Barcelona Weekend

Another long weekend

A couple of weeks ago(14-16th of May) there was another long weekend so we decided to go somewhere. At first the plan was to go to the beach but we ended up in Barcelona instead.

I had dance lessons on the Friday night so I went to Barcelona in the morning. I meant to get on the 10:30 train but I missed it, so I eventually arrived at about 1PM.

Our accommodation was right near the Plaça d’Espanya, which has a major metro station and is quite central so it was easy to get around.

The first thing I did was take my bags to the house. Then I left and walked to Montjuïc, a hill with a park and the Museum of Art of Catalonia, to meet the others(Natalie, Dmitri and his friend Tristan). When I got there we realised the museum was only free after 4, so instead we walked to a Lego art exhibition. The exhibition was really cool and some of the pieces were seriously impressive.

Next we went back to the Museum of Art. I’d been there a week or so before with my school (I guess I should write about this too at some stage) so I’d seen most of the art there already and it wasn’t as cool as the lego one so we went through quite quickly.

By this stage it was getting late so we went to find a shop for some food for the next day and then went to the house to get changed for the night.

For dinner we got kebabs from a place on Les Rambles, and then we went to Barceloneta for drinks. We ended up getting home at around 3 I think.

Sunday

We got up quite late after the late night before.

Dmitri wanted to go shopping so he went with Natalie and I went with Tristan to go to Parc Güell, a park near Barcelona, commissioned by Eusebi Guell and designed by Catalonia’s favourite architect, Anton Gaudí.

To get to the park from the metro you have to climb about 9001 stairs and it was pretty hot that day so that was a lot of fun. Once the stairs were done we followed a path through the park around the hill that it’s on to a lookout with views of Barcelona and the sea.

The park has a free area and an area that you have to pay to enter so next we went there, but they only let a certain number of people in at a time and the next lot was due in 2 hours so we decided to do something else.

The something else was going to La Sagrada Familia, a basilica designed by the one and only Anton Gaudi (it was his life’s work and he lived there for a while while they were building it), that is still under construction, due for completion in 2018 or something.

We walked there, it took about an hour. We met the others there. The basilica is impressive to say the least. I didn’t take any photos so if you want to see it you’ll have to go there.

It was now nearly 8, and it was closing so I left and then realised that there’s a museum under the church. I had a quick look around there but didn’t get to see it all.

Next I sat in a park across from the basilica for a while because I was getting sick of the other’s company, and they went to a bar to get WiFi and charge their phones or something.

It turned out that this weekend was the final game of La Liga, and Barcelona had won the title so there was a giant parade through the city, but I didn’t see it because I was sitting in the park.

I then met the others and we tried to follow the path of some characters in a book that Natalie had read but we couldn’t find the places and we ended up just walking to the beach and stopping at a random pub for a drink. By this stage it was getting pretty late and I was ready to sleep but we again ended up getting back to the house very late.

Monday

We had to leave on Monday. I wanted to go and see the parts of the park that we hadn’t seen the day before but at the metro station on the way there a rep of the park told us that there was already a couple of hours wait so we looked for something else to do.

There was another Gaudi house fairly close to where we were so we walked there but it was under repairs so we couldn’t see anything and decided to go home.

So that was more or less the weekend in Barcelona. I think I saw most of the sights to see, and anything I missed I can see the next time I’m there.