Barcelona!

I'm just going to write about spring break in 3 posts - one about each place I went. The first place we went to was Barcelona. We spent a day in Rome before because our flight was out of Rome in the afternoon. We were sitting in the common area in our hostel when some random guy came up to our table and prefaced his question with this "So, I know this may sound a bit weird and rude, but" - then why are you asking the question? Anyways, he asked us how old we were because apparently we all looked like we were 18 at most. It was really weird and we were all confused as to why he thought he should do that. Oh well. We made it to the airport fine and managed to get seats on our flight. We flew with Ryanair, which means that we don't have assigned seats like you would on other airlines. So, basically you just hope that you get a good seat or one with the people you're traveling with. Needless to say, we pushed our way to the front and made sure we had seats near each other. Finding our hostel proved to be a bit more difficult. We found the bus we needed to take to get close to our hostel, but we had some difficulties finding the road we needed to get onto. Luckily, a girl who was studying abroad in Barcelona overheard us and helped us find the direction we needed to go in. From there it was pretty much a straight shot to our hostel. We checked in and found Beckah, Jillian, and Mary in the hostel (we were meeting up with them). Our hostel was very nice. We had a small balcony off our room which was totally unexpected. Downstairs they had a lounge area where there was a pool table and a couple of computers that people could use. Not to mention, the hostel was in the middle of a plaza and pretty close to wherever we wanted to go. After we checked in, we went to dinner and got a typical Spanish dinner of paella and sangria. So good! It was my first time having both and I was satisfied :) Then we went back to the hostel to chill for a bit before going out since in Barcelona people don't go out until 12:30ish which is really late. The next day we went to the beach for a couple of hours and relaxed. That was really nice, even though I got a bit sunburned. That's how nice and sunny it was. We found a wrap place for lunch and it the lady who worked there was really nice. The food was really good too and it was nice to have a salad and a wrap that isn't the typical prosciutto and cheese sandwich in Italy. We made our way back to the hostel for a couple of minutes so people could change and then we walked around for a while trying to find a gondola type thing. We finally managed to find it and we rode it to the top of a hill. I was pleasantly surprised once we got up to the top to find a fortress there and some amazing views. On one side there were views of the entire city of Barcelona and the other side had views of the ocean. It was amazing! We made our way down after chilling out up there for a while. We got ready for dinner and went to get a tapas dinner. I've never seen food disappear so fast and I've never eaten so fast in my life. The food was amazing and before we knew it, we had eaten all the food we got. My favorite tapa was called "patatas bravas".  It was cooked potatoes sliced up and a cream type sauce was put on top. I can't even begin to describe the sauce - it's one where you have to try it for yourself. Since we ate so fast, we had plenty of time to hang out at the hostel before going out. We hung out in the bar of the hostel and talked to some British guys. They told us that everyone in England believes that Prince Harry is an illegitimate child because he has red hair and who else in the royal family has red hair. It was comical because we had a conversation with them about that for a good 20 minutes.
The next day we decided to go to the "sagrada familia" which is a huge church. It isn't like any other church I've ever seen and it's definitely one I will remember for a while. It was massive and so unique. Unfortunately the line was way too long to see the inside of the church. We walked to Park Guell after and that was really cool! I felt like I was in candyland or Willy Wonka. I absolutely loved it! That was my favorite part of Barcelona by far. In this park was the longest bench wall in the world. What made it even cooler was that it was a mosaic bench that just wrapped around an area where people were hanging out snapping photos. I would have loved to stay there longer, but all of us were really hot and dying to be in the shade (crazy that we were seeking out shade!). We also had to get back so that we could head to the airport. Our flight wasn't until 7am the next morning, but the last bus to the airport left at 7:15pm. So, we stayed overnight in the airport, which was interesting. None of us got much sleep and the chairs we slept on weren't that comfortable. But we survived the night in the airport and the 2 hours of sleep on the plane definitely helped all of us out. :-)