Hola! I write to everyone from the plane heading from Barcelona to Rome! I am currently surrounded by about 50 high school students from what I believe to be France (I heard someone say Merci). We saw the group when we first pulled up in to the airport in the cab while they were crossing the sidewalk and I said a silent prayer that they would not be on our flight. Obviously this prayer did not work, but at least this flight is only two hours. This is their first time flying, so when we started moving, there were lots of screams and clapping and the same thing happened when we got up into the air. Now, they are using a selfie stick on the plane to take a large group picture that I am a part of. I must say that this is the liveliest flight I have ever been on and I feel old. They have already switched seats about 10 times to be able to sit next to their best friends and they have formed a line that’s about 15 people long for the bathroom. I can’t help but wonder if I was this annoying when I was younger. I’d like to think that I wasn’t this annoying, but I bet people rolled their eyes when they found out that there were children on their flight.
I had an amazing time in Barcelona this weekend, especially yesterday. Yesterday morning we woke up at 9, ate breakfast at a cute café, and took a bike tour of the city from 11-3. On the bike tour, we went to La Sagrada Familia, Plaça Sant Juame, Plaça del Rei, La Catedral, Palau de la Mùsica Catalana, and Parc de la Cituadella. It was difficult biking through all of the people, but there was a cool breeze, so it was a nice ride. This is my second city bike tour in Europe now since I did one in Paris last year. I am tempted to do on in Rome, but we have already seen most of the sights and I would not dare ride a bike on those crazy roads.
After the tour, we had lunch at an outdoor café by the bike shop and headed to Park Güell. We had to take a metro from the center of the city up to the park, which took about 20 minutes and cost 2 euros. Once we arrived at our stop, we had to walk from there to the park, which was about a 10 minute walk. A 10 minute walk by itself would not have been bad, but this one was extremely uphill. It makes sense that it was uphill because the top of Park Güell overlooks the entire city of Barcelona, but that did not make the walk any better. By the time we had climbed to the top, my fitbit told me that it was the equivalent of walking up 37 flights of stairs! Despite the climb, the view was beautiful. Plus, we saw the spot that the Cheetah Girls 2 was filmed at, but we were too cheap to pay to see it. After walking around for a bit, we decided to head back to the area that our apartment was in and try to find dinner.
I am happy to report that the walk down from Park Güell was much nicer than the walk up and we decided to walk back to our apartment instead of spending money on the metro. It was a 40 minute walk back to our place, but this is a distance that I have been accustomed to from living in Rome these past 2 weeks. We stopped at a corner restaurant on the way, which offered the same food choices as every other restaurant in Barcelona: paella (my choice), bikini (a ham and cheese sandwich), and various meal options. We ate our food and finished up the walk back to our place. Back at the apartment, we were completely worn out. After walking and biking all day, we just wanted to relax. Lindsay and Kristin watched a movie and I finished up some homework. We went to bed a little early preparing for the early morning today.
The city of Barcelona is extremely different from Rome. Rome is extremely crowded and everyone is always out on the streets. In Barcelona, we were lucky to pass more than one person every few blocks. When Barcelona takes a holiday, which they literally take for anything because they have 32 Holy Days that they celebrate, they truly take a holiday. They consider Sunday’s holidays, so the beaches were crowded yesterday and the streets were left bare.
Another interesting fact that I learned on my bike tour is that the Catalans celebrate any important day, even if it is not for a good reason. An example is that they lost a war to the French and instead of being somber; they make it a feast day. Additionally, they built the Arc de Triomf, which was modeled after the arch in Rome, to commemorate losing a battle.
The funny thing is that a French architect named Eifel proposed to build a tower in Barcelona, but they rejected his tower to build the red Arc de Triomf. Eifel took his design to the French and they accepted and built what is known today as the Eifel Tower. Still, the Catalans celebrate the arch and every day that they lost a battle or a war because they like to be happy and remember the good things instead of the bad.
Well that’s it for my history lesson today, I hope you enjoyed learning about Barcelona as much as I enjoyed being here! I am happy to be back in Rome in what is my temporary home and am preparing for classes to start back up again tomorrow.
Ciao!
Taylor
P.S. Check my Facebook for pictures, I just uploaded all of the ones from my trip so far!
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Read more from Taylor at https://taylorsitalianavventura.wordpress.com/
Check out http://studyabroad.uark.edu/romecampus for more information on the U of A Rome Center: Summer Campus.
