So as all of you know, I spent the last week in Barcelona and Madrid. I had a chance to stay with Ray but he wasn't the best host. Ray wasn't the best host though which was a little disappointing. In high school, Ray was known as "Party Ray" but in Barcelona, he got a new nickname from me..."Locked Down Ray." Ray is now basically dating a girl from New Zealand and seemed to want to spend most of his time with her which was very disappointing. Don't get me wrong, she is a great girl. There were several times that Gabby (another girl from high school who was also visiting Barcelona at the same time) and I had made plans to go site see but he would end up sleeping through it or said I will just meet up with you later cause I am going over to Melissa's (his girlfriend) place.
Of course my debit card would be expired before I would leave on Spring break which ended up being a blessing and I will explain later.
Other than that, Barcelona was just awesome. It was a place that I have always wanted to travel to and I was so excited to speak a language that I actually knew how to speak. But as soon as I got there I had so much trouble understanding what they were saying. I was thinking that Catalan was spoken in Madrid and not Barcelona. This just made me feel absolutely miserable that I couldn't speak Spanish anymore. But by the time the rust wore off and I had arrived in Madrid, my Spanish was back.
The sites we saw in Barcelona were Parc Guell, Casa Batllo, Gaudi Museum, Sagrada Familia and to the top of the mountain in an old Military base that over looked the entire city. Everyone talks about Parc Guell as a place that you have to see but to be honest, I don't understand the infatuation with it. It really wasn't anything special. Casa Batllo was pretty ridiculous. It was just a house that was created by Gaudi and it had the oddest style. Even the Sagrada Familia we thought was ridiculous. The outside of the Sagrada Familia was not only gorgeous but nothing you have ever seen. We thought that Gaudi had to be taking some sort of drugs to come up with the things that he did. The inside of the church was beautiful. We didn't have enough time in Barcelona to see the entire city but I think we saw the 'must-sees.'
I had a chance to hang out with Garet and Herman while in Barcelona. I went out with Garet one night and saw Herman the night before I left. Herman knew I was coming but decided to go to the Carnival all weekend so I didn't have too much time to see him. It was real nice seeing the guys again. It felt so long since I saw them last.
While in Barcelona, we went to the Carnival about an hour train ride outside the city. We got there around 10pm and got home around 5am. Everyone dressed up in some sort of costume and I chose to be a pirate with a Johnny Depp style beard from Pirates of the Caribbean. We were supposed to go earlier in the day but ray didn't end up getting back to the house until 6pm (he slept over at Melissa's so I was able to sleep in a bed). It turned out better that we didn't go until the night because that was when the festivities were to begin.
Coming home from the Carnival was when I had my feelings hurt about my attempt at speaking Spanish. I tried talking to some Spanish girls next to me as we were waiting to get on the bus back to Barcelona. We ended up talking for a bit and at the end of the conversation I asked what they thought of my spanish and they looked at each other and laughed. Then I asked decent or "asi asi" and they just said no. I stopped speaking Spanish the rest of my time in Barcelona due to the sole reason of those girls.
The night we were supposed to leave, Barcelona was playing Arsenal in Barcelona. I thought about going but decided against it. We went to a bar to watch the game with all Barcelona fans and that was really fun. If I couldn't go to the game, why not watch it with all Barca fans? We took an over night bus from Barcelona to Madrid. It was very simple. The seats reclined further than ones on airplanes and I was sitting on the side of the bus that had only one seat.
We arrived in Madrid at 7am but couldn't check into our hostel until 1pm so we had to go site seeing when we were really exhausted. We ended up going to see the Royal Palace which was unbelievable. We weren't able to take any photos which was really frustrating. The room where the king's throne was the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen. So much gold! Going to the palace was only site we saw with the girls. John and I were so bothered by traveling with the girls. There were times where no one could make a decision then we would talk about it and come to a mutual decision then one girl would then say that she didn't want to do this so we had to start the whole program over again. Then there would be times when we had a place to go and someone would say let's sit for a bit I'm tired and then we'd miss our tour. We just couldn't handle it anymore. We did everything on our own from there on. Two of the girls (actually the two worst girls) ended up leaving on friday so we felt a little better but we still decided to do our own thing.
The entire time I was in Madrid I was looking for the posters that were put up all around the city about my friend from SDSU that went missing. His body was found the day before I arrived but I figured there would still be some posters around. I wanted to go to place where his body was found and put something next to his cross that was placed there but I just couldn't get myself to do it. I picked up a newspaper the day I got there and read the article about Austin. The way the newspaper described a dead person was "el cuerpo aparecio sin vida en el rio." If you read it, it makes sense but the direct translation is 'the body appeared without life in the river.' I just thought that was a weird way to describe a dead person..maybe its just me. I said the same thing to someone else and they didn't think it was very different.
We really didn't need to be in Madrid as long as we were. We basically ran out of things to do. Luckily one of the days we were there is was absolutely gorgeous and we just hung out a park all day. The one thing that I knew I had to do was see the Prado. The Prado was HUGE. There was over 100 rooms and we went into every single one of them. By the time we saw every room we realized we were in there for 3 hours. The best paintings that we saw and the ones that are the most famous were Goya's 'black paintings.'
I really wanted to go to the Barcelona vs Arsenal game but it was just so expensive. I paid half the price for the Real Madrid game than I would have for the nose bleed section in Barcelona. So I'm happy I spent 80euro and sit 13 rows up from the field as opposed to 175euro for a nose bleed seat. Dad, I did end up sitting on the same side as the crazy fans behind the goals but they had security guards all around them and glass containing all the people inside their section. I was blown away that there was no sort of security check point going into the stadium. No one patted me down, you were able to bring water and food into the stadium. I went with Allison and a friend from her program named Jared. I had a great time seeing Allison. I know Allison through people from LJCD and she lives in Solana Beach and she was on the girls Rancho Santa Fe Attack when I played for them in state cup. The Jared kid was a really nice kid but HE WOULDN'T SHUT UP! We didn't end up getting tickets next to each other but Allison sat in the row behind me but ended up moving up a row to sit next to me when the game started.
At the end of the game, i was chatting with someone on the phone and for some reason I had my wallet out. When I went to put it away, I put it in my back pocket by habit instead of my front pocket. By the time I got off the metro coming from the games, I realized the wallet was gone. I was hoping I had left it at a restaurant or something so I retraced my steps to no avail. Luckily it was just my wallet and not my passport. I think that losing a wallet is almost better than losing a passport especially knowing that I was leaving the next day and would have not been able to travel home. But as I was saying earlier about my debit card expiring and it being a blessing in disguise was that when I returned back to Florence I had means of getting money. When I got back to Florence, I opened facebook with a message from a random Spanish girl saying after looking through all the Tim Costello's she found my wallet. The contents of the wallet were still in there including both credit and debit just without the money. There might have been up to 50euro in the wallet which isn't the end of the world. I gave her my address and now I am just waiting for it to arrive.
Last night, March 16th, was the 150 year anniversary of the unification of Italy. There were parades and fireworks all over the city. I went to my friend's apartment overlooking the piazza that had the most celebration.
GO SAN DIEGO STATE!
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