This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Northwestern chapter.
Barcelona was my first encounter with a) traveling with friends and b) a language that is not my first. I was nervous and excited and not at all sure what to expect going to Spain. After all, it took the four of us (Mystie, Abby, David and I) something like three hours to book our flights and hostel.
The planning was really the first part of the adventure for us. It was confusing and a long process, but we somehow managed to get our flights and somewhere to stay! A couple of days before we Facebook messaged about what we’d like to do when we were there, and narrowed it down to a few big things.
So without further ado, we took off to Barcelona! At 3 a.m. Without sleep. Luckily, we could sleep for a couple of hours on the plane and we certainly did. This was especially fortunate considering what it takes to land in a foreign country…
- Getting through Border control (aka a long, long line of people filtering slowly through customs)
- Exchanging currency took us roughly 8.2 hours to get through the line (that’s an extreme over-exaggeration, but it was still quite lengthy)
- Figuring out how to get from the airport to the hostel, which I realized the night before was on the other side of Barcelona (Again, we were fortunate that the woman at the airport spoke English and could give us directions easily! I tried my Spanish out for a second, but on 2 hours of sleep it came out more in mumbles than words.)
- Making out way to the train, where we no longer had the English crutch and bought our tickets.
And all of that was just at the airport! It was pretty overwhelming, and a huge relief to sit on the train, knowing to look for the station the woman had told us to go to. We took one more train to Maragall, and that is where the hilarity began. Here are a few things I learned while trying to get to our hostel:
- I can’t really read a map. If I think the map says to go one direction, it’s really the complete opposite from where we should be going.
- Barcelona is on a mountain.
- If a hostel is really nice and inexpensive, it’s at the top of a mountain.
- Barcelona is sunny and gorgeous.
- If you have to climb a mountain, the sun will make you hot.
- Always sleep if you have to climb a mountain the next day.
- But most importantly…
“It’s easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.”- Henry Ward Beecher
Cheesy, yes. But it is so very true. You can see all of Barcelona from where we stayed.
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Despite being tired and confused and a little stressed trying to find our hostel, it was easily one of the best parts of the trip! We were so entertained by our own misadventures, and that is the beauty the study abroad experience for me. It’s all an adventure, even when it’s not exactly the perfect trip.
That first night we saw one of the most amazing things Barcelona has to offer- Flamenco dancing. We went to a theater that gives you paella and sangria with the show, which gave us a great introduction to Spanish culture. It’s also there that we coined our favorite phrases for the weekend…
“This is the best meal I’ve ever had.”
“I’ve never been so happy to see food.”
“Food has never been so delicious”
All the mountain climbing we did made us hungry kids!!!
After the Flamenco show we walked around the city, pretty much from one end to the other (due to my amazing map reading skills again). Though we were quite sleepy, Barcelona at night is positively gorgeous. Everything is lit up, the streets are buzzing and it’s just a really happy and electric city. I could have walked around all night.
After sleeping in, we headed into the center of the city. We had a long, and delicious, lunch. We browsed through a street market. We took pictures with lion statues. We relaxed in the harbor. And we checked out La Sagrada Familia (has been being constructed since 1882 per Gaudi’s designs) before taking our hungry selves to a grocery store and to our hostel.
That night we hung out on our balcony, listened to a live concert that was going on nearby and looked at the lights. The next day we headed out early enough to see lots! Our first destination was Montijuic, a castle way up on a mountain! We took a train to a train to a cable car to get up to the top! The view from the cable car was stunning.
We wandered up to the castle, and I don’t think I’ve taken so many pictures anywhere in my life. Every inch of it was gorgeous, the views unparalleled. We grabbed some lunch and took our time there, and when we were done we wandered some more! We were trying to find the Olympic stadium, but because of our (read: my) map skills never made it there. But we wandered through the loveliest gardens and found the coolest fountain until we decided to take a quick rest on a grassy hillside before continuing on to our next destination: Parc de la Ciutadella.
We found a nice spot in the shade and people watched. We saw people playing a game that was ping-pong without the table, a guy practicing his bartending skills with a tumbler and some bottles and just about the cutest little boy I have ever seen hopping curbs on his tiny bike. David and I went in search of a bathroom and came across a beautiful, ornate fountain- proof that the best things are happy accidents.
After the park, we went across the street and had tapas for dinner! The language barrier was probably the hardest then. We couldn’t really understand the menu, and the waiter didn’t speak English. We communicated with a lot of pointing and smiling, which went well.
That night I got really sick. That night I certainly considered myself the luckiest girl in the entire world for having my friends there. They were all so supportive and helpful and I would have been lost without them. We had to leave so early the next day, which was hard for me not having slept much and still feeling really week, feverish and nauseous. Again, my friends saved me. They carried my backpack, tolerated my sass and delivered me to the airport safely. When we were waiting for the bus from the hostel I told them “I’m not sure I can do this,” but I had to and they helped me do it.
We got to the train station only to find that the train wasn’t running to the airport. We were late, and didn’t have much time to figure out an alternative route. I was shocked that even in my fragile state (mental, emotional and physical at that point!) my Spanish kicked in. I walked up to a cab, with more moxy than I knew I had in me, and asked how long it would be to the airport. He said 10 minutes, I asked if he could take us and called over the rest. In no time we were driving up to the airport.We made it to the terminal, literally one minute before our flight took off. We switched our flight to 4 hours later, got some lunch and went off to the gate for a nap.
As they say, all’s well that ends well.