I went to Barcelona and didn't get pick pocketed! Spring break #1

So last week I went on spring break #1. My family came to Spain for their spring break and I joined them :) They started in Madrid and then we met on Monday the 21^st in Sevilla. It was so warm there! Some lady explained to us that it’s because of the winds that come up from the Sahara. She said in July/August, it’s miserable. If you don’t absolutely have to go outside, you don’t. It kinda stunk, I was sick from the first part of the time in Sevilla. I had a cold and because of that, my ear got really messed up on the plane ride. It hurt pretty badly on the flight. It just wouldn’t pop. So I have been half deaf since then.

We did so much in Sevilla and Barcelona. I don’t want to write it all. Succinct version, Sevilla. We went on a bus tour. Mediocre. Then we went on a bike tour. Pretty good. The tour guide was British so he wasn’t on Spanish time so when my dad was late for the bike tour he wouldn’t wait so we had to do that without him which was a bummer. But cool fact, the tour guide told us that some pretty famous movies have been filmed in Sevilla such as Knight and Day, Star Wars, El Cid, and Lawrence of Arabia. (Another cool fact, my family took a bike tour in Segovia and their guide once gave a tour to Patrick Dempsey! Awesome.) In Sevilla we also visited the Alcazar which is kinda like the Granada with just as much history but a little smaller. And that’s where the king and queen of Spain live when they visit Sevilla! But we didn’t get to see their digs in the second story, just the first floor and all the old rooms and gardens and stuff. We also toured the cathedral and climbed the tour and that was pretty cool. That cathedral holds some of the remains of Christopher Columbus because that’s where he started his trip to “India”. It also had a really really tall ceiling. It seemed like the tallest I’ve seen. We also saw a really good flamenco show, better than the one in Granada. The guitarist was the most impressive. I mean the dancers were good but the guitarist was hypnotizing. His fingers were so nimble and swift and it was beautiful. But Carl and Rose didn’t like it, specifically the dancing. Figures. So uncultured.

On Thursday we flew to Barcelona. Bad ear again. We found our way to our rented apartment and wandered the Rambla while being careful to not get pick pocketed because if there’s one thing you know about Barcelona, it’s that it’s like the city with the biggest pick pocketing problem. Proud to say, my family and I didn’t get pick pocketed! Though my dad did get solicited by a prostitute….

All week we ate delicious, usually expensive, food. But I did get my family to try kebaps! It’s like the cheap delicious food of Spain. I would compare it to gyros sandwiches. It’s amazing! I’m glad they got to try some. One night in Sevilla we went to a crazy “contemporary” restaurant. Now, I hate contemporary restaurants. I like traditional food, even in the states. So I had some strange “lasaña” which I thought would be pasta but it was not, and we’re pretty sure Rose had rice with squid ink, which is common here. I tried some and tried not to think about the fact that it might be squid ink. We pretty much confirmed our suspicions the next day :p yuck. At a restaurant in Barcelona I had hake fish and Carl had duck and my dad had veal with the best sautéed mushrooms EVER.

On Saturday we took an all day hiking excursion an hour north of Barcelona. A guide took us and two really nice Indian from New York hiking along the coast of the Med. Now I hate nature-y activities but it was really beautiful. Our (German) guide told us that the water was so clear because the beaches were stony beaches and not sandy beaches. It was the clearest, bluest water I’d ever seen! It was really cool. Like something straight out of a movie, specifically fool’s gold with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. Our guide was good enough to warn us ahead of time that the beaches would most likely have nude people and she was certainly right. The beaches were pretty secluded so there weren’t many people on the beach but I caught sight of a couple naked older men, a topless middle aged woman and a cute younger man butt. On the hike there were lots of hills and then we ended at an old fishing village. We got to sit down for a huge, amazing lunch! We started off with salad and delicious (muscles/oyster) in a marinara sauce and olives then we each got to pick a main dish. I got chicken and it was really good. The Indian women and I split a few pitchers of cava sangria which is different from wine sangria. This kind was made with champagne, peach juice, and fruit. It was so good!! Then we had dessert and I had flan and rose had crema catalan which is just a way of the people of Barcelona claiming crème brulee. It was such a good meal with just SO much food after a nice long hike. Then Carl had to ruin the end of the day by dropping Rose in the Med. Typical.

