Barcelona (3/24 to 3/28)

Barcelona was a blast. I was hoping for beach weather, a possibility but not a given for late March. Unfortunately, it was too cold for the beach, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the last stop on my trip.

The city is very cosmopolitan and had some amazing and unique architecture, the most notable being the works by Gaudi. The Casa Batllo was my favorite, a house that literally had no corners or edges in any room- all of the doors and walls and railings were organic curves that flowed from one element to the next. It was as if the walls and rooms were living things growing out of the ground.

I definitely made the most of the last few days of my trip. The nightlife was awesome, with tons of nightclubs and more than enough revelers to fill them on all nights of the week. I sampled a cross section of the bar scene, from pseudo-Irish bars, to multi-level clubs, to sleek lounge bars, meeting all sorts from all places- a hipster Swede who declared his love for me several times throughout the night, a group of 20-something Europeans that came to Barcelona for a language program in 2006 and never left, and some English soccer hooligans who hassled me for a good 15 minutes, much to my obvious dismay and the amusement of other English speakers within earshot (Me, angry: “No, all four of you MAY NOT have ‘a go’ at me at the same time!!” Him, slurring: “No, we can, one goes here, and one here….”). There was one unfortunate night when I drunkenly decided to ignore the 4AM lockout and wait until my hostel reopened at 7AM, disappointed when the club closed at just 4:30 and I had to kill two and a half hours before going home.

I ran into a slight mishap on my way back to the States, when my train out of Barcelona was cancelled due to a French rail workers’ strike. I had to catch a later, more expensive train, which then required me to catch a cab from the rail station to the airport in order to catch my flight. I caught my flight, luckily, and am now safely back home although 100€ poorer thanks to the French rail workers.