After the end of the pre-session we had a week until actual classes started, so two of my friends (Becky and Melissa) and I decided to go to Ibiza and Barcelona. We planned to train down to Barcelona Tuesday the 7th but, true to French form , there was a national grève (strike) planned for that day and none of the transportation services were going to be running. To avoid the strike we got our tickets changed to Monday and just stayed in a hostel that night in Barcelona and flew out to Ibiza on Ryan Air on Tuesday.
Aerial view of the island
Once in Ibiza, we took one of the public buses to our hostel in Es Canar. The buses run periodically through out the day and most of them are used as Discobuses to transport people at night to the area where the clubs are.
Ibiza is insane in all aspects of the word. Insanely beautiful (the beaches are so amazing), insane amounts of people (there were hordes of tourists everywhere), insane lifestyle (people habitually stay out til 630 or 7 in the morning like it's no big deal.
Our view at dinner the first night
beach in Ibiza is better than any beach back home. Like any good tourists in Spain, we had Sangria with most of our meals. The food really good for the most part, but we had to make sure we found somewhere that was decently priced and didn’t charge us 5 euros for a soda.We took it easy the first night since we were pretty tired from traveling all day and we slept for a solid 11 hours which was amazing. The second night we decided to venture to Eivissa for dinner, which was a mistake because the food was not so bueno and it was all so overpriced. The entire place was a tourist trap, but it had interesting back streets full of people (a lot of trannys) and gay bars. Quite an interesting scene but needless to say we didn’t stay for too long.
Cala Nova
Oh yeah, we went PARASAILING!! Becky freaked out.
At Space, there was an event going on called "Come Together" and a whole bunch of different artists appear at different times in the night. We were able to see English rapper Tinie Tempah, who I had only heard of because his song is in the DJ Earworm summer mix, but he is really big all over Europe. On Friday at Privilege there were multiple things happening all at once it was hard to keep track. A pirate show was being put on while acrobats hung from chandeliers, and performers rode unicycles across tight ropes 15 feet in the air as everyone in the crowd watched in awe.Saturday we headed back to Barcelona. We stayed at a pretty good hostel near a place called Las Ramblas. We went to dinner near the Santa Maria del Mar Basilica in La Ribera district. The girl who worked at the hostel recommended that area and it was a great place to go to get dinner or hang out at a café. Afterwards we wandered around for a while and stumbled upon a festival going on in front of the Arc de Triomphe. This was probably my favorite part of Barcelona and why I would always recommend just openly wandering around a city because you’re always bound to run into something. At first we just thought it was a summer festival equivalent to the wine festivals here in Montpellier, but then we realized that it was a sort of rally/concert/festival all packed into one for the liberation of Catalonia. The people of Barcelona (well a certain really proud percent of the people) are really adamant about being Catalan and not Spanish, hence the rally.
On that note, one must remember that they don’t speak Spanish in Barcelona. They speak Catalan, which is a mix of Portuguese/French/Italian/Spanish. I didn’t realize this when we first arrived and was confused as to why no one understood what I was trying to say to them. Then again my Spanish is very limited, but the language is so different that you can’t really get by just speaking Spanish.
During the day on Sunday we did all the normal tourist-y things. We opted to skip the tourist bus because it was 22 euros and most of the big tourist spots had metro stops right near them. We started off with Sagrada Familia, a Roman-Catholic church designed by Antoni Gaudi. The church has been under construction since 1882 and has even more scaffolding and fenced-off areas than the first time I saw it. I remember my tour guide in high school said that it is privately funded and they continuously run out of money to pay for the construction, so it isn’t expected to be completed until at least the 2020s (140 years in the making, mind you). Despite the construction, it is still a fabulous thing to see because it is so majestic.
Sagrada FamiliaNext, we headed towards Parc Güell, the famous park with all the mosaic decorations. It was 
another site I had seen when I went to Barcelona in high school, but I was glad to be back because it had been so long, also because I didn’t bring my digital camera on the first trip; only a 35mm manual to take pictures for my photography class. The park was just as great as I remembered it. In the grotto area with the giant columns there were lots of vendors and my friend and I both bought necklaces in the mureno glass style (did I spell that right?). They were only 4 euro which was a pretty sweet deal!
another site I had seen when I went to Barcelona in high school, but I was glad to be back because it had been so long, also because I didn’t bring my digital camera on the first trip; only a 35mm manual to take pictures for my photography class. The park was just as great as I remembered it. In the grotto area with the giant columns there were lots of vendors and my friend and I both bought necklaces in the mureno glass style (did I spell that right?). They were only 4 euro which was a pretty sweet deal!After the park we made our way over to the famous Gaudi houses: Batlló and Milà. Both were very architecturally intriguing from the outside and had museums on the inside, but since we are cheap college kids and their tickets didn't fit within our do-whatever's-free budget, we decided not to go in. Lastly, we headed to the Parc de la Ciutadella, a giant park in the middle of the city that includes a zoo, fountain and several museums. We didn’t go into the zoo or the museums because they, of course, cost money too, but instead we walked around and saw the fountain that was constructed for the Universal exhibition in 1888. It is based off of the Trevi Fountain in Rome and built in part by none other than…Gaudi.
Casa Batlló and Casa Milà
That night we headed down to the port/beach area for dinner. We spent a while trying to find the plaza that I had remembered from my first trip and once we realized I had no idea what I was talking about, we gave up and ate at a pretty good seafood restaurant near the beach. A large majority of the restaurants in Barcelona offer seafood paella, a traditional dish featuring rice, seafood, meat and seasonings. But... I just had the chicken, figures.
Afterward we hung out on the beach for a bit, which seemed to be a pretty popular place for both
locals and tourists to hang out a night. We then ventured off to IceBarcelona, the self-proclaimed first ice bar on the beach. It was 15 euro for admission and one drink, and the necessary clothing to keep you from getting pneumonia (giant parka and gloves). Of course the only shoes we brought on this trip were sandals because we don't think ahead, but at least we had jeans! Some people were in there in shorts and dresses and they were loco. It was an interesting experience, complete with creepy bartender. It definitely wasn’t as big as the Absolut ice bars in London or Copenhagen, but it was cool because everything was made out of ice. The bar, the cups, the chairs, the people.. hah just kidding. It was funny because they were playing the movie Ice Age on the flat screen TVs that were apparently necessary for the bar. Except, it was Ice Age the Meltdown which made it more ironic because they were in a desert while our toes were slowly developing frostbite.
Getting attacked by an ice bear
Me, Becky and MelissaAfter the ice bar we went to two other clubs that were on the same boardwalk. It was sweet because there were a bunch of people handing out flyers that gave us free admission so we didn't have to pay anything to get in (unlike in Ibiza, those covers were expensive).
A couple of our friends had been in Barcelona the three days before we went and they did a free walking tour and a bar crawl, something I wish we had known about. There are always free things to do in those major cities, so next time I am definitely going to do more research.
Monday we had a bit of a scare because we thought school started Tuesday, but then we kept seeing everyone's Facebook statuses saying FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!! So I frantically called one of our friends back in Montp (it's what the cool kids call it) and she confirmed that classes had already started. Luckily, my classes didn't start til Tuesday (I am in the IEFE aka the foreigners school and they run on a different schedule) and Becky and Melissa don't have any Monday classes, so we were good.
As soon as our bus arrived back in Montp, we headed straight for the Wok. The Wok is amazing. I want it right now. It's Chinese stir-fry and you can get whatever you want in it and they have so many sauces and MMMHM it's so good! I might have to get some tomorrow.
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