Parc Güell…is really awesome

Parc Güell is another creation in Barcelona by Antoni Gaudí, it was built from 1900 to 1914 and it’s not exactly a “park” but more of an architectural garden and terraces with complex designs and in the front there are statues and Gaudí’s house, la Torre Rosa.  There’s mosaic everywhere, I love this place; since it’s pretty high up on the mountain part of Barcelona, above the Gracia neighborhood, the views towards the ocean is amazing.

CARNAVAL

Bueno, Carnaval is a big deal here.  It’s the week before Lent starts though Spain is not religious at all and I’ve been told by the Spanish that Carnaval here isn’t a religious thing as it may be in other places.  Same goes for Brasilian Carnaval too, from the Brasileños I’ve met, they all raved about Carnaval, most said it’s a must to be back home in Brasil from their European travels for the summer event which happens all over the country though the biggest parades and events in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília.  In Brasil it’s all about a week of art, partying, parades, music and floats.  Here it’s very very similar to Halloween and it’s mainly celebrated on the weekend, but the costumes are really interesting and it’s completely normal for most guys to dress as a girl.  Lots of group costumes as well, entire families get dressed up, my host family celebrated Carnaval in Tarragona dressed as a family of pirates.  First I went to Terrassa, a town outside of Barcelona, to my friend Laura’s house and we saw the parade and festivities and I got to meet some of her friends and family. I went to Sitges on actual Carnaval night, a beach town about 30 min by train from the center of Barcelona.  It’s known to have one of the best Carnaval parties in Spain along with Las Islas Canarias and Cádiz, it’s also the gay capital so maybe that explains why so many men were dressed as women, and pulled it off quite well might I add.

Excited for Electric Zoo 2012!!

OK I know I have until Labor Day weekend, but I’m really excited for Electric Zoo since a) I didn’t go last year, B)  EVERY DJ I want to see will most likely be there, and C) It’s going to be a 3 day adventure with one of my best friends 🙂 (shout out for youu Katieee!) and D) The island that the festival takes place on is right near Brookyln so I’ll get to see mis amigas Isabel y Analy at Fordham! 😀   Anyways, I already bought one lime green sparkly tube top for one of the days, not sure if I’ll wear it yet, now I need two more outrageously colorful and fun outfits.

Sagrada Familia al dentro

Estoy segura que todo el mundo que conoce algo de Barcelona ha visto una fotografía de La Sagrada Familia.  Si no habeís visto, aquí teneís:

Según yo, la basilica no es muy “linda” afuera, es muy muy detallada y algunas cosas son muy extrañas.  La estructura y el trabajo de Gaudí es increíble sin duda pero creo que el dentro de la basilica es genial. Aquí teneís más fotos:

Roma, Italia

So the second week of February, I left early one morning to fly to Rome with my friends Ilana and Janae, while Paige and Lizzy were going to join us the following day since they couldn’t miss their classes.  It was cool flying further east since for Portugal we flew west ( aww towards home!)  So after the hour and a half flight we landed in Ciampino and had to get to the main train station of Roma, Termini.  I was really excited to use my Intermediate Italian II skills!!  After taking a bus from Ciampino Aeroporto to the Ciampino Stazione Ferroviaria we realized the train that goes to the center of Rome didn’t come that often, and when it did, we weren’t on the right platform of course.  After an hour we finally got on a train and off to Termini! The hostel, The Yellow was extremely close to the huge high tech train station of Termini so after checking in (seriously check in took FOREVER at this hostel, I think they wrote down every detail from my passport by hand) two of us went to one of the 6 person and Ilana went to another 6 person room.  The hostel was really big and had a bar downstairs, if you “liked” them on Facebook you got a free drink….so I’m sorry if it was on your newsfeed 8 times that I “liked” The Yellow that weekend…oh the power of “liking” then “unliking”…repeat = lots of free Long Island Iced Teas.

We knew the weather wasn’t going to be great for the following 3 days so we wanted to use up the nice sunshine of that day to go see some sights…after some Italian food of course!  In a few hours we managed to see an army procession at the Palacio del Quirinal for the President (Rome, being the capital,  had a ton of government and EU buildings), many Roman Catholic churches, statues, fountains, the Colosseum, Arco de Constantino, Fori Imperiali, bridges over the Tiber river, gelato, old textile factories, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, nutella, Via Condotti and Via del Corso.  SUPER tired after all that but we chilled in the bar with some new friends we made.

