Barcelona

I'm back from a long weekend away to Barcelona, Spain. Me, along with 4 other girls, flew into the city on Thursday night and stayed until Monday morning. Our first day was consisted of laying out on the beach for the day. We got there early and took a few breaks for lunch and walks but enjoyed soaking in the rays for the majority of the day. While we preferred to keep our suits on, a lot of women prefer the "no tan-lines" look and went around the beach topless. One older woman, unfortunately for us, took post right in front of us in nothing but a G-string bottom - yikes! While we were there we were approached by a girl going out and recruiting people for a bar crawl that night and so we signed up. According to the girl, they usually get about 45 people a night; well that night they had quite a few less...only 11 of us total. We went to 3 bars and then ended our night at a huge club on the beach. It was fun but we all agreed, not worth all the money we had to pay. My first few nights at the hostel we stayed at I didn't get much sleep due to an old guy that was also in our large room. His snoring was like a fog horn. Sleeping with my fingers in my ears didn't even drone out the noise. The night of the bar crawl we didn't get home til around 5am...I'm still catching up on sleep.
Anyways, our next two days were mainly sightseeing. We went on an informative walking tour of the city and got a lot of history. Basically, Barcelona was hardly on the map until they started preparing for hosting the Olympics in 1992 and now it's one of the most popular vacation and visited cities in the world. All the beaches that they are known for weren't there before the Olympics, they were man-made by shipping tons and tons of sand over from the Sahara desert. So technically...I've buried my my feet in the Sahara! We also spent a day doing mainly Gaudi sights. Gaudi is the famous architect from the city that started the Sagrada Familia church there. This church was absolutely exquisite. Construction started in 1882 and it still isn't finished. Gaudi was a very "out-of the-box" designer and the inside is supposed to resemble a forest almost. The inside hardly has much done, but we could catch the foresty sense already. It's doubtful that it will be done in my lifetime, but I think it'd be amazing to take a trip back there in 50 years and see how much progress they've made. Gaudi also designed a few apartments in the city which stand out and are pretty different. We ended by visiting the park that, again, was designed by Gaudi himself. For all my America's Next Top Model girls, it's where the final runway show was held during the season of Melrose and Carrie D :) We spent a few of our nights at the Traveler's Bar which was down the street from our hostel. Barcelona is a gorgeous city, but its one downfall is the number of pickpocketing that goes on. We were in McDonald's late one night (I know McDonalds? really? it's open late, that was our excuse.You wouldn't believe how popular it is here in Europe - and expensive!!!) and one of my friends was just finished ordering and we noticed a guy (nicely dressed mind you) standing close next to her and someone told her how creepy it was. She turned towards him and caught him with his hand in her purse grabbing her wallet. She screamed luckily, slapped his hand and he freaked out, didn't get anything and took off out of Mickey D's. That was our last night there though, and we made it through the trip without anything taken. I feel like I just got back from Barcelona, and now I have to start packing and I take off for Amsterdam tomorrow. I'll have more pics from there and I also will add some pics soon hopefully of my neighborhood, dorm, and room for all you to see where I've been spending my days here in Milan. Enjoy the pics! Ciao from Italy.