5/21/12
Today we arrived in Barcelona at about 8:50am to the BCN
airport. Our flight was due to arrive at 9:30, so we arrived ahead of schedule!
Then we went through the huge line at the customs counter and got our passports
stamped and went into the airport to find the meeting place with Dr. Shah! He
thought we wouldn’t finish with customs until 10:30, so we had to wait at the
airport for a bus until 11:30 and it was 9:30 at this time, so that kind of was
a drag because we were so excited to finally be there after such a LONG flight!
Which I only slept about an hour on the flight because it’s extremely hard to
sleep on those planes!
But eventually we left and took the bus ride home, which was
amazing to look around and just take in the beautiful city of Barcelona for the
first time. We were so excited that we were taking pictures through the
windows. We finally arrived at our apartment/flat and it is beautiful. Such
amazing architecture on the inside and out. The elevator is extremely old and
artistic, and for some reason really reminds me of the elevators in titanic.
But if you can picture those, then you’ll know what it looks like.
We live on the third floor of the apartment building, which
is dreadful walking up the stairs because there are about 7 flights of marble
stairs to walk up. And you can only take the elevator up and not down, which is
strange as well! The culture and living style is so different it is crazy! In
our apartment we have 9 girls living here, but the apartment is HUGE! I have my
own room with a double bed, which is perfect. There is no air conditioning, but
the weather is so nice and beautiful that the temperature is perfect and we can
leave the windows open during the day. Oh and the keys to our apartment are extremely
old keys that are long and look like something you would find in an antique
store. They are so awesome.
To finish our first day we unpacked for a while, and then had
pizza delivered to us. It was interesting pizza….extremely thin and the cheese
was different, but it wasn’t bad.
Then we went on a tour of the neighborhood
and rode the metro to our schools campus (UPF), so that we would know how to
get to school the next day! But we were still so jet lagged that none of us
could pay attention to where we are going. We have learned to mostly go off of
landmarks now, which is a lot easier.
After the tour a small group of us wanted to drink wine
somewhere (vino), so went to a gorgeous little place we found as we were
aimlessly walking around. All 7 of us sat at the bar and were the only ones in
the place, but the owners of the place were awesome and so nice to talk to. Audrey
and myself shared a bottle of sparkling cava, which is what the French call
champagne. And then a few of us shared a delicious cheese tray as we chatted
and talked to the owners of the restaurant. The man was from Italy and the
woman was his cousin from London, so they both had beautiful accents. They had
just moved to Spain about 3 months before to open this place together. The guy
asked his cousin if she wanted to move with him and open this place and she
said, “why not?” Which I think is awesome of her, because it seems like such a
hard thing to do. She also gave us advice about where to go and what to see and
do in the city, which was great.
We then left the restaurant and went home to drink more vino
and cava! We all hung out at our kitchen table and some of our guy friends came
over as well. It was a lot of fun just hanging out together, with the windows
open in such a beautiful and new place for us to be.
We later went out to explore and try to find a club to go
to, but most everything wasn’t open on a Monday night, go figure. So we had one
beer at this place where I ordered a Stella Artois, but received an estrella
instead. And they gave us a goblet to drink out of as well, which sort of
reminded me of Harry Potter for some reason. But the beer was okay, kind of reminded me of Sam Adams!
After that we went home and crashed, it was an extremely
long, but amazing first day
:)
