Spring Break '11, Parte Quatro (Barcelona)

Does anybody remember that show called Family Matters with Steve Urkel and crew? Well, I forgot to mention in the Madrid post, but while we were in Madrid, I got to watch real TV for the first time since I've been here (that I can remember at least), and guess what was on. Yeah, Family Matters. Who would've thought?

Barcelona
Next up on our trip was Barcelona. We arrived there at like 7:00 PM on Thursday and went to walk around. Just like everyone says, it is really, really touristy, but that's because the city has a LOT to do for everyone. Seriously. We didn't really do anything on Thursday, but I did eat chicken paella (paella is the rice thing that Spain is supposed to be famous for). It was pretty good at the beginning and it was okay at the end, I kind of got tired of it as I was eating it.

The next day, we went on a free tour of Barcelona (not the normal ones we go on with New Europe Tours or whatever) and it wasn't bad. But I think the reason it wasn't as good as the ones we usually go on is because Barcelona is more of a city you need to experience rather than tour, and it's way too big to do a walking tour of. During the tour, we saw a place that had 4 euro haircuts, so a few of us went there to get them afterwards. The guy was so fast, and didn't even use anything electronic. That night, we went to the casino in Barcelona where I played blackjack and roulette. I lost like 5 euros at roulette, and then proceeded to go up 15 at blackjack and end up down 20, but it was definitely fun. Also got instructions on how to get to the casino in... you guessed it, Hindi. Seriously.

The next day, we woke up and rented bikes (10 euro for the entire day), which was freaking awesome. We saw the outside of La Sagrada Familia (the line was probably like 2 hours long, at least), Barcelona's Arc de Triomf, biked along the beach, and went up to see the castle in Barcelona. Funny story about the arc - it was built for the World Fair. Another proposal? The Eiffel Tower. Paris had the fair the next year, so they decided to build the Eiffel Tower. Another funny story - we saw the castle on the map and decided it'd be a cool thing to go see. Little did we know it was up a gigantic hill, but we braved it out. It took us like an hour to get up to the castle, and literally like five minutes to get down with our bikes.

The last day, we went to go see the chocolate factory (not that cool, to me at least). We wanted to go to the market, the biggest market in Spain, but apparently it's closed on Sundays, so that was kind of a let down. We headed back on the train at around 6:00 PM and that was basically the end of our Spring Break. Another funny thing, when we left Spain, it was like 60 degrees. We had a train exchange literally right inside the French border. We got out, and it was like 40 and windy. Welcome to France.

Oh, and the passport thing. So we were at a random park with our bikes, and there's this awesome fountain, so we all get off our bikes and go up. I get down first, and there's a cop there with two horses. He stops me, points to a spot and says something in Catalan, so I assume what he's saying is to go around so the horses don't get bothered. I start moving and I soon realize he's telling me to stand there. He starts asking me for my passport, and I'm like crap, I don't know how to speak Catalan - I can only somewhat speak Spanish! So I tell him that, but he doesn't really listen. But he started talking in Spanish, or I magically began to understand him, so I guess it was okay (Cool! I talked to a cop in Spanish!). I catch random phrases like 'Te nervioso?' which means 'Are you nervous?' I'm like crap, this guy thinks I'm going to blow up this park or something. But yeah, so he's like are you here by yourself, and I tell him there's 9 of us and I don't think he believed me. So he just stood there and waited for his partner (meanwhile, two girls come up and ask to take pictures with the horses and he says yes, all while I'm standing there getting my passport checked). The guy comes down, and one of my friends starts to come down, so I point him out. The police officer calls him over and asks him if we're friends, and he says yes. Then the guy lets me go and tells me to be careful. I THINK (maybe this is me trying to be optimistic) that he thought I was part of a group of two people at the top of the fountain that were trying to get people to sign stuff (which sometimes means they're going to pickpocket people), but who knows. I think overall in Spain, I got my passport inspected (not checked) like 4 times, but whatever, such is life.

Now, pictures!

Chicken paella

Modern art of George Orwell getting shot in the neck, in George Orwell square, which funnily enough, is under 24 hour video surveillance (big brother!)

Space invader - Apparently these things are at random streets all over the world at places of important history. This one was outside of the school Picasso and other famous people learned from.

A portrait of Eulalia - a 13 year old girl who was tortured in 13 different ways because of defending her beliefs (she died after the 13th one). The street to the right is named after her - it's called the Descent of Saint Eulalia. Her 13th torture was to be put in barrel of knives and razors and be rolled down the hill of that street.

A Barcelona (or Catalonian, not sure) tradition. At any festival, they have a person-pyramid competition. Apparently the record is like 10 stories or something. This was on the architecture building.

Barcino - the original name of the city before it was renamed Barcelona.

Foozball table in our hostel

All of us on bikes!

The park

(this was the fountain, the cop with the horses was to the right)

Arc de Triomf, right outside the park

La Sagrada Familia

The beach

On the way up to the castle... (You can see La Sagrada Familia clearly in this picture)

...the next level of the ascent...

...and at the very top of the castle. We biked up that far and back down. It was awesome.

Chocolate museum pictures (all of these were made of chocolate)

Spring Break '11, Parte Tres (Valencia)

Just got back from Paris earlier this morning, but before I update anything about that, I'm going to finish the story of Spring Break. This will also probably be a relative short post, since we were only in Valencia for approximately 24 hours.

