We took a gondola to the top! Montjuic is basically a huge park that has a castle, the 1992 Olympic stadium, a fountain, and more random stuff. After spotting the water, we were all ready for some beach time!
Even though it wasn't the nicest beach and the water was freezing, it felt great to relax and enjoy the weather.
The next morning we went on a very long walk to see most of the important Gaudi-designed buildings in the city, most impressive being la Sagrada Familia.
We also found a Dunkin Donuts in Europe, we were all amazed and of course I had to get iced coffee!
In the afternoon it was time for some more beach.
Then we had the most amazing paella at a place that a friend recommended to us, and went to a club that night. The walk home was kind of sketchy and made us all glad that we'd be heading back to Paris where we actually have a handle on where we should and should not go at night!
Saturday we checked out Parc Guell, which was designed by Gaudi and is up on another huge hill. We brought a picnic and people watched for a few hours.
We finished up our day by exploring and people watching the pier: I can't even imagine how pricy it is to have your sailboat docked here, it is right in the middle of the city!
Before we knew it, it was time to head back to Paris! I really enjoyed Barcelona but probably didn't experience it fully because I was so exhausted from traveling for two weeks straight. Luckily, going to the beach was a welcome break from tourist-y activities. It had much more of an international city feel than a Spanish-city feel, much less Spanish-y than Madrid and definitely Sevilla and Granada. Also, they do not speak Spanish, instead they speak Catalan so that made it feel even less like Spain.
A funny little story about Catalan: In 8th grade my Spanish teacher was a Spanish woman named Mrs. Pla on an exchange program to teach Spanish in the U.S. for a year. She decided that she was going to teach us Catalan grammar rules and such instead of actual Spanish and was just in general a terrible teacher. When we got to 9th grade, my teacher basically spent the first half of the year re-teaching what we were supposed to have learned in 8th grade because:
A) we barely learned anything at all
B) what we did learn was not even correct Spanish!
