Ay Dios Mio, Barcelona!

While I was very sad to leave the beautiful, surprisingly not-rainy Ireland, I was super pumped for Spain.

Because we had to leave from Cork to get back to Dublin to catch our flight to Barcelona, our first day in Spain was pretty much just a night in Spain. But, our hostel was really great, if you're looking for one the next (or first!) time you go to Barcelona. Hostel One Paralelo had free dinners each night, and on our first night there, we made hostel friends with two brothers from Argentina, Lucas and Federico, and an engineer from Philadephia. The six of us went out to L'Ovella Negra, this massive bar with awesome sangria. We had drank a lot of sangria, traded currency (I am not the proud owner of one Argentinian peso), and had a great time on our first night in Barcelona.

You guys, look how good-looking we are!

Prior to making it to Barcelona, however, we had some travel drama. The airline with whom we booked out flight from Spain to Venice decided to give us an extra day in Barcelona-- by shifting our reservations to the next day. At first, we were pretty pissed about this. We were going to lose all sorts of cash money on reservations in Venice and spending more money on another night in Barcelona. But you know what? I'm not mad about it. Barcelona is a great city. You have good food, places to go, stuff to see. We could have been stuck in a far worse place.

So on our second day in Spain, we took the subway (metro? I'm just mixing up my modes of public transportation now) to the water and the La Rambla area. We spent a lot of the beginning of our day just strolling around and taking in the sights.

We did, however, hit up the Chocolate Museum (the actual name of which is in Catalan, and there's just no way in the world I'll spell it correctly) where your ticket was a bar of chocolate!

Additionally, that had some really amazing artwork made of out chocolate. Some of them you actual had to get super close to in order to tell that it was in fact chocolate. There was everything you could imagine made out of chocolate, from a rendition of Don Quixote to Tom and Jerry to a giant albino orangutan... honestly, it was just a smorgasbord of visual, and, I would imagine, gustatory delight

The house from UP? The best thing.
Highlight of the whole museum.

Bambi... probably just as sad in chocolate as it is on VHS.

La Sagrada Familia!

Like I said, after the Chocolate Museum, we did more walking until we could gain free entry into the Picasso Museum.

Courtyard of the Picasso Museum... gettin' our culture on.

So, we did the Picasso Museum, which was very interesting. Unfortunately, you couldn't take pictures inside, but I did buy some sweet postcards to put on my walls. My room in Turkey is so cultured now. Afterwards, we walked along a marina and grabbed a very tapas lunch at a restaurant whose name I can't remember.

The best of this meal, aside from the food, was Kara picking up one of those fried fish and chomping the head right off, wholeheartedly convinced it was a good idea. Whether or not that's the correct form to adopt when eating tapas, it was still hysterical to watch.

After our late lunch, we strolled back to the water and enjoyed a super sunset on the picture.

I want to clarify that I'm not actually this fat yet, I just
have about seven layers of clothing on.

Rough life, huh?

YUP.

The next day, we headed back to La Rambla and went to La Bocqueira for some fresh as hell snacks for the day. For breakfast, I had a plate of strawberries and a plate of raspberries for two euro, which isn't the worst deal you could pay. It was probably one of the most colorful and most delicious-looking places I have ever visited in my entire life.


Fresh juices, crazy kinds of candy, freshly made gummy snacks (!!!)... you name it, La Bocquiera has it. If it doesn't, you don't need it.

It's honestly nothing short of a miracle that this
hasn't turned into a full-on food blog yet.

We did a little bit more walking around Barcelona, and saw some pretty neat bits of street art, like the spray-painted Louis Armstrong, and this very cool chain-link fence sculpture that wasn't even completed yet.

We had some time to kill before our scheduled Sagrada Familia visit, so we went to Park Güell first.

Unfortunately, because at this point in our travels, I was getting a little camera-fatigued, I forgot to take pictures of Park Güell, because I am a fool. However, Wikipedia has some great pictures of the park, and more background information than I'll share with you here, because I'm sure a lot of you are tired of reading all of the stuff I write on here.

