10/23/10 Un fin de semana normal...

I started my day pretty early for going to sleep around 1:30 am.  I met up with Emily and the Rome girls to visit Parc Güell in the morning.  Park Güell is a park that was designed by Antoni Gaudi, the same important guy who designed La Sagrada Familia and pretty much every other cool looking building in Barcelona.  Gaudi wanted the park to be a garden city, and Gaudi reflects on the conflict between man and nature in his artwork.  A lot of his work is done with beautiful mosaics.

            I met up with Emily and the other girls at the metro station.  Emily had been to Park Güell before, so she tried to get us there from the metro station.  She didn’t actually know where she was going though, so we ended up wandering around for a while.  The park is on a giant hill, and we ended up having to walk over the backside of the hill and down the trails to get there.  From the top of the hill, there was a great view of the city.  It was almost like the view from Tibidabo, but the hill is a bit smaller.  We walked down the hill towards the crowds of people.  Venders were selling things everywhere.  They all just lay out blankets on the ground and sell everything from scarves to magnets.  It is pretty hard to describe all the different elements of the park, so I’ll let my pictures do the talking.

After the park, I went home and had an amazing lunch.  One of my favorite meals.  We had a saugage pasta soup, but it was a little bit thicker than soup.  My second course was Calamari a la plancha, cooked in an olive oil, parsley, garlic sauce.  Finally for dessert, we had sweet potatoes.  I like having sweet potatoes, because there are often vendors in the street roasting sweet potatoes and chestnuts.  As amazing as they smell, I always resist the temptation to buy them, so I’m pretty pumped that Pepita makes them.  Our lunch was accompanied by another episode of Walker Texas Ranger.  I chilled at home for the afternoon.

After dinner, I met up with a bunch of people and went to a bar called La Oveja Negra (Black Sheep).  It was a really cool and there were tons of native people there (as opposed to tourists).  I think the best part about the bar was the foosball.  I miss playing foosball so much!  Last year, my dorm had a foosball table, so I played with my friends almost every day.  After the bar, a few of us went to a club called Mary’s Place.  Admission was free before 1:30 am, and we made it there just in time.  I realized how much I miss American music when I was there.  I don’t really hear any music when I’m at home with Pepita, so the club is one of the only places where I could hear it.  For some reason though, I kept wondering as we were dancing, if they Spanish people around me understood the music or if they just danced.  I enjoy American music because it is in English, I don’t think I enjoy dancing to music in other languages as much.  Every so often a song would come on in Spanish, but it just wasn’t the same—not as fun to dance to.  Anyways, I’m glad I speak English for at least one reason—all the popular music around the world is American and it is in English.