Lizzy and Paige joined us the next day, and we also had two new roommates in our room Michael from Germany who was just started his ERASMUS in Rome and was looking for a flat to rent and Jordan, the Australian who lives in Germany for now. Thank goodness we got some new roommates since the people prior to them smelled terribly but they left early in the morning.  Either way, it was very cold and rainy/snowy that day, it was very rare for Roma and all the locals in shops and pizzerias were telling us that its extremely unusual, which it is since the last time it snowed was 25 years before!

The next day our group and Jordan set out to see Vatican City, it was snowing and slighting sleeting but St.Peter’s Square was HUGE!  I imagined the entire square being filled by people to listen to Pope Jan Pawel II (Giovanni Paolo II) 🙂  We met some Australian pals in line and then we all walking around St. Peter’s Basilica, it was seriously the biggest covered building I’ve ever been in, such an ornate and beautiful basilica.  Plenty of pictures below.  Off course we couldn’t go to the top since it closed 4 minutes before, and we couldn’t go into the Sistine Chapel since there was a holiday of “sette de febbraio” where Mussolini tried to invade Vatican City but they resisted, I’m not sure, either way it wasn’t the 7th of February so I’m not sure why we couldn’t go in.  Bummer.

We fell for a tourist trap by going to a restaurant where most people pretended to not speak English and would tack on things to the orders and serve us things that we didn’t ask for and weren’t free (like bread!), “Ok 1 spaghetti, with meatballs yes?  Meatballs very good.  Tortellini I bring you meatballs too.”  No lady we did not ask for you 8 Euro meatballs.  She then proceeded to tell us that we can’t change the order since she already put it in the computer system (there was definitely no computer or any type of “system” in that restaurant, we could see the kitchen…it was 5 feet away).  We walked around some more sites, saw the monumento nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, really cool monument, fairly new but built in the same style like ancient Rome.  Then Paige and I attempted to go into the Colosseum…no go since it was closed due to the “snow” (they don’t know the real meaning of snow, there was maybe .5 inch on the sides of the sidewalks).  Bummer again, oh well, that night was fun, talking a bunch of languages to all the people we met at our hostel from Brasil, Argentina, Australia (and lots of other Southern Hemisphere since it’s summer break for them now), free beer pitchers and free Long Islands, that’s all from that night haha.

Ilana, Lourenço, Rafael and I all did some more seesighting the following day, running into the Colosseum is inevitable, then Piazza Navonna, Piazza Spagna, more churches and then joined the rest of the group for a delicious dinner!  I was pretty sad we didn’t get to go inside the Sistine Chapel and the Colosseum and that the weather got in the way of more walking around, but I guess this just mean I’ll have to go to the tiny city of Rome again haha, maybe not in prime summer tourist season though since I can’t imagine where people fit there.  We had to catch a bus to the airport early the next morning so most of us just chilled in the hostel’s bar, which is actually a popular place for people from other hostels and locals as well.  The Argentinian group was my favorite that night, of course one of them would pull out a guitar and all 15 of them started singing well known Argentinian songs…then came “Ai Se Eu Te Pego”…Argentina, Brasil, Mexico, Germany, USA and all other nationalities in the bar united in song at that point 😉

FEED ME @ Razzmatazz

Finally went to the massive SUPER-club in Barcelona, Razzmatazz!! Apparently there is no more Pacha here since Razzmatazz took over the scene.  It’s huge huge.  Felt like 5 huge clubs in multiple buildings with lots of passageways and backways and staircases and outdoor walkways.  I’m glad I saw FEED ME though!!!! Oh wait….he came on at 4:35am and I left at 4:20 -.-  I really wasn’t feeling well and we had already been partying for HOURS so I just decided to go home, he kept coming on stage to put a song on…then leave and let Daniel Dexter (the opening DJ who I didn’t know but was really awesome) play the rest.  The club was super cool though, I can’t wait to go back when I’m not sick.

