Barthelona

Last weekend, I went to Barcelona, which is where a TON of my friends are studying abroad. For some reason, I had this preconceived notion of Barcelona as being really gross, industrial, polluted, and just not that nice as a whole. Instead, I was really pleasantly surprised. Barcelona is actually a beautiful city and, most notably to me, soooo clean! I really think that had the whole volcano incident not occurred, it would've been one of my favorite cities in Europe.

Unfortunately, the volcanic eruption played a large part in influencing the whole weekend. Instead of enjoying the city and what it had to offer, my friend Molly and I were forced to focus on more important things....like getting home. We had about one full day in the city, and even then, we were both so stressed about getting home that we didn't really have the chance to take in the city. I will definitely be returning to Barcelona sometime in my life though because I know I would've loved it.

This is going to be a short post considering there weren't many pictures taken. I could go into detail about how the volcano ruined everything, but just read any news article and you'll know exactly what Molly and I went through. It was miserable. Good thing Barcelona was amazing, though, otherwise I would've regretted the trip.

One more thing before I go into pictures/itinerary: everyone has heard about the nightlife here and everything that is said is basically true -- it is INSANE. It's no secret that most kids who go to Barcelona go primarily for the nightlife, and this is totally true...it's actually kind of sad because a lot of the kids who go here leave without really seeing the city because they sleep all day (so say actual friends who live in Barcelona; not being patronizing). For 2/3 nights I was there (I only went out on the 2 nights I was actually supposed to be in Barcelona...night #3 was way too stressful for me considering I wasn't sure I was going home), I am proud to say I stayed out so late that I didn't even go home...I went straight from the club to the airport one night and stayed out till 7 the other night. At first I was a little worried about my ability to handle this kind of intensity because I just picture 6th Street in Austin and I know there's no way even it could stay fun past 3 or 4 am. But the nightlife here was SO fun and I have no clue where the time goes -- you go to dinner, a bar, and then a club and then suddenly it's 7 am already.

I will say that this lifestyle has had interesting and notable repercussions on my friends there. They don't go out this hard just one night a week...they do it about 4-6/week. Anyway, I came to Barcelona as their semesters were all winding down and they are all just SO sick all of the time. They've gone out so much and everything that it's literally effecting their immune systems...it's nuts. A lot of my friends who are the hardest partiers and drinkers I know have told me that once they get back from home, they don't think they'll be able to step foot in a nightclub or stay out past midnight. It was really fun but if I had keep up with them for 4 months, I'd probably die. I had 2 nights of this, plus 2 full days of traveling and sightseeing, and it took me about a week to recover.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my Dad, who has been nagging me to update my blog for a couple of days now...thanks, Dad, for being the only one who reads this! Hope I'm making you proud!!

Allison took me to Fountain Show at Montjuic Castle. We caught the last 5 minutes but the area and the Castle itself was beautiful:

The next day, Molly and I spent a lot of time at Parc Guell, which is a park with all of these buildings designed by Gaudi. It was probably my favorite thing to do in Barcelona and Gaudi has some really amazing designs.

Other things we did: Gothic Quarter, saw Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's most famous work....this was at a travel-crisis moment so I didn't get to take a picture but was reallllly cool), the Boqueria Market (HUGE food market with AMAZING fruit juices and candy), Las Ramblas (the main street where vendors sell all kinds of stuff, even pet rabbits and birds), ate (food isn't that great, especially compared to Italy, but patatas bravas are delicious and I love tapas), beach (is nice but apparently was man-made for the Olympics in 1992...which brings me to another interesting thing I learned: when Barcelona hosted the Olympics is when it turned into a "tourist" city, cleaned up its act, and became truly modernized. If the Olympics hadn't occured here, apparently it wouldn't even be a legitimate place to send kids abroad. It's amazing to consider how much money something like the Olympics or the World Cup can bring to a city to revitalize it).

And theeen the whole volcano debacle occurred. Besides that, it was a fantastic weekend and Barcelona was honestly one of my favorite cities in Europe. The end.

Mia Famiglia in Venezia, Firenze, San Gimignano, Chianti, e Siena & Feste di Primavera in Sicilia

My family paid me the obligatory semester abroad visit during my sister's spring break. They got to see Florence, Siena, some small towns in the Tuscan countryside, and Venice.

One day we went on a wine tour in the Chianti region. That morning, we took a little visit to San Gimignano, one of the aforementioned small towns, to get the World's Best Gelato....literally:

One of the vineyards we visited:

On our way to Venice, we decided to take a little roadtrip with our friends, the Evanses, who we've probably gone on about 10000 family trips with. We made two stops: at the Ferrari factory and museum and at a balsamic vinegar factory. You'd think that the Ferrari place would take the cake, but it was actually a piece of shit and SUCH a rip-off.

