Barcelona

Fri June 8 - A weekend in Barcelona began! We left Valencia at 1130 to Barcelona. The trip was through the school so we took a bus there full of 55 students. It took 5 hours to get there with a 45 min lunch stop. We arrived in Barcelona and went right to the Sagrada Familia which is a cathedral that has been being built for 90 years and still has a long way to go. It is maybe going to be doen in 10 years but that is will be a push. It was designed by Antonio Gaudi who is a well known Spanish Architect. He has works throughout the city of Barcelona. The cathedral will have one main tower that will be 500 feet tall when done. Surrounding that are four towers representing Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are three entrances to the cathedral and each has four towers so 12 total which represent the 12 disciples. Everything in the cathedral has a biblical significance. The inside of the cathedral is based off of nature and looks like a forest. The huge tree looking structured have a foundation or "roots" that go seven stories down. Because of this they are really strong and support everything so the walls do not support much. This allows the walls to be more ornate than functional. The walls are filled with stained glass. The choir loft in the cathedral can fit 2000 singers! There is also a chapel below the main sanctuary.

We had a tour guide with us all weekend to tell us about things. She spoke in english which made it easy to understand what was going on but I kind of which she would have spoken Spanish because that would have helped me learn a lot. At the Sagrada Familia we got headsets. Below is Sam and I with headsets.
After the Sagrada Familia we went to hotel to check in. Our hotel was out of the city like 15 minutes which was kind of a bummer but it was nice. I shared a room with Jaclyn and Sam. our hotel was called Las Tres Torres.
Our room was made into a triple with a third bed in place of the night stand. I slept in the middle and at the head of the bed there were the three light switches so during the night I accidentally turned them on, oops!
At 930, we met back up again to go to Las Ramblas which is the main street in Barcelona. There are lots of restaurants, stores and people. Barcelona is much more touristy than Valencia. Every time we went to a store or restaurant the people immediately spoke english to us. I would try to respond in spanish so that I could practice my spanish. The streets were full of people trying to get you to go to their club or restaurant. We grabbed dinner at a burger place so I got tortilla potato. It was really good. We ventured out into night life around 11, which is way to early for anything to be happening. We walked along the marina which was really pretty. The marina in Barcelona is really big. The waves at the beach were much bigger than the waves in Valencia and were so pretty. We ran into some friends and found a place on the beach that was free so we tried it out. After about 40 minutes we decided to call it a night. We grabbed a cab home and passed out after a long day. 

More about my weekend to come!