The three of us fell asleep right away on the car ride back to Barcelona and my dad got a couple pretty funny pictures of us. We got back to the apartment and I lied down bc I wasn’t feeling well. I felt sick. Vomity sick. Then I promptly threw up the entire lunch we had :( well the upside is I got to taste it all and got none of the calories! But it was so crummy. Luckily Rose was there to rub my back. She’s so good at taking care of people when they’re sick.

Wanna hear something else?! In Sevilla I had two bloody noses! The first one lasted for a half hour and the second one for an hour!! It was terrible. Both in the same day. I was a little scared. I have a recent history with nosebleeds. I had a half dozen back at school in the winter and then one the day I left for Spain but none since getting here. Then the day I get back together with my family, BAM! I joked with my mom that it was because I was with them. But it might have been true. Maybe my blood pressure went up because of the stress of having to plan our days in Spain. I don’t know. I mean I had a cold so my nose was runny and “raw” I just don’t know. But I called Cynthia and she said that I should go to the hospital if it happened again because the ER would probably be free because of the public health care system here. But luckily it didn’t happen again. I had to remember to take deep breaths to keep my BP low in case that’s what was causing it. If it happens again here I told my madre that I’d like to go to the hospital and Cynthia said maybe we could go to the university doctor and he could look and maybe he’d just cauterize the vessel if he can see it. But we’ll see if it happens again. I mean if it does happen again here that wouldn’t be bad bc of the free health care here. Better than having to pay for it in the states right? I don’t know.

Again, Rose took care of me during my two nosebleeds. She’s the best. I like the gory details. I had a nice big blood clot in my nose during the second one which is pretty typical during my recent nosebleeds. I went through a half roll of paper towels too. The second one was at our apartment but the first one was at a fancy hotel we were visiting. We used a ton of their fancy paper towels. And we filled their garbage and wondered what the cleaning staff would think when they went to empty the garbage can…

So, in Barcelona we took another bike tour. It was pretty good. The tour guide was a cool Australian guy named Buddah. Bike tours are nice because then you can get a more personal tour than a bus tour and you can see more of the city than a walking tour. We visited the cathedral and Parc de la Ciutadella and the bull fighting ring and the Sagrada Family and the beach and ended at a good quick restaurant were a got some delicious pesto pasta and foucaccia bread. The bull fighting ring was interesting because Buddah told us he wasn’t trying to push anything on us but that that day he just felt like telling us the pros of bullfighting. He said that (unlike dairy cows and chickens) the bulls were treated like royalty until the fight. They’re giving names and after the kill their meat is often given to orphanages. Interesting. I still don’t think I want to see an actual fight, but I don’t know. It’s always good to hear both sides of a story.

On Sunday we visited some Roman ruins beneath the cathedral and went to Parc Güell which was really cool and kinda trippy. We stopped and listened to a singer for a while and she had such a beautiful voice. A young man decided to dance with the music and he was a beautiful dancer! Such a nice combo. So beautiful that I decided to buy the CD and now I’m dreamily swaying to the music. Though the CD isn’t as good as the lady was live. And the presence of the dancer. It was magical. It was so cool that the guy was just improvising his dance.

So these are the major things I can remember at the moment from the trip. It was nice to be with my family but I got back to Alicante and my Spanish was pretty bad after speaking English with my family for the whole week. I told my host family this and my madre was like “Yeah, I noticed.” Well gee, thanks.

But it was nice to sleep in my bed here after a long week. Now I have to study for my test tomorrow and then I really, really need to focus on my anthropology class. I’m getting way behind and need to start working.

Next I’m headed to Munich!