Here’s a clip I got of Daniel Dexter:

Calçotada & Tibidabo

The first Saturday in febrero my study abroad program had a calçotada and hike planned out for us.  The hike was up Tibidabo which starts off as a walk through a fancy neighborhood of Barcelona and soon after its up a path up the mountain.  Great views and great hike 🙂  Now a calçotada is common and traditional in Catalunya, not the rest of Spain.  It’s comparable to having a “barbeque” back in the States with burgers and hot dogs, except here it’s with calçots that are fire roasted.  Calçots are a man made vegetable, and by that I mean the Catalan people years and years ago changed the pattern of growth of a regular onion so that it had the shape of a leek, with a milder onion taste.  I’m not quite sure how they did it.  Either way, the fire roasted oniony vegetables are dipped in sauce and you have to eat them in a certain way, with your hands haha! Then a few of us decided to climb all the way to the top of Tibidabo from the restaurant, we took a funicular and got to the cathedral on top, here’s the pictures below! P.s. thanks to Sarah, Isabel and Sammy for the pics 😉

Cook & Taste!

Drugiego lutego wkońcu miałam szanse troche pogotować!  Niby nam nie wolno gotować jeśli mieszkamy z rodziną katalońską, nie wiem czy kiedyś się coś stało czy poprostu zapobiegają żeby się nie przytrafiło.  Poszliśmy razem z grupą 10 osób do „Cook & Taste: Barcelona” w Barrio Gótico, najstarsza dzielnica w Barcelonie.  Jedzenie katalońskie jest wogóle inne niż hiszpańskie, nie ma dużo przypraw, je się dużo jedzenie morskiego ale też strasznie dużo „jamón”…szynka w każdej postaci co sobie możesz wyobrazić.  Najbardziej popularne to jest cała noga szynki, Jamón Iberico, jeszcze jest 100 rodzajów tej szynki, i czym wiecej czarna tym drosza, albo czym więcej żołędzi zjadła świnia (60% +) i czym wyżej w górach była hodowana to też już ekstra 50-60 Euro.  Mniejsza większość, nie lubię szynki…ani wiepszowinę, ani wołowinę…a kurczaka i indyka to wogóle się nie je tutaj.
ALE! ale ale, jedzenie na ”Cook & Taste” było naprawdę smaczne:

pa amb tomàquet

pa amb tomàquet po katalońsku, chleb z pomidorem i oliwą z oliwek

chupito de sopa de tomate al aroma de idiazabal, zupa pomidorowa na zimno i ser idiazabel

tortilla española, ale w Katalonii to (nic nie ma “español” w nazwie) tortilla de patatas, jajka i kartofle

paella valenciana (con pollo)

crema catalana, coś podobnego jak budyń

PORTO PORTO PORTO

I’m obsessed with Porto, can you tell by the title of this post? Porto, Portugal was absolutely amazing and unfortunately I’ve been comparing all my trips to Porto (since I’m writing this 2 months late and catching up with the times…) which is just not fair since nothing yet has compared.  The people, the city, the history, the atmosphere, and just the actual place was fantastic, definitely made Portugal one of my favorite places I’ve ever been to.  Which explains as to why I’m applying for a summer course at universities in Portugal, but nothing is set in stone yet, well actually, nothing is EVER set in stone with me until the last minute but that’s another story.

So January 26th, a group of 12 of us girls, (yep! 12!), embarked on our first trip of the semester outside of Spain.  All I remember is that I saw that flights to Porto, Portugal were cheap that weekend and found a cool looking hostel on hostelworld.com, I sent out a few facebook messages, this soon became a thread of 17 or so people.  Either way, the trip to the airport was interesting enough seeing as Sammy, Robin and I thought that we could just get on the first train to come to the correct platform, well we were wrong and thank goodness for the girl sitting across from us who heard us being excited about our trip.  We went really far out of the way.  Like had to take 2 more trains to get to the airport after getting off somewhere outside of Barcelona and way past the airport.  A 30 min trip turned into an hour and a half but we gave ourselves plenty of time for mistakes of the sort.

First encounters with Ryanair!

