Hello, and welcome back to another week of my life in Barcelona. This week, I went to classes and worked as usual, but I also went to Milan, Italy, for the weekend.
monday, september 13th
I slept terribly last night. I’m talking maybe five hours because it took me about three to fall asleep. When my alarm went off this morning, I was seriously considering sleeping some more, but I decided to get up and walk to the gym, where I had a great leg day. Then, I came back to my apartment before class and attempted to make coffee with our old-fashioned coffee maker that we were given (I’m not sure how old-fashioned it is but it’s definitely not the Nespresso machine I have at home). It was a failure so I bought coffee at my favorite cafe across the street instead. After my architecture class, I worked for a few hours, and then it was time for Mediterranean Politics, in person. It was fine, but honestly, a bit boring. Then I went to International Business class and after that, my roommates and I got empanadas for dinner. We are exploring a variety of cuisines here, and these empanadas were delicious. I will probably go back there sometime soon. After dinner, I applied to a couple of jobs (just senior things), and then I went to bed!
tuesday, september 14th
After a much better sleep than the previous night, I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to conquer the day. I went to the gym, came back home, and then headed off to my first class of the day, Inequality, Poverty, and Globalization. After that, I was looking forward to eating the salad I bought to have for lunch, only to take a bite of it and realize that it was disgusting. That was disappointing, but I’ll get over it. After putting in more hours for work, I headed to my second and final class of the day, Intercultural Communication, where I was the first person asked to answer a question, and I turned bright red when I was speaking. Thank goodness for masks because I think mine successfully concealed my tomato-red face. For dinner tonight, it was just me and one of my roommates, and we really wanted pasta. So, we found a place with great reviews that was a ten-minute walk from us, only to get there and see that it was closed. It was tragic. We ended up finding another pasta place a few minutes away, so we ate there instead, and it was good, but I’m certain the other place would have been better. Hopefully, we can go there sometime in the future, and it will actually be open.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH
Today was a big day. After my usual gym adventure this morning, my roommate and I (we have class together) took the metro to Plaça Catalunya, where we ate breakfast and met up with our architecture class. Today, our professor took us around the area to show us what we would be learning about so that we could visualize it. We walked around for two hours and afterward, we exchanged some money, which I was in desperate need of since I don’t want to be using my credit card all the time, and we headed back to our apartment. I worked for a little bit, and then it was time for Mediterranean Politics. The professor is so incredibly boring, which is unfortunate because it should be an interesting topic. Anyway, after that, I went to my International Business class, which was slightly more interesting, and then I came back to the apartment. Instead of my typical dinner-outing, tonight I FaceTimed my therapist because there were things I needed to get off my chest, and it was very helpful. I’m so grateful to have him as a resource. Then, my roommates and I went to get gelato, and I planned my outfits for Milan and headed to bed!
thursday, september 16th
This morning I decided to sleep in instead of going to the gym, and I am happy with my decision because I didn’t realize how much I needed the extra hour. I made oatmeal for breakfast and headed to my first class of the day, after which I worked for a few hours and finished laying out all my travel necessities. Then I went to my next class, where we had the entire hour and 40 minutes to write a cultural autobiography about ourselves. I have no clue if I followed the prompt, but fingers crossed. We booked a taxi to take us to the airport after my class, so after rushing home to pack my backpack and eat a sandwich, we were off! We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare because our flight had been delayed by about an hour, which we were unaware of prior to leaving the apartment. It wasn’t a big deal, we just walked around Duty-Free and other shops that were at our terminal. Then, we boarded our flight and we were off to Bergamo, Italy! We were hoping to catch the bus after our flight, but there were no more, so we took a taxi to our hotel and went to bed.
friday, september 17th
This morning was slightly hectic. We had tickets for a train to Milan at 9:00, so we woke up at 8:00 and got ready, but our check-out process took forever and we almost missed our train. We had to sprint through the station and quickly find our platform, and luckily, we managed to get there just in time. An hour later, we arrived in Milan, and our hotel was only a five-minute walk from the station, so we dropped off our bags and went to grab some croissants and coffee. We then took the metro to the Duomo, took some pictures, and walked around the Galleria Vittorio where we did some shopping and ate overpriced sandwiches for lunch. At 1:00, we had tickets for the rooftop of the Duomo, which overlooks the city of Milan. It was beautiful, but getting up there was a task. There were probably 15 sets of narrow, steep spiral staircases to go up, but we did it, and it was worth it. The cathedral was included in our tickets as well, so we went there after. Overall, it was a good time, but we were ready to lay down, and check-in time was at 2:00, so we took the metro back to our hotel and hung out there for a couple of hours. In the evening, we had dinner reservations at a pasta restaurant (obviously, because it’s Italy,), and I loved it. However, my roommate found a hair in her pasta, so that was unfortunate. After dinner, we went to a rooftop bar, which was not as fun as it was made out to be on their website. It wasn’t even a rooftop, there were maybe four other people there, and it was super quiet. The drinks were fine. After a big day, we are ready to sleep and start fresh tomorrow morning!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH
After sleeping in past 9:30 today, we got dressed and, of course, went to scour the streets for a cafe, and we found one! I had a cream-and-chocolate-filled croissant, which was a fantastic start to the day. After that, we went shopping again, but this time on a popular shopping street instead of the Galleria (it’s the fashion capital of the world, can you blame me?). A little bit later in the afternoon, we took the metro to the Brera area, which is a historical neighborhood in Milan filled with stores and restaurants. We also popped into the Castello Sforzesco and walked through a couple of exhibits at the castle museums. At this point, our legs were ready to fall off and we needed to sit down, so we found a place to eat gelato, and then headed to our hotel. While enjoying a few hours of relaxation, we had a realization that our original travel plans for tomorrow were not going to work out because we would not make our flight back to Barcelona. So, we quickly had to change our plans, which included getting new train tickets to Bergamo for tonight at 10:00 and booking a hotel room there for the night. This was stressful initially, but we got it all figured out. We had dinner reservations for pizza, which was delicious, and then we checked out of the hotel and went to the train station. But wait, there’s more. At the train station, we looked at the board that displays the trains, destinations, times, and platforms, and low and behold, the board said our train was canceled! We never even got a notification of any sort about the cancellation, and the next train to Bergamo wasn’t until 11:40. We decided to just wait at the station for that train, and while it was an annoying situation, I was able to finish the book I was reading, “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue”, and I highly recommend it. We finally boarded the train, arrived at Bergamo, took an Uber to our hotel, and went to bed around 2:00 in the morning.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH
As I type this, it is only 1:00 in the afternoon, and it has already been such a long day. We woke up this morning at 5:45, after a terrible “four-hour” sleep, and took the shuttle from our hotel to the airport. Our flight was at 8:25, so we landed in Barcelona around 10:00, and took the metro from the airport all the way back to our apartment, which is roughly an hour-long journey. We finally arrived at the apartment around 11:30, I started my laundry, and we bought and ate sandwiches for lunch. For the rest of the day, I think I will just rest and maybe I will do some homework if I feel like it. We have yet to figure out dinner plans, but that is a problem for later.
Well, this is it for week three. Thanks for following along with me on my adventure, and I will see you all next Sunday for week four! Click here if you want to read last week’s installment.