First Trip!

So my trip this weekend to Barcelona and Andorra was so epically awesome that there is no way I can possibly describe everything in this one blog post. I'll do the best I can, and hopefully you can all get a general idea of how great this trip actually was.

Thursday night, Kyle and I headed up to Barcelona before everyone else and met up with Sander at the hostel. The hostel wasn't bad, but it was an interesting first experience. Friday we spent the day wandering around Barcelona. I had heard a lot about Las Ramblas, but in all honesty had no idea what exactly it was. Basically it's this long street in Barcelona filled with souvenir shops, restaurants, artists, and plenty of mimes. We went to one of the markets close to our hostel (honestly don't remember what it was called) and saw some tasty fruit juice blends for 2 euro that we couldn't resist. Of course we found the same drinks for 1.50 about 100 feet away and then found them for 1 euro even later on. Go figure. But this place had all kinds of stuff from sweets to meats and was really cool to explore. After that we hopped onto the metro and walked up to Parque de Guell, or Gaudi's park, and had an amazing view of the entire city of Barcelona. We just kept climbing higher and had a better view each time. After walking around for several hours, we decided it was time to head back to the city and grab some lunch. We got a little lost, but stopped in a convenience store for ice cream...and magically found the street we needed right afterwards (aka ice cream solves everything). We met up with Lucy at the church of the Sagrada Familia, and that night went to go see the Magic Fountain...a huge fountain set to lights and music, it was absolutely amazing. We eventually met up with John and Mike, hung out for a bit, and went to a club where we got totally ripped off from the deal they were advertising. Got about an hour's sleep (if that) and then left at 5am to catch our 6:15 bus to Andorra.

Needless to say we all passed out pretty much instantly when the bus pulled out of the station. Three hours later, we arrived in the tiny little country of Andorra. I was a little bummed because we didn't get our passports stamped, but that didn't bother me for too long...I was too impressed by the mountains that surrounded us. It took us a little while to find our hostel, but we finally found it and got ready to explore this random vacation spot. Unfortunately it started to rain, but that didn't stop us from checking out the shops and parks around the city. Despite the rain, Andorra was still a beautiful place. We stopped in at parliament and learned a little bit about the history. I felt kind of bad for our tour guide, though--she spoke a little bit of English and tried to give her presentation in English for those that didn't really speak Spanish, but she was having a tough time. We eventually just told her not to worry about it and helped translate for those who couldn't understand. That night, we split the group in half. Kyle, Lucy, and Sander all went to a guitar/violin concert while Mike, John, and I went to this place called Caldea, a type of spa where you get to walk around to all the different areas and just relax. It was absolutely AMAZING. The pool even went outside, where you could relax in the warm water and look up at the mountains.

We got about 6 hours of sleep before getting up Sunday morning to try and go see the sunrise. We didn't get to see the actual sun because of the mountains, but we still got to relax in this really peaceful part of the city, watching the mountains and trees get brighter and brighter. We caught mass at the church right by where we went for sunrise, then headed back to the hostel to pack everything up and get ready for skiing. We took a while at the rental place, trying on boots and getting all suited up for the snow (P.S. I forgot what a bitch it was to put on ski boots). We took a gondola up to the actual ski area, which gave us a great view of the snow-capped mountains. I got a little 5-minute refresher course from Kyle on the basics of skiing and then rocked my first time down the bunny slope. I was a little nervous to go up to the next slope since it was a level higher, but I ended up rocking that one as well. The next few...well, let's just make a long story short and say that those weren't quite so easy and I felt like I was going to die at times. You want more details, you can ask me later. But overall it was a really fun time. We ended up going up to one of the really high points (unintentionally for some of us) and the view was INCREDIBLE. Unfortunately, the downer of the day was Mike busting up his knee after crashing into a snowboarder. We helped get him back to town at the end of the day, grabbed our stuff from the hostel, and headed to the bus station.

Now seeing as this was the last part of the trip, this little instance gets a paragraph of it's own. Kyle, Mike, and Lucy all took a cab to the bus station while John, Sander, and I walked and picked up a tasty McDonald's meal for everyone. The three of us got back to the bus station with 10 minutes to spare, normally not a problem with the buses. Well, as it turns out, the bus driver was in a hurry to leave, and when we got there we found him arguing with the other half of our group--he wasn't going to let us onto the bus (there was a miscommunication with ticket info). Finally, after talking at the front desk, we got everything cleared up and he let us on. Then, he saw the pizza boxes Sander had, pizza boxes that actually contained the clocks that he and Kyle had bought in Barcelona. We had to physically show him that it wasn't food for him to let us on (he was a very grumpy bus driver), and suddenly had no idea how we were going to get our dinner on with us. And of course, I was the one holding the two giant bags of McDonalds. I threw my coat over my arm just in time to perfectly cover the food as we got on the bus. We all agreed that dinner would have to wait til we got back to Barca--the last thing we needed was the lovely aroma of fresh McDonalds getting us kicked off the bus. Finally, after an extra long bus ride thanks to the boarder traffic, we made it back to Barcelona, and ate our smuggled dinner from Andorra in Spain.

Well, this is the very abbreviated version of the weekend. There were many other smaller stories and jokes in between, but these are the highlights. I apologize if the writing isn't that good, but there's only so much you can do with lots of stories and limited space so as not to bore people. Hope you enjoy!


This is a picture of all of us in Andorra, minus Sander