So after getting to Porto after a relatively short flight we made our way to the hostel, first hostel experience for many of us!  It was late in the night and a weekday so no one was out in the streets but it turned out that our hostel was on a main shopping street, Rua de Santa Catarina and we saw the first of many blue tiled buildings!  This one is Capela das Almas which became my landmark as to find my way home when asking locals while “lost”.

While checking in we were checked in by Jorge who was awesome and probably one of the wisest people I’ve ever met.  He told us how he likes workings night since people can be the best but also the worst, he then told us “I don’t like people in particular, but I love people in general.”  A real Portuguese Confucius.  He told us how he used to work as a night manager in Ireland in a fancy hotel but has since returned to his city of Porto.  He was one of the most open and friendliest people I had met, and soon we’d find out that Portuguese people are all incredibly friendly and open (though Jorge’s wisdom was by far one of a kind).  The hostel was big, clean and felt like a lovely house that we were invited to.

We all went to sleep and got up the next morning to go for a walking tour after breakfast [with Pancho Tours, best tour guides ever, here’s a little advertisement 😉 ]  We met a group of Brazilian boys in our hostel who also went on the tour with us, might I add that every Brazilian and Portuguese that I met speaks perfect English?  Smart people.  Well here’s some pictures from the tour with Tiago and Liliane and the rest of that day (ignore repeats of previous pictures, I don’t know how work this site very well):

Igreja de São Francisco

It was probably one of the coolest days I’ve ever had, I’m not quite sure how to even describe it.  The atmosphere, the people, the weather, the excitment all together.

Then, after some hostel pregaming and dinnner we went out on the pub crawl with Graca and Tiago woohoo!

Next day we went to Matosinhos, the beach area about 15 min outside of Porto, I really liked it, it had waves! Yay Atlantic Ocean haha. As opposed to the calm Mediterranean beach waters of Barcelona.  Did some more exploring around this amazing city and had a big happy family hostel dinner 😀

Only downside was having a 6:30 am flight which involved taking a 4:30 bus to the airport, but Holly, João and Luciano and I all figured staying up and going on another pub crawl was the more practical route 🙂

ALSO, did I mention that Portuguese sounds absolutely nothing like Spanish (castellano), to me it sounded like a Russian twist on a romantic language like Spanish.  Definitely sounds like a Slavic pronunciations, when I pronounced names of places with a Spanish accent, a few people actually asked me to repeat it since they thought the accent was funny.  Anyways, in conclusion to this extremely long post, I apologize since I’m still getting the hang of this blogging thing and website, but I really really enjoyed Porto it was a beautiful city with great history and some of the friendliest people, and it’s one of my favorite places ever.  Going to end this post with the song that I sang about 1000 times in Porto since it’s in Portugues (well…Brasilian), and for all those who know how well I sing, well I’ll just leave it at that.

Week 3 Continued: Galleries & El Clásico

So this was a very “culture packed” week since I’m pretty sure I went to a museum or expo every single day of the week up until the trip to Porto, Portugal!  I went to a photo expo near Liceu of the photographer Claude Cahun with my stylistics class (the class has 5 people, it’s great).  Really interesting photographs!  Cahun’s work is very vague and gender-ambiguous.  Here is an example:

the expo

 

Later that week…..El Clásico!!!!

OK so I don’t want to talk about the fact that I could buy tickets and I tried over 40 times yet my card would just not work on the ticketing site. So at first Mel and I tried finding a decent place to watch the game, at first we were drawn to a bar off La Rambla by a nice Ukrainian boy who promised us free shots just for stopping by…..literally all juice.  We left shortly after due to an annoying Argentinian bartender who would not let us chill in peace.  Also there was only a tiny TV in the corner.  Left within 15 minutes.  I then proceeded to ask the police…well actually “guardana urbana,” about where we should watch the game, they recommended a place right next to their station in the area called “Sports Bar”…..decent name.  Anyways, we ended up going there and I discovered mojitos.  They’re great.  The bar was really big and had a big screen set up and soon after all the girls joined us.

After Barcelona won the Copa del Rey matches against Madrid, we went to celebrate at Fuente de Canaletas on La Rambla which is where all Barca fans go to celebrate after matches, golly gee it was awesome!! Sang, screamed, cheered and met nice Scots!  Here’s some pics and a video 🙂