Feliz Cumpleaños a Mi…

¡Hola Todos!

Well, it’s probably about time to give a more detailed description of what’s been going on out here in España, given that I haven’t written a detailed account since Madrid. Much has happened since then, as you can probably guess from my previous post. I will attempt to pick out the most important/interesting things from the last week to report.

Barcelona is an amazing city. So far I’ve liked it the best. For those of you who don’t know, it is on the eastern shore of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea and is the second largest city in Spain. As mentioned before, it is the home of many famous buildings, artists, and authors. It was relatively recently the site of the Olympics and experienced significantly remodeling since then. I have many pictures of the city, and they are all gorgeous.

The more visited area of the city is divided into two main sections: the old city and the new city. Our residence was a two-minute walk from the beach in Barceloneta, around the old area of the city. It was a pretty nice residence. Each of us (except for one person) had a roommate, with a small bedroom and a decent sized common area. Our school was about an hour and fifteen minute walk from the residence, but you could make it in half an hour if you took the metro. Walking home every day was awesome though, and it took me through the main commercial area of town, which is full of different kinds of shops and bars (the tapas were great). It was walkable unlike any other American city I’ve been to thus far, which was pretty awesome for me.

I’ll limit myself to two of the awesome places I went to in Barcelona. First, the Sangrada Familia. If you haven’t heard of it, the Sagrada Familia is an extremely large cathedral designed by Gaudí in the late 1800s. The catch is (and what makes it amazing to me) is that he wanted it funded only by public donations. What that means is that the building is still not finished. It has been worked on for many years and there are different sections with different styles. This causes some controversy (some people think it looks just like a patchwork of different styles), but I really liked it. If you ever come to Barcelona, you owe yourself a trip.

I also managed to get out to the Dalí and Picasso museums in the area (I know, two in one, I’m a cheater). Both had an amazing inventory of work from both the artists’ histories as well as what they were known for. It was amazing to see the development of their work over time, especially the variance that you don’t get to see when briefly studying an artist in a class. Picasso’s early work is gorgeous, and we got to see some work he did with metals and pottery as well. Dalí, on the other hand, had a ridiculous amount of random types of work. The most interesting to me was the hall of precious stones, where all the work was made out of various expensive types of gemstones (including, but not limited to, a creepy, beating heart).

As of right now I am actually back in Madrid (worst, blogger, ever), but updates about my time here and Granada will have to wait. Until then, I hope all goes well back in the States!