Barcelona: Day Three

So we got up on Sunday, April 10th and went to Parc Guell (pronounced Park Gwey). This massive area was originally intended to be a master planned community designed by Gaudi, but apparently the idea never quite took off so they left it as a huge park which is now one of the most popular places in Barcelona. I'll let the pictures explain.

The entrance to Park Guell


The "central market"


The Iguana which is somewhat famous


Some nice stairs


Terraces in the park


Flowers growing over the terraces


The view from above the market


Views on the way up to the three crosses




View of Barcelona from the three crosses, click to see a big version!

Adan and Mike met us at Park Guell and we all went to get lunch. After that Ashley went back home to study some for her classes on Monday. Adan and Mike took me back to their appartments, which are TINY. I felt really bad for them, their entire apartment (kitchen, bathroom, dining, bedroom) is a single room that is smaller, MUCH smaller, than my dorm room at Santa Chiara. They got pretty shafted, especially compared to the girls. And rediculously, their rent is like 700 euro a month. Insanity.

Mike, Adan, Dave (Morris) and I went down to the coast and the Barcelona Forum where we met Kim and Crystal. For a while we fooled around in some exhibit buildings from a mostly failed city project intended to jumpstart the northern part of town. After that we went out to this pretty cool jetty where there were huge boulders that we ran around on and could have died on. Yeah it was really a great idea.

Me with Mike, Adan, and Dave, goofing off in front of a big mirror


Crazy boulder jetty


Adan on massive concrete blocks at the end of the jetty

So after that we went to this park which was pretty cool, very modern in contrast to the majority of Europe. Adan and I had a good time taking out the slides in the playground.

Interesting Park in Barcelona


You're never too old


Mike and Adan at Qu Qu

That evening we went to dinner at "Qu Qu" which was fun, I ate duck, which was really good by the way, and had a lot of coca-cola, official sponsor of the european continent. It was good times for all. I went back to the apartment with Ashley, we got home around midnight and finally got to sleep about 1 AM, just in time to get up at 3:45AM to start heading back to Italy. On the way home I hailed a cab at abuot 4:15 (which was kind of interesting) and said goodbye to Ashley, then rode to the Barcelona north autobus station, met the girls (Kim, Crystal, Elisha, Jackie) and caught the 5AM bus to Girona, got to the airport about 6:15AM, checked in, had breakfast, waited for the plane, took off at 8:30, landed at 10:30 (we flew over Rome and the view was insanely amazing),caught a bus from Ciampiano to Rome, got to Termini about 12:45, ate lunch, caught a 2PM train to castiglion which finally put us home at about 5:45 PM. So nearly 16 hours travel time. Seems to me like that would be about the same as driving there, but oh well we have no car. Thus concludes Barcelona, which was really really fun.

Just one more time I want to send a big THANK YOU to Ashley who let me use their extra bed and played tourguide without complaint for three long days in Barcelona. Muchas gracias!