or holding flags or anything typical though. No no, these people literally looked like they had been walking down the street, seen whatever protest was going on, and decided they had enough free time to hang out in the street too. It’s been a few hours and they’re still out there, holding up traffic in all directions. I think there are helicopters out too, but again, no idea what anyone is protesting today. I will NEVER understand this side of Rome. They want to put up a super efficient high-speed train? No. Let’s protest. It’s a busy Saturday? We should have a transportation strike. None of it makes sense.
I just got back last night from my weekend in Barcelona! All the traveling has really started to take a toll on my body, but in the words of my mother, “It’s cheaper and faster to get to Venice from Rome than it is from America”, and the weekends are running out so every last trip needs to be squeezed in.
We had another early AM flight, courtesy of Ryan Air. Our expected land time in Barcelona was 10:00 AM and we actually landed at 10:15 AM so there were no celebratory horns and applause and a recording telling us that 90% of Ryan Air flights landed on time last year. It feels great to be apart of the 10%. The airport is Barcelona was completely Americanized. It looked straight out of Chicago and the planes even pulled up right to the gate instead of us having to walk out to the plane. It was a great reminder of home/reality/proper airport technique.
The Casa Gracia Hostel in Barcelona is one of the cutest places I’ve ever stayed. Everything inside is so trendy; from the wall decoration to the furniture to the rooms. It was cleaner than some of the hotels we’ve even stayed in since getting to Europe, and our private 6-bed room looked like a cross between Madeline and princess chamber. The best part of all though, was when we learned there was free coffee/cappuccinos/hot chocolate/tea ALL DAY EVERY DAY LONG; a true saving grace. While we were checking in alone we averaged four cups of coffee each. It was a glorious start to the trip. We got a bar (equivalent to a quick café with limited seating in Europe) recommendation from the women at the front desk and wandered down the street to find a place called PianoPiano. They had a long list of piadinas for us to choose from and picking a bad one would have been impossible. I’ll never be able to go home to Notre Dame and eat the Reckers piadinas after this experience.
After a quick turn around from our exhausted state once all the coffee kicked in, we made our way over to the Basilica della Sagrada Familia via metro. The metro systems are the one consistent thing we can rely on from city to city. The line was long, but Carole’s mom to the rescue we were warned ahead of time to buy them online, so we cut right to the front. The Basilica has been under construction since about 1880, and is still not done. If this doesn’t tell you anything about how intricate the inside is, few things will. The outside architecture was a true work of art, but it wasn’t until I was inside that I realized how intricate the place was. The stained glass lit up the entire basilica magnificent colors and not a single portion of the wall was let without design. My favorite structural aspect were the columns in the church. As they reached the ceiling each turned to look like a tree, representing trees of life. I could have spent the entire day in there picking out new things.
We met up with some girls from the St. Mary’s program in Spain once we were outside and together ventured towards Park Guell. It was great to see how different everything was from any other place I’ve traveled to yet. Park Guell is known for the massive, snake shaped, mosaic bench, which you could see shining even from higher up on the hills towards the walk down to the park. There were tons of street vendors set up near the park, and they were all way less creepy than the ones in Rome. Also none of them were trying to sell me splat-balls, which I really appreciated (for those of you privileged enough to have never been harassed to buy a splat-ball, here’s what I’m talking about: http://www.toydoo.com/frog-splat-ball-pack-of-24-ea.html). We started to head back towards the hostel once it got dark but did some intense window-shopping on the way.
More perks of our trendy hostel: they offer a dinner each night for 8 euro that includes some sort of traditional Spanish food, salad, and all the sangria in the world. Friday night was tapas night, so we opted to eat at the hostel. The food was definitely restaurant quality and we got to try tons of different kinds of Spanish food (strangely a lot of potato dishes). All in all it was a pretty slow night; there isn’t liveliness when you’re running on a few hours of sleep.
The next day we were back at it early though. We walked along the streets from our hotel through the shopping district. A hit of the morning was a store called Desigual, home to some of the scariest throwback clothing I’ve ever seen. If you’re in the market for an expensive pair of flair jeans or a patch-style jacket, this is your place. We walked though the market place, which was even larger than the one we had gone to in Thessaloniki. We got some fruit and walked around to look at all the different booths, but also didn’t leave before getting a ton of over-priced chocolate. Back on the streets we walked farther down towards the sea, stopping at even more little tents on the way. Barcelona is clearly all about the handmade goods. The port was a sure sign that Barcelona must be packed in the summer with all the beaches and boats.
We split the afternoon between the aquarium (home to some fish I never knew existed), the beach (where car ads were being shot? In November?), and lunch by the sea where we got another traditional Spanish dish called Paella di Mare. It was heaven on earth. I would eat it for every meal for the rest of my life probably. We did a quick nap time/coffee break in the hotel before going back out into the city to the Magic Fountain of Montjuic. The fountain, each half hour, puts on a show complete with lights, music, and various patterns. No picture could really accurately capture how fun the show was though. That night we decided to go out to a massive club called Razzmatazz, assured by multiple people we would regret it if we skipped out on it. I can honestly say I’ve never been anywhere like it. There we were more people than in downtown New York, live performances, and the entire place was just all around massive.
Sunday morning was a little slow. We had initially planned to go to the Barcelona stadium, but didn’t have enough time before we had to start making our way to the airport. There was a massive strike on the streets, and although we weren’t completely sure what it was for, there were tons of people holding flags with an X through a pair of scissors. No haircuts? No scissors? No craft projects? Your guess is as good as mine. We attempted to go into our favorite store called Mango, a shop we found in Rome and love love love and it’s based out of Barcelona, but the massive store was closed; some places in Europe completely shut down on Sundays. We instead got more tapas for lunch and then went back to the hotel to finish checking out and go to the airport.
It wouldn’t be a true weekend trip if something didn’t go wrong, so of course we got on to the wrong train to the airport, had to get off at a random, scary station, proceeded to be trapped inside the train statin (it’s a thing), had to jump over a few obstacles (it’s okay because we didn’t get arrested), and escaped out to the streets to frantically wave down taxis. So much for completely understanding the metro system. We made it to the airport with enough time still and caught our breath at the gate before we got on the plane to come home.
Arriving in Rome is always a huge sigh of relief, and when we’re in the taxi on the way back from Ciampino airport and we see the Albergo come into view it definitely feels like home, which is the coolest part of traveling. Not too many people can confidently say they associate home with a two star hotel in the center of the city of Rome.
I’m in the process of making a quick turnaround since I’m leaving for Budapest in a couple days to spend Thanksgiving there with a couple of my best friends from Notre Dame, Megan and Kristen. The conversion rate is 300 Hungarian Forints for one Euro, so everything I buy in the next few days will be hilarious. I can’t even begin to tell you what I’m going to do in Hungary but I’m sure the next blog post will be entertaining. I’ll also be overnight training to Munich between Friday and Saturday to spend the rest of the weekend in Germany! The true test will be to see if I actually retained anything from all the years of German language I took in high school. I think the only phrase I actually remember is, “Mein Hund ist weg”, which translates to “my dog is gone/lost”; a key survival phrase.
Happy early Thanksgiving!
I'm still I'm still Haley from the Bend 