Valencia
We arrived in Valencia at about 3 PM. After finding and getting to our hostel (it took about 45 minutes), we went to find something to eat. Here, we found the first all-you-can-eat buffet I have seen in Europe! For those of you don't know me, I eat a lot, and in Europe they do not have good portion sizes, so this was awesome. It cost only about 10 euros, but there wasn't that much variety. That night we went to some bars and met people from all over - Canada, Italy, Germany, and Poland. But before going out, we saw the towers that used to guard the city and got to go up into one to the top, which was pretty awesome. The next morning, our train was around 3 PM, and we still hadn't seen much of Valencia, so we decided to go to the area of the city with the museums, which look really, really cool (pictures below). The only problem was that we decided to go there at 1 PM. Basically, we ended up making it back with the help of a really nice Valencian, a taxi driver, and some really fast walking.

Two let downs: while talking to the taxi driver, we found out that we missed bull fighting and the la fiesta del fuego (the party of fire, a huge city-wide party where the city is basically shut down and everyone is in the streets) by about a month. I also got my passport checked (like inspected and flipped through rather than just skimmed over) a few times, which seemed to be a trend throughout Spain (more on that during Barcelona).

The only thing I would recommend is to rent bikes and getting around that way because it is a really nice city, like I said before, and to spend time in the area with the museum buildings, because, once again, it is really, really pretty.

The view from the tower

The Valencia market with strawberries not nearly as good as those in Madrid :(

The museum area

By the way, notice the sunny weather. 77 degrees in Valencia. Why am I in France again?

Next Up: Barcelona

Spring Break '11, Parte Dos (Lisboa)

I realized that a lot of times when I write these blog posts, I use it as a means to procrastinate, as in now, when I should be doing the tons of economics homework I have. I have also noticed that, for most cities, the actual names sound a lot better than the English names for them.

Lisboa (Lisbon)
So we took a night train from Madrid leaving March 19 and arriving on March 20 at like 9ish AM at Lisboa Oriente (keep this station in mind). This was the coolest city on the trip for a few reasons. First off, when we got there, it was bright and sunny, probably the first time I've experienced it that much my entire time in Europe. Secondly, Lisboa is a coast city, therefore the beach is walking distance and is pretty visible the entire time. Thirdly, a bunch of cool things happened there.

The city of Lisboa reminded me a lot of San Fransisco in the US. If you've been there, you know what I mean. The city is very hilly, there are trams everywhere, and they even have a bridge that looks identical to the Golden Gate Bridge. Anyway, by the time we arrived it was early morning and we were really hungry. Unfortunately, in the city, since it was Sunday, everything was closed. This meant we walked around for over an hour and a half looking for food. We finally found a museum that was open and walked around there for a little while before going to a restaurant right outside of it, which ended up being the best idea ever. While we were there, a few people in our group began to talk to the bartender about stuff to do in the city. Apparently, he used to work for the local soccer ('football') team (Sporting Clube de Portugal, or Sporting for short). Coincidentally, they were playing their biggest rivals (Benfica) the next day, and he told us he'd be able to get us tickets. This was the equivalent of, from what it sounded like, going to a Yankees-Red Sox game, a Lakers-Celtics game, whatever - you get the picture. Needless to say, we were pretty excited. So the rest of the day, we kind of relaxed and walked around the city. We even walked down the coast at night, which was really, really cool. We also got to see a guy in a suit get thrown into some tables at a bar. The most ironic part of the night, to me at least, was that, earlier in the day, we were discussing the languages spoken amongst the 9 people in our group (English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi). On the way back from the bar we went to, we tried to take a shortcut, failed, and some guy gave us directions to get back. In Hindi. In Europe. Of all the languages we spoke.

The next day we went to the beach, but also called Francisco (the guy from the bar), and told him we wanted the tickets - 18 euros per person, for 8 people. For a rivalry game. 3rd floor up. On the '50 yard line'. The beach was awesome, but the highlight of the day was definitely the game. Francisco even gave me his scarf, which is basically what defines your team. The only thing that sucked about the night was that Sporting lost, 2-0. However, I do have a European soccer team that I will now follow. I also saw a guy on a motorcycle get hit by a car, sit idle for a minute, get up, shake the dude's hand, get his bike, and leave while I was at the beach.

But back to the game for a minute - the game was crazy. There were riot police, almost saw a fight break out, saw red fire in the stands (when the other team scored - their color was red, we are green), flares on the field, etc. This is normal for the soccer game. In fact, it was probably tame compared to others.

The next day, we went shopping, went to the beach again for a little while, and headed to the train station to go home (Lisboa Oriente). Our train, for some reason, left from Lisboa São Sebastião, I think. Luckily, Lisboa São Sebastião is the last stop on the line, and it stops at Lisboa Oriente before it leaves.

Overall though, Lisboa was awesome. It was a really nice city and it was really calm and relaxing. And they have my favorite football club there.

First view right when we got off the metro.

Tiny door to our hostel

This was the street in front of our hostel after they had been cleaning up for a while. Apparently a huge party had happened there last night.

Sun + 'Golden Gate Bridge'

My attempts at taking cool macro pictures at various parts of the trip -

Walking along the coast at night

The beach

Pictures from the soccer game

Benfica scoring their first goal :(

Random graffiti I saw around, kinda interesting.

Weird things about Lisboa:

Visa and Mastercard are not really accepted there.

Their metros do not have sensors on the doors, and they close within like literally 5 seconds. Two of our group got stuck outside of one and had to wait for the next one because of this.

Lots of Indian shopkeepers and Indian food in the Cascais (the city the beach was in).

Next up: Valencia