February 8th after a long day of class I grabbed my bag and headed to the airport with my friend Emma. Hoping we would make it in time for our 7:30 p.m. flight to Barcelona, Spain. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and had dinner at Wonder Tree Cafe. The food there was interesting, but good. After our meal we ran to our gate and boarded the plane.
Unfortunately sometime after we boarded, their boarding system broke and we had to wait on the plane for two hours for the rest of the passenger's to board, which was as boring as it sounds. This delay caused our 10:30 flight to land at midnight, and we didn't make it to our airbnb until after one.
Did I forget to mention that our airbnb was a sailboat? Because it was, and it was amazing! It has always been a dream of mine to sleep on a boat, don't ask why I'm just strange like that, and to be able to do it in Spain of all places was amazing!
Speaking of amazing, Spain in general is amazing, although they do need to work on their public transportation. It's not tourist friendly in the sense that it's not bilingual and confusing to use.
Back on track, we only had one full day in Spain, so we had to budget our time wisely. We bought "hop on hop off" bus tickets, which for 30 euros basically gave you a free ride around they city so I highly recommend it! You can use it all day, and because of it we didn't have to pay for transport until we wanted to go back to the airbnb. We also got to see the whole city, which I don't think we would've been able to do any other way. It was a great way to learn about the history of the city I once knew so little about. It also reaffirmed just how important the Olympics are for the economy.
After our tour we had dinner at a tapa's bar, and by the time we were done it was already ten o'clock and we were exhausted. Getting back to the airbnb wasn't as easy as getting into Barcelona is. We discovered the line we needed was under construction, listened to the wrong creepy guy in the subway, and got lost. We had to call a taxi and be "rescued" but we made it. It was a learning experience, that's the best way to describe it. By the time we got back to the boat it was already 11:30. We picked up a little for checkout in the morning and then crashed.
One thing I knew I wanted to do the minuet I stepped onto the boat was watch the sunrise, and that's exactly how I started my day the morning we had to leave. I forced my friends to wake up and watch the sunrise with me, which was basically them popping their head out of the boat to look then retreating back inside, myself on the other hand, I watched. I've always had a thing for sunsets, I just find them so beautiful. Well a sunrise in Spain is even more beautiful. Beautiful doesn't even really describe how breathe taking it was, but I'm pretty sure the English language doesn't have a word for it, so i'll take what I got.
We left pretty early Sunday morning. We were off the boat by 8:30 and in a cab by 9:00 so we didn't have time to do anything. In fact we even got breakfast in the airport because we were were worried about missing our plane, although we got there with plenty of time to spare.
It was a good trip, there was stress but that's to come with traveling. Especially when you don't speak Spanish. I don't know how to summarize it, it still doesn't feel completely real you know? Like i'm living my wildest dream right now and I'm just waiting to wake up.
Once again I saved the bottom of the blog for a photo dump, so I hope you enjoy.
The only thing I regret about Spain is that I never did get to find out for myself if "the rain in Spain falls gently on the plains" or not. Oh well, maybe next time.
As Always,
Talia