Wednesday: Lisa & Anne arrived from travelling around Europe for their Barcelona stay. Took them around for the day. In the evening, we headed out to this club, Carpe Diem, close to our house by the beach. It was the Welcome Party for the international students in Barcelona. Basically, it was a gongshow. So many people crammed into this club, like 1000 people! And, free food and free wine & beer. Craziness. Most of the students there were Americans, not exactly what we had hoped for. We were hoping to meet more international students, but it's okay cuz we had fun anyways.
Thursday: Hung out with the girls. Went shopping along Las Ramblas and did more sightseeing. Had lunch at this restaurant in El Ravel called La Fonda. Good, chea
p food with large portions. Mmmm. I decided to get my lip pierced, on a whim. Well, actually not exactly a whim. I wanted to get it done before I left Vancouver, but decided to hold off on it, cuz I didn't wanna take care of it. But basically, once I got here, I've noticed so many people with piercings, I thought, why not? (that's our saying for this entire exchange experience). So I got it done. Met up with Ji Eun & Eric for dinner in the area. Lisa had this place she found in Lonely Planet called Foodball, which is basically a restaurant where they serve all your food to you in balls. We search for it, only to find out its closed down and replaced by some other sketch looking bar. Sort of epic fail. So we picked some random restaurant in the area and ate. We were planning on going out clubbing again, but got home around midnight and were all too tired to go out again.Friday: Lisa, A
nne and I had been planning to go to Ibiza for the night, but it turned out to be way too expensive and too long of a trip to get there. Plan B: party hard in Barcelona. Hit the beach around noon. I love where we live =) After the beach, we went to visit La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's unfinished cathedral. Bought a ticket to check out the inside. It's so amazing. So unique. The columns are supposed to be like tree trunks and the roof part like the leaves of the trees, so you feel like your in a forest. It's so crazy. But there's like construction everywhere inside, and scaffolding, so its a pretty interesting picture. Apparently, they hold mass there every weekend, which I don't even know where they'd hold it, so I'm planning on checking it out one weekend. Paid 2.50 euros to take the lift up the towers of the cathedral. Up top, there's a great lookout of the city. You can see everything! We were up there just as the sun was setting so the whole city was glowing. It was so gorgeous. After, we met up with Eric, Ji Eun, Mark, Piyush & Raul for dinner at La Rita, which is supposed to be the same owner 
as La Fonda. It was close to Paseig de Gracia, this main street with all the high-end shopping. The place was super cute and the food, amazing. And fairly priced too! We had a good time, and ended the night off with a bang, literally. So, at the end of dinner, we're all getting up to leave, and suddenly we hear this scream and a bang and we look over. Basically, when Piyush got up, there was this huge fake plant/tree right behind his chair, and when he pushed his chair out, he knocked it over. And the tree, it fell onto the table behind him, right in this lady's food! HAHAHAHA. Omg it was hilarious, everyone turned to look, cuz she screamed so loud. And us, well we walked out of the restaurant pissing ourselves laughing. Good thing tho, the ladies at the table had good humor and were laughing about it as well.So, after dinner, Lisa, Anne and I head home, everyone else heads home, Eric decides he wants to go find a random pub. Us girls get ready to go out. Eric gets home. We leave, and catch a cab to find this bar called Club Nitsa, that we found in Lonely Planet. So we get to the club. Well, we walk to the address that was in Lonely Planet. And we find some place called Apolo. Shit, we're thinking, another dud thanks to Lonely Planet. But no! We ask some random people and bouncers, and they say that Nitsa is inside. But we wait around a bit before we go in to meet up with some people. We meet Brook, who's Thai studying in Singapore, and his friend Yasmin, who's on exchange in Valencia. We wait around a bit more for 2 more of his friends. We wait, and wait, and wait. Finally we get antsy so we decide to head in. Later, we find out that they were caught by the cops with hash and were taken to the the police station! The cops were threatening to cancel their visas, and the guys almost peed themselves from fear. Basically, they got off with just a 30 euro ticket each for drinking in public (which everyone does, so obviously a cover-up). ANYWAYS, back to us at the club, we get in, and it's pretty dingy. But all the bouncers were saying this was the place to be. The people, sketch. The bars, sketch. The dancefloor, sketch. The bathrooms, uber sketch. It looks like a crack house. But the venue itself was pretty dope, like a big, old school theatre. Sort of reminded me of the Commodore. Basically, around 2am, the club totally picks up, and it gets packed! People just going CRAZY! Jumping/falling all over the place. Some random girl came up to me and started speaking Japanese to me and was raving about how she loves Japan. Lots of gross, creepy guys, but a few decent ones. So much cigarette smoke, everywhere you turned, that we came out reeking of smoke, down to my bra. Broken glass all over the floor, my new shoes got totally cut up. I got jumped on, elbowed, spilled on, stepped on, broken glass shattered at my feet, burned by a cigarette butt. But, it was amazing. Danced all night, until 6 in the morning. And I didn't even drink (because I can't for a week cuz of my piercing. boo.) At the end of the night, Lisa meets this decent guy, Paulo, who offers to take us out around the city the next day. Oh ya, around like 5am or so, we totally lost Eric, Yasmin, Brook and his 2 friends. So we head outside of the club at 6am and yell for Eric, or Enrique as well are now calling him in Spain. But we can't find him. We were kind of worried about him, but we hoped he already left the club and headed home.
