el fin de semana

I am so thankful for being here. Life is so good, it's everything I want. The city is beautiful and I get upset when anyone thinks it isn't. I guess it /is/ a major metropolitan city and there are things about that that aren't great: high prices, lots of tourists, resentful Spaniards. I can think of a lot of reasons why I could have studied in Seville or Grenada or a smaller, more traditionally Spanish city, but why bother thinking those types of things? Hopefully I'll get to visit those places and otherwise, I'm really content. Plus I think Barcelona has a lot of advantages in terms of traveling to other parts of Europe. As in, I can basically fly any place I would want to go relatively cheaply. At any rate, I appreciate the pace of life here and how much time I get to spend doing what I want. I'm making a point to never be upset with myself for doing one thing instead of another or for not reading as much as I would've liked, because the point of this semester is that I get to be as nonacademic as I please and I have enough time to see everything I want to at my own pace. That's all. Just everything as it comes.

Ok, weekend update.

Great, great weekend. Best Barcelona weekend by far. Thursday after class I had Luke and Lisa over for beers (and forgot to take my online Spanish quiz) and then we went out to Bar Paris for tapas and Estrellas. Called it a night pretty early.

Friday I got up relatively early and rallied the troops for a day of sightseeing. I've been dyingggg to get to the art nouveau masterpiece La Palau de la Musica Catalana since we've been studying it (more specifically its architect, Domenech i Montaner) in my Barcelona art history class. Unfortunately, Luke ending up taking for/ever/ to get to the Palau and it had closed for visits by the time we all arrived. Still, we got to see the outside, which is beautiful and intricate, if a bit difficult to take in because of the narrowness of the streets. We walked around the Barri Gotic and El Borne for awhile before finding a place for lunch. It was a fantastically warm day so we had our beers and tapas outside. (All I do is eat patatas bravas.)

Onwards and upwards to Casa Mila, or "La Pedrera," yet another astounding Gaudí masterpiece. The roof is probably the coolest thing I've seen in Euroland so far. We spent a couple hours at Casa Mila and then metroed to Plaza España for the free light show at the fountain. There were so many people at the fountain! We got cafés con leche and beers and sat on the stairs forever for the show to start, but they were experiencing technical difficulties. After an hour and a half of listening to what my guidebook describes as "pop and opera hits" (the duet 'Barcelona' by Freddie Mercury and a famous Spanish soprano is not to be missed) we had to leave because the cheap liquor store (read: the grocery store next to my apt) closes at 9.

Gin-tonics back at mine and then we went out with a few of my roommates and their friends who were visiting to Pippermint, a bar where they serve gigannnntic glasses of mixed drinks. You know, like the fishbowl places in the States, only the glasses weren't shaped like fishbowls. We all came back to our apartment afterwards, where our RA was called on us at one point because Luke stole Hana's guitar from her room (she was in Paris for the weekend) and played a moving rendition of "Hallelujah." Probably wasn't in bed until 7.


Palau de al Musica Catalana.


Lisa. Lunch outside, right by the Cathedral of Barcelona which you can kind of see on the right.


Facade of Casa Mila/"La pedrera."


Closey-uppy.


The courtyard.


A model, so you can get the idea of what the whole facade looks like.


A hanging model. Gaudí invented the concept. If you look at this model in a mirror it looks like a building. He used it to design and it had a lot of advantages for figuring out structural calculations (that end up being mathematically exact) really easily -- but I'm not sure exactly how it works.


Bad picture of the mirrored version.


The roof!


'Lisa' means soft in Spanish.


Luke listening to the audio tour.


Another roof shot.


And another. It would've been so much more awesome if less people were there (and the lame chain link fences hadn't been erected). Hopefully when I go with my mom we'll find a less touristy time.


I like these guys.


A lot.


My favorite picture.


Another one of my BFFs.


One day all of this will be yours, Simba.


Chicos.


Just hanging out in some Gaudí-designed chairs.


These pictures are from one apartment in Casa Mila that is still open to the public. All the furniture and accouterments are Gaudí-designed because the whole deal with Art Nouveau (which goes by "modernisme" in Spanish) was that everything was a complete work of art.


I want this.


Dining room.


Bedroom.


Salon.


If this were a Facebook album (and MJV was still on Fbook), I would tag this 'Marjorie Vujnovich."


The outside of La Pedrera, which they referred to as "undulating" every 5 - 10 seconds on the audio tour.


Not the main fountain of the light show, but the part that /didn't/ experience technical difficulties.


Still not the main fountain, still pretty.


Laugh central.

Saturday I woke Luke up and made him get patatas bravas with me from Pans & Company, which is basically the Spanish version of McDonald's (think: lots of tuna and ham sandwiches, with the occasional olive here and there). Then he went home. Hung out all day reading with the balcony door open and generally being a layabout. At night, tried to find the Champagnería with Luke and Lisa but it was already closed by the time we actually got to Carrer de la Reina Christina. Oops. Found another sweet bar on that street, got more tapas (patatas bravas for me, OF COURSE) and a few beers. They tried to overcharge us on the check, but I totally caught them! Whatever, I'll totally go back there again. The food was great and the beers were cheap. After that we headed to Razzmataz (sp?) to see Yeasayer, this Baltimore/Brooklyn band that is on the label that Zach's interning for. The club was inSANE. It's this industrial warehouse-ish space with God knows how many floors and gigantic rooms filled with hundreds of people everywhere you looked. I guess all the rooms have different types of music. The place was so big that when we finally wanted to leave (again, it ended up being 6 in the morning before anyone realized they were tired) no one could really tell us where the exit was. Took 20 minutes of wandering around the place to get out. Yeasayer was reallllllly awesome. Very fun. I'm going back to Razzmataz again on Saturday night to see the Mars Volta.

Sunday was lazy, as always. I read a lot about Lisbon and started reading this really huge and really extensive Barcelona history book. Found out that Monday classes were canceled because some girl in my program has bacterial meningitis. It was like having a snow day when its 65 degrees outside! Went for coffee with Lisa and later she came over to start planning activities for our trippytrip to Portugal.

So excited for Lisbon on Thursday!