Barcelona

Barcelona was probably my favorite part of the trip. To start off with, we immediately saw the FCB bus as we were leaving the airport! (By the way, I now have a number 21 Hleb jersey :D)

I got to eat paella (Claire and I shared, and scarfed down enough so that we both looked 5 months pregnant. Oh, and the waiter didn't speak English. Francina, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, did most of the talking for us, but they made me go ask for the check), and eat at the fresh food market, which was one of my favorite things, and there was amazing (and pretty!) deserts as well.
Gaudi was prominently featured everywhere, with some of the coolest buildings I've ever seen, and I'm going to live in one (I'll give you a hint-- it's the one that looks like a gingerbread house. I'm going to dress like a witch and have black cats and run a daycare center. It'll be great.)


I discovered that Barcelona is either radioactive, or naturally produces gatorade beneath the streetsI found a tiny section of paradise


I spent a day with some friends at the famous park at the top of the city, where I took some of my favorite pictures, including the best one I've ever taken of my roomie Regina, and Claire, whom I got to know on this trip, and we spent a lot of the time wondering how we'd managed not to know each other beforehand, since we have a very similar sense of humor.





Regina found her perfect Vespa
Claire and I laid on the floor taking pictures of each other upside down, and of the ceiling, while listening to some guy play guitar
And we spend an afternoon at the beach, where Claire and I played in the icy waves and watched crazy people wind surf (or just regular surf) while the other girls tried to decide if we were crazy, or didn't have nerve endings anymore, or just didn't have the sense to get OUT OF THE WATER since we kept screaming that it was cold every time a wave came up and splashed us (I had my camera and was taking pictures, but we were only like knee deep, so it didn't get wet or sandy or anything bad like that)
Half our little crew waited outside in this little park area while the other half explored the inside of an unfinished Gaudi building and a couple guys on guitars played "Brown Eyed Girl" which made me really happy

I discovered why everyone in Barcelona is really happy and laid back

I had the coolest camera malfunction ever while taking a picture of fake people on a balcony dressed more fashionably than _I_ ever will be

And lots of other random things. I took over 850 pictures of Barcelona alone, in only two days, and feel like I could have continued at that rate for another three months straight and still not run out of interesting subjects. All in all, Barcelona was straight up incredible. Of all the places I've been on this trip, I think Barcelona was the one I'd love to live in. Everywhere else was a cool place to visit, but Barcelona could easily be home.