Barcelona: Like Disneyland, but better!

NOW BEGINS THE SPRING BREAK POSTS. I HOPE YOU ARE ALL EXCITED.
Okay. Caps lock probably wasn't necessary. But whatever. LET'S BEGIN.

After saying goodbye to my family on Thursday, I did a quick load of laundry and then repacked to head off to Spain and Portugal with my lovely roommate Michaela! After a long day of struggles with planes, trains, and automobiles (if you really want to hear about my public transportation issues, just ask me) we finally made it to our hotel in Barcelona approximately 6 hours after my plane landed in Barcelona. Our hotel was around a 15 minute drive away from the airport. Just saying. The fact that our hotel had a complimentary mini-bar made up for it. Kind of.

Since we got there late, and we didn't really want to try and tackle Spain's public transportation system in the dark, we asked our concierge if there was any place within walking distance for us to eat dinner. She said that there were loads of restaurants just across the street! It turns out she was talking about the food court in the mall, but whatever. We ate there anyway. We picked up some muffins for breakfast and a nice pack of FIESTA SNACK MIX for when we get hungry at night and then settled into our very comfortable beds and watch Million Pound Drop - Ninos Edition where instead of betting on a million pounds, they bet on regalos. It got pretty intense.

Saturday morning we decided to take a bus tour! We successfully took the Metro to Placa Catalunya and bought 2-day bus tour tickets and sat ourselves on a bus and took off! We got off at the Sagrada Familia, which was actually beautiful and still not complete even though it was started 150 years ago, and I bought some sunglasses for 5 euros because I forgot mine in Glasgow. GOOD THINKING MEL. Soon it was lunch time, and we stopped at the first cafe that looked safe and went in and bought sandwiches. As soon as we sat down they started playing Ke$ha, so obviously we picked the right place to have lunch. This place also had the most delicious frozen lemonade I have ever had in my life. Yummy! After lunch, we took the bus tour to Park Guell, which was home to some amazing sculptures by the man who basically built all of Barcelona (at least, to my understanding). It was SO cool. Made mostly of mosaics. Also very, very hot and sunny! It was getting close to siesta time, so we made our way back to the hotel and took our own little siesta before heading out for dinner.

us in front of Park Guell

Post-siesta, we made our way back to Placa Catalunya (aka the center of Barcelona hot-spots) and found some dinner! We ate at this nice place called the Happy Bar & Grill, where they had jokes of the day on the back of the bathroom stalls. The joke of our day was "What has four legs, is big, fuzzy, and green, and would kill you if it fell out of a tree? A pool table." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. But actually, it's one of my new favorite jokes. ANYWAY.

When we checked in, the woman at the front desk told us about this "fountain and music show, it's just like Las Vegas!" I kind of squealed a little and basically demanded that we go see it. We stopped by after dinner and watched it. It was only five minutes long, ten at the most, and because it was still sunny out you couldn't see any of the lights. But there was music and dancing fountains, so I was pretty stoked about it regardless. We also had coupons for this thing called "ICEBARCELONA" so obviously we had to go there. It was an ice bar, located on the beach, except it was really just a 12 x 12 room made of ice and kind of cold and things were melting.. it is definitely one of the most ridiculous things Michaela and I have ever done, and that's saying something, because Michaela and I do a lot of ridiculous things. After ICEBARCELONA we headed back to our room, watched some One Direction and Miley Cyrus music videos, and went to bed!

Sunday was a bit less eventful. We rode the other line of the bus tour all the way around, and then got off at Placa Catalunya and stopped at Starbucks (oops we're American). Then we got back on the bus and went to Olympic Village, which definitely makes Mel's Top 10 Places in the World list (along with other exotic locations such as Istanbul and, you know, Disney World). It was so beautiful, and so cool just to be there! I don't even know what else to say besides the fact that I just loved it and I never wanted to leave. But then we did. We went back for our siesta (nothing was open, anyway) and then decided to explore La Rambla for dinner! We ate at this really good italian restaurant and walked along looking at all of the shops and such. It was a very relaxing day.

This seems like a lot of writing, and also I'm hungry, so I guess I will write about Portugal later. Hope you're enjoying all of this nonsense!

Mel