Myself and three of my roommates left for Barcelona on Thursday morning. After sleeping through my alarm and waking up 5 minutes before we were supposed to walk out of the door my morning started off a little rough...but I got myself together in the airport bathroom we headed out! We ran into some of the boys from our classes in the Barcelona airport and they helped us find the way to our hostel, which was in Plaza Real right off of Las Ramblas. It was absolutely beautiful! We settled in and then headed out to explore, we started off by walking along the water and stopped for a wonderful outdoor lunch by the water. We then went to the beach! My favorite part of spring break for sure. The next day we headed out to see Park Guell. It has a amazing view of all of Barcelona and some of Gaudi's work. It was an interesting experience to say the least...while we were there my roommate got her wallet taken out of her purse. Some of the vendors took off after the guy and caught him and turned him into the police! Rambo, the vendor, was our savior! To save an extremely long story, basically myself and my roommate Brie had to spend the entire day in the Barcelona police station. In the end she got everything back though! My Spanish came in handy, a little, but the type of Spanish they speak in Spain is so different from what I learned. The next day we were headed off to Portugal!
We made it to Lisbon late afternoon on Sunday. We absolutely loved our hostel, Oasis Backpackers Mansion. It was a small operation with homemade meals served for dinner where everyone sat at a big table and got to know each other. They also had a patio in the back with a hammock and chairs we all sat out and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Some of the guys even played Jack Johnson on their guitar. I was in a happy place. But it did make me miss some of my best friends from home. Sitting around playing guitar and singing is our favorite thing to do. We spent the next two days at the beach, I can't even begin with how in love with that beach I was. My favorite place I've been so far without a doubt.
We headed back to Barcelona and spent one day checking out the rest of the city we hadn't seen yet. We went to Sagrada Familia which is Guadi's church. It was absolutely breathtaking. We then walked to some more of Gaudi's places and the old bull fighting arena. Then to Montjuic which is the Olympic park there. With another view of the entire city, we had finished our touristy stuff. We spent our last day at the beach trying to get every last ounce of sun.
After some boring and complicated airline issues, we spent a night in a hotel and finally headed out on Friday morning and made it back to Prague safely. It was such a great week! No one was ready to get back to school today. We all think it's unfair that we have to go to school while we're here, even though that was the whole "study" part of "study abroad" I don't think any of us expected it. Getting excited for Easter because word on the street is that Prague is the place to be for it, not really sure what to expect! It's also the week that starts off all my visitors. 2 weeks straight of playing tour guide, and I couldn't be more excited! Not ready for this experience to end at all. It's so insane that it's less than 2 months until I come home! So bittersweet.