Anyways, after exchanging numbers with Paulo and agreeing to meet the next day, we metro home. And yes, the metro is open all night on the weekends. Unlike Vancouver. We get to our station, and take the 10 minute walk to our apartment, which felt like an hour since we felt like death (aka tired with hurting feet). We get home, and I'm thanking myself that I brought my set of keys. Because, when we left the house I wasn't going to bring them but Eric said I should, just in case we got split up. And I was thinking, doubtful that we won't come home together! So, I put my key in the lock. I push, the door doesn't move. I push again, it still doesn't move. Eric, the drunk ass, DEADBOLTED the door. So, at 7am on a Saturday, we ring the doorbell. Mutiple times. We bang on the door, we yell his name. We go downstairs and ring the buzzer. All of this, for half an hour, straight. NOTHING. We were pissed. We go up to the terrace to wait for a bit. The sun was rising, and it was pretty beautiful. We sit on the dirty, dusty lawn chairs, half passing out. After about 15 minutes around 8am, we go down to try again. Nothing. So we decide to go walk and find something to eat, even though our feet are KILLING. We find this little bakery that was open and buy breakfast. We sit on a random bench, feeling like homeless bums. We must have been quite a sight. 8:30am, three asian girls in clubbing clothes, sitting on a bench, eating pastries in silence. Head back to the apartment. We ring the bell, and hold our breath. Suddenly "helloooo". We all yell "ERIC!". He opens the door, with his jersey on inside-out & backwards, and waddles back to his bed. We all yell at him, beat him up, while laughing. 9am, and we finally had a home again =)
Saturday: Obviously, after the night/morning before, we didn't get up until late. Eric does his thing, us girls head to Las Ramblas to do some last minute shopping. We find this place called El Mercadillo which feels like a little flea market. It's cute & cheap =) We meet Paulo & his friend Bernard there. They take us up to Montjuic, this mountain with a great view of the city. Gorgeous! There's a castle at the top of the mountain too. After, he drops us off at the metro, and we meet up with Eric, who had planned a dinner for all the UBC students who were studying in Barcelona. He organized it through Facebook. We meet at La Fonda, which has a huuuuuge lineup to get in. Since we were a big group, we had to split up. Lisa, Anne & I ate in the non-smoking section (wow! they actually had one!) since we were so sick from all the smoke at Nitsa. Dessert is amazing there. After dinner, all of us headed to this shady little bar, the Shanghai Bar. They had these bird cages hanging from the ceiling with random stuffed animals in them. Anyways, it was nice to meet new people =) Since Anne & Lisa were leaving at 5am to catch their flight at 7am on Sunday, we headed home early (early being 3:30am). Paulo came to say bye to the girls. Anne & I head home while Lisa went for a ride on his scooter =)
I stay up to see the girls off at 5am. I clean the house while I'm waiting, since Joe was coming in the next day.
Sunday: Get up and Eric & I head to MNAC, the Museu Nacional de Catalunya. It has the biggest art collection of Catalan art, for the past 1000 years. Eric's Spanish teacher toured us around. I tried to listen to this tourguide in Spanish, which went alright. The art gallery is MASSIVE. It's in Montjuic, in this huge old building on top of a hill. You could spend weeks going through the galleries and still not see everything! After the museum, we head to El Born to this place that serves pinchos, which are a Basque specialty, called Bilbao Barrie. The place was pretty cool. They have all these plates with little hor d'oeurve type things. They have sticks in them, so when you're done, they count how many sticks you have and then charge you. It was so good! After, Eric, Brook and Sabrina, who studies at UBC Okanagan, head to the beach. Such a perfect day for the beach. Except, we didn't get there until 5pm, and the sun was going down. Shit went down at the beach. All of a sudden, we see this lifeguard sprinting to this part of the beach. We hear sirens, and 2 ambulances book it onto the beach. Cops pull up on motorcycles. There's a huge crowd around. We didn't know what happened though, cuz we didn't want to go into the crowd. It was exciting though.
Anyways, we head home. Eric, Sabrina and I hang out and wait for Joe to come in. FINALLY. He gets in, but one of his luggages was left in London. Anyways, we head out for dinner in El Born to this tapas place called Tapas de Lonja. It was yummmmm.
WHEW. what a weekend. I'm so happy I got to hang out with girlfriends for a few days, since I'm stuck with Joe & Eric for the next 4 months. First time alone with both of them, on the way home from dinner, was already a gongshow. And alcohol wasn't even involved =P
TRIPOD IS IN FULL EFFECT. tis all.
