On Saturday, our program took us on a day trip to the Codorniu, which is a vineyard. We got a tour which was pretty cool. They had an unbelievable amount of champagne (or what they call Cava). The cellars were pretty cool. We got to ride on this train thing and ya, it was fun. I wasn't able to hear the tour guide very well, but also I was taking pictures of things and not really paying attention so sorry, I can't really tell you how it's made.
Then, we went to Sitges, which is up the coast a little bit from Barcelona. The beach was beautiful. We had lunch there and walked around a little bit. Most people stayed at the beach but a couple of us didn't know we were supposed to bring our swim suits so we went back on the bus. Sitges is also one of the most gay-friendly cities in Spain so to say the least, it was interesting. It is a very beautiful town though. Josh and Bryce stayed and said that the paella was unreal. The other day we went back because we wanted to go to a beach but not Barceloneta (the beach in Barcelona) so we went to Sitges. We got some paella and it was pretty good, not something I would order again though. I did have to at least try it.
On Sunday, we decided to go see Camp Nou, which is Barcelona's soccer stadium. This was definitely one of the top things that I wanted to see. FC Barcelona is like a religion here. Everyone has uniforms, there are stores everywhere, its crazy. People don't really support Spain though. Catalonia, which is the region that Barcelona is in, used to be its own country until Spain took it over in the 18th Century (see...I do go to class). Many people are very bitter about this because the Catalans were repressed and forbidden to speak Catalan in public, people were slaughtered, and they closed the university. There's still many people who support Spain but there are definitely people against Spain as well. Anyways, we went to Camp Nou only to find that there was this huge event where they vote for the next president of the organization. The place was packed and so we weren't able to go down near the field or get a tour. Hopefully I'll be able to go back though.
Since we weren't there very long, Bryce, Josh, and I decided to go to Tibidabo which is the highest point in Barcelona. There, they have an amusement park which looked kind of cool, but it wasn't really big. We got on one of the rides which basically just took us higher. I took the picture of the Cathedral while we were up there. Then, we went in the Cathedral and went to the top which was actually even higher than the ride. The view of Barcelona was unbelievable. You can see the entire city on one side and then the mountains on the other side. It's definitely one of my favorite places.
Then Dong's birthday was that Sunday night so we went out for that. We started at a place called Xiputo's where they have all these crazy shots for 2 euros a piece. Somebody bought Dong one called the Monica Lewinsky, which is pretty raunchy. I'll just leave it at that. I didn't make it to my first class in the morning but it was ok...we get 2 freebies.
We didn't do much the rest of the week. We went to the beach, we took siestas (naps) after class a lot. We went out a few times to check everything out. We still had a lot of time so we kind of took it easy the entire week. I did go on some cool field trips with my class though so I'll probably post that next time.
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