Park Güell, if you're interested, is a garden complex that was designed by Antoni Gaudí and constructed between 1900 and 1914. It was originally supposed to be a part of a residential complex, which was commercially unsuccessful, inspired the garden city movement in England that called for communities to have an abundance of green space and be established away from larger, central cities. This is why Park Güell is on a hill overlooking the rest of Barcelona where the air was cleaner. The man for whom the park is named, Eusebi Güell, commissioned Gaudí to complete this garden city that would house the wealthy elite of Barcelona, until they realized that not everyone liked Gaudí's style of architecture. After only two houses were built, Güell gave the park to the city of Barcelona in 1923. 

The most famous part of Park Güell is its serpentine park bench on its main terrace. It's covered in mosaics from end to end, and it's a very popular place to stop and have a picnic (at least, that's what we did) on a nice day. Also, because Gaudí was of Catalan descent, the design and style of the park contains many nationalistic Catalan motifs that are extremely important to the Catalan identity.

Unfortunately, I am too ignorant to know what these motifs look like, so I may or may not have pictures of them.

Alright, so I didn't take this picture, but this is where we sat!

PROOF.
Also, Kara and I looking fine as hell, as per usual.

Underneath the terrace, from which you can see the Sagrada Familia and, more or less, the rest of Barcelona, are sets of columns and mosaic decorations. Basically, mosaics everywhere.

After eating our snacks from La Bocqueria and enjoying some fine ass weather, we took a different exit out of the park to find the super famous mosaicked (are you surprised that "mosaicked" is a word? I am.) dragon. It took me like seven minutes to land this picture, since sooooo many European women insisted that their husbands take pictures of them draped across the back of this statue. I mean, whatever floats your boat.

After leaving Park Güell, which was difficult knowing we had at least two more months of abysmal weather to go in Turkey, we headed to Sagrada Familia.

We made a pit-stop at this bakery though, because they had THE BIGGEST meringues I have ever seen in my entire life. Naturally, I needed to have one.

THIS IS ONLY HALF.

Ate the whole damn thing, if you were wondering.

Okay. Sagrada Familia.

First of all, craziest/coolest/beautifulest building I have ever seen. I know I say that about the Blue Mosque every time I go there, but still. Sagrada Familia? Whole. Other. Level.

Immediate reaction: "Is it a drip castle? I feel like it's supposed to be a drip castle."

And this is only one side! I ate my meringue looking at this side of this behemoth of a building.

Which, I suppose, I should provide some insight on. Also, probably on Antoni Gaudí as well. Alright.

Sagrada Familia is this massive Roman Catholic church in Barcelona that was designed by Gaudí in the 1880s. Construction of the church, which is a basilica and not a cathedral, began in 1883... and is still in progress. This building has been under constructed for well over one hundred years.

Gaudí died in 1926, at which point construction was only about fifteen to twenty-five percent complete. With any luck, all construction will be finished in celebration of the one hundred-year anniversary of Gaudí's death in 2026.

Warning: there are no words in the English language that I could possibly string together to do Sagrada Familia justice. Furthermore, my pictures will also not do this building justice. The pictures I took can't even compare to the mental images I'll have in my mind for the rest of my life. Just wanted to throw that out there before continuing on.

Just to provide an explanation as to what you're about to see, you should know that Gaudí, as a child, was constantly in poor health. According to the displays and exhibitions, it was a culmination of his inactivity and his adopted vegetarian lifestyle that led him to really appreciate nature and the environmental. He was a devout Catholic who devoted his life to creating Sagrada Familia for the Church. Despite the fact that Sagrada Familia is considered a Gothic-style building, no matter how modern it might be, the way in which he decided to decorate this basilica was influenced by nature.

Apparently, the interior of Sagrada Familia was designed to make its visitors feel as though they were praying in a forest. He designed his columns and the supports of the nave and ceiling to look like trees. In fact, he actually invented a completely new type of column in the process of designing Sagrada Familia.

Again, it really is the coolest place. I mean, the columns... they have turtles on them.

On our final day in Barcelona, we took another walk down La Rambla and finally had paella, which had been hungering after for a few days. I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant, because it was on point.

Finally, we went back to La Bocqueria, grabbed ourselves some gummies (!!!), and took the bus to a really nice view of the entire city, where we finished up the last of our fruit, ham, cheese, and bread.

Pit stop to take a picture of these chocolate shoes though.

And I ended my time in Barcelona making battle scenes out of the animal gummies I bought at the market.

Aside from that jalapeño-shaped gummy being spicy and gross, this was a very successful trip to Barcelona. So successful that I hope to head back there in the future.