Jetting off to España: Barcelona and Ibiza

I just have to say that I love three day weekends. So much travel time! So, in honor of our first three day weekend that there wasn't an IES trip I was going on my friend Allie and head jetted off to Spain.

We left Thursday evening for Barcelona. Our plane was delayed so it was pretty late when we got in. Luckily, the Spanish (or in Barcelona it's mostly the Catalans) stay up super late (even later than most Europeans). We checked into a hostel, got some dinner, drank some Sangria, and headed to bed after that.

We got up on Friday morning and went on a bike tour of Barcelona! We went with Fat Tire Bike Tours which I would highly recommend to anybody who likes to bike (and can bike obviously; it's a pretty easy bike though) and wants to get an idea of what to see. My roommates had told us about it so we decided to go and it was definitely worth the twenty euros we paid for it (which was a pretty good deal in my opinion for a four hour, guided bike tour in English). We saw the outsides of things but that was fine because we just went back to the places we wanted to see more of.

We started the bike tour at the Plaza Sant Jaume which is the political center of Barcelona to today and includes the city hall. We also saw Plaza del Rei which is where the palace Ferdinand and Isabella lived in. We saw where they tied people to the wall and poured boiling oil on them during the Spanish Inquisition (which was all Isabella's idea...although Ferdinand really didn't stop it. Isabella hated the Catalans and since Ferdinand never stood up for his own people no Catalans today will name their children Ferdinand or Isabella). We also saw the steps that Christopher Columbus scaled many times to ask Queen Isabella for the boats to find "Asia" and instead he found the new world. We saw the Music Palace which looks like Gaudi (the famous architect of Barcelona, if you don't know anything about him look it up) but was done by a contemporary. It's gorgeous to see even from the outside. My Aunt Kathy told me that it's nice to see inside as well (she gave me a bunch of ideas before I went to Barcelona and I was so glad that this one was on our bike tour) but we didn't get around to that. We kind of saw the Barcelona Cathedral but there was a festival in the way so it was hard to see. However, I learned that in order to be a cathedral the church must have the remains of some saint. Well, Barcelona took this to heart and collected over 700 body parts of saints. Crazy!

We saw the Arc de Triomf, and yes, Barcelona has one too. Theirs is red brick and very pretty. I think I liked it more than the Paris Arc de Triomph because it was in a much more serene area. You could walk the area around it and you weren't fearing for your life. We got to bike right underneath it which was fun. We then went to the Parc de la Ciutadella right next to the arc where the Gaudi Cascades are (which Gaudi was only an apprentice on but when it was being finished he'd become famous so he gets a lot of credit now). It's a beautiful park and was fun to bike through. We got to see the outside of the only bull fighting arena in Barcelona that still hosts bullfighting. Bullfighting was never a Catalan thing and was imported. They hated it so the government decided to be nice and ban it, however, the Catalans don't like following the laws so the next Sunday they held a bullfight. Apparently you can go any Sunday from April to September and see a bullfight there but they are going to try and ban bullfighting again in 2012. Other laws we learned about in Barcelona that are never followed:
-It is illegal to bike without a helmet on (nobody on the tour had a helmet on...)
-It is illegal to smoke in any bar or restaurant (there was smoking in every bar and restaurant)
-It is illegal to walk around with shorts and no shirt on. However, take off those shorts and you're not in violation of any law.

After that we went up to Sagrada Familia which is Gaudi's cathedral that has been under construction forever. It's pretty crazy looking but really cool at the same time. I loved it, it was just so unique. Interesting fact about Gaudi, he was killed from injuries he sustained after being hit by a tram. He designed the Barcelona tram system. Talk about irony. He also sold all his assets to keep working on Sagrada Familia and moved in there for the last few years of his life (before the tram accident). I also learned that when Franco was in power he hated anything Catalan and would burn down all Catalan buildings (he also allowed Barcelona to be used to bombing practice). However, Sagrada Familia is all stone and couldn't be burned down so instead Gaudi's workshop and all the blueprints were burned. The current plan for Sagrada Familia has been created from still existing pictures of Gaudi's plans but are probably rather inaccurate because Gaudi always designed as he went.

After Sagrada Familia we went to Port Olympic which was built up for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. They added a ton of beach with sand they imported from the Sahara desert so that Barcelona has the most beach front of any city in the world (and they kinda cheated for it). Then we biked to the beach, had a wonderful lunch on the beach, and biked back to the Fat Tire store (after everybody on the tour had consumed sangria...). It was a great way to start the day.

After the tour we wandered a bit and ended up at La Rambla which is one of the main streets through down. We saw a theater, a lot of street performers, and went into this indoor market my Aunt Kathy told me about that had so much beautiful food. We wandered around taking pictures before heading to the Barcelona Cathedral again. We were able to get a few better pictures and then I got to go in. I saw all the chapels with various saint remains buried in them including Saint Cecilia (patron saint of music), Saint Ambrose (patron saint of Milan), Saint George (patron saint of Spain...they refer to him as Sant Jordi they love him so much), and Saint Eulalia who was tortured to death for three days in the streets of Barcelona back when Christianity was illegal because she refused to renounce her beliefs. She was only thirteen when all of this happened and seven years after Constantine came to Barcelona and declared Christianity legal.

We then went to another indoor market, a less touristy one, chilled by the Arc de Triomf, and went to dinner. We had gotten recommendations from our guide from the bike tour and ironically ended up at the Mexican restaurant she recommended. We figured if we were missing Mexican food that Spain would be the best, and most ironic, place to get it. After that we were so tired from biking (it was about seven miles according to the Fat Tire website) that we went back to our hostel and slept like rocks.

We got up on Saturday and headed back to Sagrada Familia. We waited in line for about an hour to get in but it's so beautiful on the inside. My friend Allie wasn't a fan of the outside but she even agreed that the inside was beautiful. Gaudi loved his columns and his stained glass. We also went under the church into the crypt where there's a museum about the progress of Sagrada Familia that was interesting. We then took the metro up to the Park Guell which is the park that Gaudi designed. It's really nice and has some cool architecture including a long, serpentine bench. There are also fantastic views of the city up there. I really want to go back and see even more of it.

We met up with three friends who were also in Barcelona for lunch before heading and getting our backpacks from the hostel. Our plan was to see the magic fountain they have but we failed to realize that it's only on at night and that it's under construction. However, it turns out we were by the National Palace and the Olympic Park so we wandered those for a bit. We actually got up the hills by escalator which was cool and nice since we had our heavy backpacks on. Finally we had to catch the aerobus and our plane to the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.

Ibiza was gorgeous the minute we saw the water. We ended up in a pretty nice hotel because the place we originally booked got shut down early due to lack of occupancy (it was the very end of high season) and they moved us at no cost. It was pretty awesome and we had water views. We went to dinner, chilled a bit, and then went to sleep.

Sunday we slept in which was much needed. Then we spent the whole day relaxing on the beach. We walked a bit, wandered through a small bit of the town right on the water, but mostly just had a nice time relaxing before getting and early dinner and heading to the Ibiza airport for our flight back to Milan. After all our beautiful sun in Spain we were sadly met with fog, rain, and cold in Milan. However, it's good to be "home" after a long trip. But I can't wait for the next one!