Rivers & Roads

Sorry I have not posted yet, I has been a whirl wind of academic meetings, bus tours, and excursions. But my first few days here in Barcelona have been great! My apartment is a  3 bedroom, 2 bathroom with laundry and a balcony. I have 3 roommates and I am sharing a room with one of a girls which is not ideal but I think it will work out just fine. From what I can tell our apartment is located in a more residential part of the city, not very close to all the big clubs or the beach, but its a little quieter around here which is nice. 

The first day involved me landing in Barcelona around 730 am and not arriving at my apartment until about 2 pm, due to transportation difficulties with the program, but they did eventually drop us off right at our apartment which was nice. Then we had some time to unpack and get situated before we had to take the metro, which is very easy to use and understand, to a program meeting about safety and to pick up our cell phones. We did not explore too much this first day because we were all so jet lagged but it was very surreal to finally be in Barcelona. I would say the hardest part about our first day was trying to find food. Around my apartment are a lot of small little shops that are a bar, cafe, sandwich place all in one. Most of them have these little ham sandwiches, or bochadillos as the Spanish call them, so we ate a lot of those before we found a good grocery store. I have been trying to speak Spanish with the store clerks and things but it is pretty intimidating and a lot of them are speaking Catalan at first. But practice makes perfect right! 

The second day was a very loooooong day. We had to meet our program at 930am at one of our campuses which is about a half hour metro ride away. Then they proceeded to bombard us with academic, safety, and living information for about 5 hours. Sitting through this with  very little sleep from the night before and no breakfast was very difficult. We then had a 40 minute lunch break before we reunited and went of a 2 1/2 hour bus tour around the city. I wish they had split up this day into two days because the bus tour would have been useful and interesting but it was very hard to stay awake at this point. But we did take a quick stop at Parc Guell on the tour, we got to walk around for 1/2 hour which was great. I will absolutely be going back there when I have more time to explore, I did not realize how huge it is! After this long day, the roommates and I relaxed for a while back at the apartment before one of my roommates, Robyn, and I went out exploring our neighborhood a little bit. We found that we are within walking distance of Las Ramblas, one of the most famous streets in Barcelona. We were walking around at about 1130 pm and everyone was eating dinner at all these beautiful outdoor restaurants all along the street. It is definitely interesting getting used to how late they eat dinner and go out here. 

Forthe third day our program had planned a fun day excursion to a town about 40 minutes away called Sitges and a tour of one of the most famous cava producers in Spain, Freixenet. Sitges is a beautiful little town located right on the coast of the Mediterranean. It has 18 different little beaches and incredible white buildings that line the coast. It is a very popular vacation spot for people in Barcelona who want to get out of the city for a few days. We had around 5 hours to go explore the town, unfortunately it was a cloudy rainy day otherwise we would have gone swimming, but it was stunning all the same. Then we drove 1/2 to get a tour of the Freixenet headquarters. When we started to tour, our guide first thing warned us to stay with the group because the building is a labyrinth and you will get lost. She was not joking, this building has huge filled with millions of bottles of cava going 5 stories below ground. It was very interesting to learn how they produce cava and all the different varieties of cava that they have. At the end we got to try a glass of their black label cava and it was delicious. 

Today is my first day off. I slept in until about 1230 and am now sitting on my balcony writing this, rather long, blog post. I have no real plans for the day, possibly go to a museum or the beach who knows! I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I am living in Barcelona and will be here for the next 4 months. But i am very excited to keep exploring this city and improving my Spanish! Here are some photos of my first few days: