Hola Spain! Barcelona is a badass mf'er of a city. It is gigantic, and there is loads to do there. I really liked it there. Our hostel was about a 2 minute walk to La Rambla which is one of the main streets packed with restaurants and all that so that was handy.
We arrived into Barcelona at around 6:30 at night, and the bus ride there seemed to take forever so we were pretty keen to arrive. As usual on our first night we just went for a stroll to check things out. We wandered down to the waterfront and the guys trying to sell sunglasses and other counterfeit goods were back! We had a nice break from them in Avignon and we only saw a couple in Nice. Can't say we had missed them. We saw the po-po slowly roll along in their beast mobile and we finally got to see them in action. The place was empty in about 30 seconds after the cops rolled up, as they roll up their sheets and they're outskiis. It's very entertaining to watch. Some of them were still trying to deal as they were walking away.
The next day was my birthdaaayyy! Hooray! It felt nothing like my birthday and I actually forgot it a few times until Brendy reminded me. We took it easy during the day. We went on the hop on hop off tourist bus and just cruised along checking thing out before going back to the room to Skype the fams. My parents and Sarah were so cute they all had party hats on and had a little cupcake for me with a candle it was the best. It made me so happy. :D We skyped brendys parents too and he ended up calling back so Chris could face the laptop towards the TV and he watched the footy. Then we skyped Trini!!!!! That was very very exciting for everyone involved and she kept trying to jump through the screen but it didn't work and she's still in Doncaster. Poor Trini. Nikki an I tried skyping each other like four times and kept missing each other. That was really sad because I love Nikki T just so much.
That night we had our cooking class. We went to the meeting point early because it was a bar and had a few drinks. We went to the market first and bought the ingredients for the paella. We walked to the next bar from there which was where we watched the bearded chef make paella in a giant dish. While it was cooking we had tapas and got to make our own sangria, which meant FREE POUR! Which also meant Brendan went crazy and the sangria we made was a little too strong. Our friend Dee made a jug that was too weak and together they made the perfect sangria. That was nice. We got lost in our attempt to walk back and ended up at the other end of town. Brendan asked some old woman for directions and she grabbed his guns and pointed him in the direction of La Rambla.
We jumped on the bus again the next day and cruised about. We hopped off the bus at some random market but there wasn't much around so we jumped back on the next one to arrive. As we were cruising around town we passed a burger place and realized we were starving so we got off at the next stop. Best move made on the trip to date. The place is named Kiosko and as you walk in, you take a piece of paper and mark down what you want on your burger and then hand it to the girl at the counter. And omfg these burgers are off their t***, t*** that's how good they are! It's very close to the park where the zoo is so we walked around there and found a little lake where you can rent a little paddle boat, so we did that. I was like yesssss notebook time and was very excited but scared as well because I felt like I was going to fall out about 5 times. Brendan ripped the oar out of the boat a good 5 times because he has super human beard strength now. We were just boating about and then we became really close to another boat and smashed into them. Then Brendan thought it would be a great idea to lift up the oar and it went over the head of a kid in the other boat. He had to duck, otherwise he would've smacked him in the head with the oar. The kid got pissed and push our boat away. I laughed so hard!!! Hahahaha we had a cute day though. :)
On day four in Barcelona we woke up and decided to explore the cable cars and walked down to the waterfront to get on board. While we were waiting there was this kid who was chucking a tantrum behind us in line and kept running up to the vending machine and bashing it. Of course we got stuck with it in the cable cars but it had quietened down by the point, so I didn't need to throw it out the window. The view of Barcelona is amazing! You can see everything it's so beautiful. When we got to the other side, we walked around for about 5 minutes talking about the burgers we had the day before, so we decided to catch the cable car back, stole some wifi and made our way back to the burger place. Such a great idea because they were still amazing the next day.
That night we went to a flamenco show. It was so good!!! I tried dancing like the lady on stage after the show but Brendan kept making me stop. He tried to break my spirit but he wouldn't stop me from spreading my wings to fly. The lady however who was doing the flamenco was mental!! You could see she was b*****ed but she was going crazy up on stage and it was so amazing! Afterwards we walked to a small little restaurant and had tapas. We met two cool girls who we walked back with because just after talking about creepy people, they got scared by creepy people and came back inside the place to walk with us haha.
On our final day we did it!! La Sagrada Familia!! We decided to walk from the hostel which took about an hour, so we stopped off at various supermarkets to get booze on the way to make the way seem quicker. It worked. We joined a protest for a little while along the way, a fun time had by all. We stood in line for only 59 minutes an drunken Brendan decided to make Japanese friends in the line. It was so so so awkward. They spoken very little English and then we ended up singing some glee to them and one got excited because I drew a demented kangaroo and koala on a piece of material for them. Anyway, the building is off its head. The outside probably is better than the inside, but it is still amazing. We strolled back and had a nap then got up and had weird kebabs and pizza.
We woke up in the morning and hopped on one of six busabout coaches and through all the mayhem, we said goodbye to Barcelona and headed for Valencia.