Libby and me at the Ferrari Factory and Museum:

The balsamic vinegar factory, on the other hand, was awesome. They make the vinegar from rinds of grapes and they age it for a reeeeally long time -- the most valuable vinegar we saw was 400 euro/bottle and had been aging for 100 years.

Below is some vinegar that has been aging since 1925. I had no idea it was such an intense process:

We got to Venice, which is gorgeous. Although there isn't much to actually do there, it's just a really beautiful place. Don't try staying for more than a weekend, however....you'll get bored real quickly.

I also have to add that Venice is THE most expensive city I've visited this entire trip. It is RIDICULOUS. First of all, you have to take a boat everywhere, and even the public boats are super expensive. The food is so costly, and unless you're willing to drop serious money, it pretty much sucks. I just couldn't believe it. But I guess it doesn't matter considering the place was full of tourists.

My dad and me in Venice :)

We spent a good part of a day in Murano, the area outside of Venice famous for its glass. We went to one glass maker and watched an artist create this amazing piece for about 2 hours. It was sooo cool. Then, the owner of the glass place took us to his gallery, which had some of the coolest art I've ever seen.

After my family went back to Texas, I flew to Sicily to meet my friends for our Spring Break. The first half of the break was spent in a town called Cefalu, which is about an hour's tran ride from Palermo and is on the northeast coast of Sicily. Cefalu was a tiny, beautiful beach town with Arabesque influences and was absolutely perfect. We rented an apartment instead of staying at a hotel. The location of the apartment was incredible - right on the main piazza and a 5 minute walk from the beach.

The view from the balcony of our apartment in Cefalu:

We then, unfortunately, made our way back to Palermo for the second half of our vacation. Palermo is easily the most disgusting, ugliest, skeeviest, shittiest city I've ever visited in my entire life. This is where my rant will commence:

Firstly, all of Sicily is run by the Mafia, and I'm 100% serious. Like, the Mafia originates from Sicily. And the capital of Sicily is Palermo, meaning that it is basically Mafia City. No joke, every single person there is somehow linked to the Mafia. I know this information from credible sources (i.e., my Italian professors, program directors, and friends) and I've done a lot of research on the matter.

Because the Mafia rules Sicily, the Italian government really neglects it. This means that big cities in Sicily are disgusting...especially Palermo. "How disgusting," you ask? Well, there are stray dogs and cats everywhere. The tap water isn't drinkable. There is virtually no trash collection, so trash litters every street. It's REALLY dangerous to go out at night. There is graffiti everywhere, and even the sights and monuments that could potentially be pretty are ruined by the prevalence of this graffiti.

We thought Palermo would be sooo cool because it was supposed to possess so much history. Well, it does have a lot of history, but it isn't even worth going to see because the historical parts are now gross. We decided we would pay 20 euro/person to go on a tour of the city on one of those really touristy red double-decker buses, and the audio-tape on this thing literally tried to convince us that a parking lot was beautiful, proceeding to call it a "garden of multi-colored cars." The bus took us to "historical ruins" that really were just building from the 1960's and '70s that had been torn down. It was so ridiculous that we just laughed the entire time.

One of the stops on our tour of Palermo...no joke:

After we realized how horrible Palermo was, we decided to get the hell out of there ASAP and we went to Mondello Beach for the day. This beach was about 20 min. from Palermo and was beautiful...I couldn't even believe we were still in Palermo's city limits. On the way home, though, I was reminded of my proximity to Palermo when the bus driver decided to stop the bus just to come to the back and hit on my friend, Amanda. Literally, there were other people on the bus, and this 60-yr-old bus driver decides to just stop what he is doing and flirt with my friend for a good 20 minutes. He even let my other friend pretend she was driving the bus, prank-called a friend who we were meeting, and proceeded to have a weird photoshoot with us. It was one of the most bizarre events I've ever witnessed.

All of us at Mondello Beach...it was beautiful:

After we (miraculously) got back to our "hotel" (it doesn't really deserve that title), we went out to dinner and on our way home, a man with a stray dog followed us home. I was the first person to realize we were being followed, and as I poked each of my friends on the shoulder to let them know we were being followed, I cushioned my warnings with, "DO NOT FREAK OUT, but ...." Immediately after I told my friends to remain calm, they all did the exact opposite and RAN down the sketchy alley where our "hotel" was located. Of course, this made the situation 1000x worse and provoked our stalker to start running after us, no exaggeration.

The good-for-nothing stray hoodrat cats who lived outside of our "hotel" and who provided NO protection against our stalker enemy:

Once we reached our "hotel" we had to buzz the doorbell so the owner would let us in. The hotel owner was some 90-yr-old lady so, of course, we were stuck outside for what felt like an hour waiting for the lady to buzz us in. The rest of the night consisted of tears, nightmares, etc. etc. It was seriously the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, and I know a lot of people are going to think that I was just being really paranoid and that nobody was following us, but I can promise you that this guy was DEFINITELY following us. And that concluded our Spring Break.