espagne!

DISCLAIMER: first post, so it's kind of long

so this is my third night in europe, and i have yet to post anything, so i'll go over my trip thus far. the flight was long, and it was pretty hard to get any sleep. i had a four hour layover in newark--it was pretty lame aside from the fact that i could see the new york skyline from the airport, which i'd never seen.

i landed in madrid monday morning spain time and took a bus to zaragoza. there i met up with elizabeth and cindy at michael and cara's apartment. michael's friend clay from kentucky was also staying there, so it was pretty crowded but it was good to see michael and cara after them being in spain all semester. we walked around zaragoza and saw some of the sites:





this is the teatro romano-the city was apparently founded by augustus ceasar, so there's still some remnants of the old roman city.

after that we tried to go to some improve comedy show, but due to some scheduling error the group had showed up early and left because nobody was there to watch. so we went to a bar where they have a full jazz band set-up and random groups of people will grab instruments and break into a jazz freestyle, pretty entertaining.

thte next morning elizabeth, cindy and i woke up and took a bus to barcelona. waiting for the bus = the best stinkeye i've ever seen:


we got to barcelona and checked into the travelers' hostel on passeig de gracia. it's a pretty nice hostel--free breakfast and internet, clean rooms and a bar/restaurant thing. it was originally pretty cheap too-15 euros-but the second night we tried to book the same room again it had gone up to something like 24 euros. the staff is not terribly consistent or organized here.

barcelona is made up of two main types of architecture, the gothic areas and the things designed by gaudi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. one of his buildings, the casa battlo, was turned into a museum and was just down the road from the hostel we stayed in:


the first day in barcelona we mostly walked around the area of our hostel. we ate at some italian place because of a relatively cheap meal that included two courses, bebida (drink) and dessert. apparently most of the time meals here are full two-course meals. the second day we got up and took the metro to parque geull, which is a huge sprawling park on the north side of the city designed by gaudi. most of his stuff is pretty bizarre--it looks like some combination of dr. seuss and pan's labyrinth. we didn't go through the entire park, but we saw a pretty good view of the city and i picked up a souvenir for my sister (trying to get as much souveniring out of the way now so i can send it all home with elizabeth when she leaves).





then we went to another of gaudi's creations, the sagrada familia. on the way we randomly came across a museum that had a free display of special effects used in movies, mostly masks and dummies. there was a lot from guillermo del toro, like the eyeball monster and the faun from pan's labyrinth and the big hand from hellboy. it was a pretty interesting exhibit, especially for free. it had a warning that it was not appropriate for children under 13, and apparently also not for cindy (she was too scared to go in).

the sagrada familia is a ridiculously huge cathedral that is still not finished. construction began in the late 1800s, and it's expected to be finished around 2020. it is definitely the most imposing building in the city and the biggest church i've ever seen. there is an insane amount of detail around the exterior of the entire church, sometimes to the point of being overwhelming. there's also a museum within the cathedral that has lots of original sketches and models of the structure.




we stopped for lunch in some little diner that had good a good patata stew-ish dish followed by really nasty steak and fries. it was a mixed experience. after a brief siesta at the hostel, we took the metro out to the beach. apparently the beaches in the city are crap compared to some farther along the coast, but we didn't really have time to go too far. we crashed on the beach for a while, which was really nice after walking around all day. i saw the mediterranean for the first time:


afterward, we tried some sangria (barcelona is supposed to be well-known for its sangria) and had doner kabobs for dinner. they're like a flatbread or pita stuffed with meat and vegetables. in zaragoza i had one with pollo, here they were all lamb. they're really delicious and cheap, and i'm told they're a staple of european, or at least spanish cuisine.


tomorrow, we're probably going back to zaragoza. the rest of this week is not quite planned out yet. also, i am healthy, well-fed and soon to be well-rested, so worry not. expect more posts soon.