Spain

ARGH!!! I just had most of my post done, and the stupid computer froze up...so I lost all of it....

Well, this is my Spain post. I was sick for most of the weekend, but other than that it was amazing. It started with me getting about 1 hour of sleep and leaving for the bus station at 1:30am on Friday. We got to the airport early and waited for our flight. We got to sleep a bit in the lounge, which was nice. The plane boarded late and took off late. But we got into the airport just fine and took a bus into Barcelona. We had problems finding our hostel at first... We had an address, but we couldn't find it. After wandering for a while we found a hotel and asked the conceirge where it was. And then we wandered some more... We finally found it; we missed it because we were looking for a large sign over the doorway... when all that there was was a little sign about 4 inches square above the door buzzer. But the hostel was really nice. It was small, two double rooms and 2 8-bedded rooms. Breakfast was included, we had a little balcony over the street and a patio out back. They were friendly and really great there. We didn't do a lot the first day, due to total exhaustion. But we ate lunch in a park where we didn't have to wear coats because it was so nice out! Then we walked down to the beach and dipped our feet in the Mediterranean :) We had supper at a small cafe and then crashed for the night.

Saturday was our touristy day. We started out on the tour bus. We went first to La Sagrada Familia, which was a temple designed by Gaudi. It was amazing. The whole temple/church is still unfinished, but it was inspired by nature. The ceiling looks like a canopy of trees. It is so beautiful... http://www.sagradafamilia.org/ (I don't have my pics with me, so I'll have to put up the link... but I'll post my pics soon). The next stop was Park Guell, another place inspired by Gaudi. It was huge! A lot of the caves and things looked like they could have been natural, but weren't. There were also tons of mosaics there. http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/barcelona/gaudipark/gaudipark.html (Like I said, I'll post my pics soon). Then it started to rain. So we got back on the (open-topped) tour bus and rode around for a while. Our next stop was Poblo Espanya (yes, it's spelled right, it's not Spanish, but Catalan, a regional dialect that looks and sounds like a cross between Spanish and French). It's a replica of a traditional Iberian villiage, built in 1929 and restored for the 1992 Olympics. It was really neat just to wander through there. We got back about 9pm.

Sunday was fun; we went to the Picasso museum. It wasn't any of his famous works, but we got to see some early sketches and lesser-known works. And since they were remodeling, we got in for free :) Then we went to La Rambla, which is the big open-air market in Barcelona. We wandered some more around the city, and then took a bus back to the airport. We got back to MTH about 1:30.

So that's my Spain trip! It was amazing, and I'll post some of my pics of it soon!

Love to all!