Don't cry for me, Barcelona...

THE trip: Zaragoza, Monserrat, Barcelona...

So I feel like after this study abroad I ought to write for National Geographic or something, considering I go cool places and then write reviews of them for y'all... Also, I really recommend you look at my Picasa album about this trip, because I took about 200 photos and they're ALL interesting. :D

Anyway, so once again we departed on the autobus for strange and far-off destinations in Catalunya - a part of Spain in the northeast corner that pretty much would like to secede from Spain entirely. They're pretty proud, the official language is Catalan, not Spanish, so all the signs and everything are in Catalan with Spanish underneath. Our tour guide the second day told us that the FC Barcelona soccer players are the World Champions, because more national team players in that game came from the team FC Barcelona than any other team - therefore, Barcelona is world champions, not Spain. In return, most of the rest of Spain calls Catalunya weird and strange and says they're not really Spanish, so hey, everything works out in mutual minor dislike.

Day one - visited Zaragoza, a city between Madrid and Barcelona - it has this cathedral, which is where the virgin Mary supposedly appeared to St. James - I went out on a bridge by myself to take amazing pictures, got in trouble for leaving and taking said pictures, but... it was worth it, if I say so myself.

Basilica of the Virgin Pilar and the river Ebro - photo taken from the bridge.

We continued to Monserrat, in the mountains, where there's a little monastery and a GORGEOUSLY BREATHTAKING VIEW of a mountainous rivery valley.

I was overcome by an urge to take an artsy picture - there's more in my Picasa album. Here you can see the mountains, though. There weren't a lot of mountains, but they looked like this.

We got to Barcelona just after the sunset, went to our hotel, then headed out to see the Sagrada Familia at night and eat. If you haven't seen the Sagrada Familia before, I suggest you go to Google and look up pictures of it. None of mine do it justice. But I'll try...

The next day we took a bus tour of Barcelona. We saw a lot of crazy things. Barcelona is a more modern city, influenced especially by the work of Gaudi, a half-crazy, half-genius architect. I plan to learn more about him - because his works are amazing!

The "Face of Barcelona" statue. After seeing this, I started thinking maybe the rest of Spain isn't so off in thinking Catalunyans are weird... We drove up to the lookout point on a hill overlooking Barcelona called Montjuic. From here we could see the city and the Mediterranean. We later came back to Montjuic and hiked ten minutes up to the top, where there's a castle/fortress. It was closed when we came, but we got to see all the city lights and lights from ships out on the sea.

I fell in love with the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, looking at it from on top of Montjuic was as close as I got to it.

From Montjuic, we went back to the Sagrada Familia with the guide to take the official tour. It's a cathedral dedicated solely to the Sacred Family - Christ, Mary, Joseph - started in the 1800s, that's STILL under construction. It's the most crazy cathedral ever invented. However, it's also incredibly cool, because everything is symbolic. The front side of it has scenes depicting Christ's birth, and the back side has scenes depicting his death. The whole thing was amazing - it's been declared a world heritage site, it's definitely one of a kind! They anticipate finishing it (for real this time) in 2016. The world is waiting to see if it actually happens.

After our tour, our group basically spent the rest of the day walking around Barcelona. We saw the Plaza Catalunya and Las Ramblas - a street with lots of flea-market type stores - we saw a statue of Christopher Columbus, who visited Barcelona after his first trip to the Americas, we explored a neighborhood of Gothic -style architecture, and best of all we ate at an all-you can eat that had FRUIT and VEGETABLES and PASTA and I was in heaven!

Yes, that IS grapefruit! It was AMAZING!!!

On our way back to Alcala the next day, we stopped at Monasterio de la Piedra - monastery of the rock - and it was cool, but the best part was the park - basically it was a mountainside with trails all over through the trees and waterfalls EVERYWHERE! It was quite possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.

This is the biggest of the waterfalls we saw - and this isn't even the bottom of it.

The trip to Barcelona was, for various reasons, the trip I was both looking forward to the most and worrying about the most. However, it couldn't have gone better! The only sad thing was that we were only there a day and a third. Someday I'm coming back to Spain, and when I do, I'm going to spend all the time I want in Barcelona.