Barcelona!

So, this brings us to day 1 and day 2 of the 10 day adventure! We arrived in Barcelona and used the Metro system to get to our hostel, which was located near the Sagrada Familia!

A view from outside the window on our way to Málaga. Yay green! And mountains!

Me looking a little crunchy (that's for you David!) after 3 hours of sleep, crying after saying goodbye to Carmen, and wearing 6 layers of shirts to make my suitcase lighter!

Our room at our hostel in Barcelona!

Throughout our time in Barcelona, we kept comparing it to other major cities! It had such a gorgeous arch that Paris, France is famous for!

 This post is quite long, so click "read more" to see the rest of the photos!

This is part of the outside of one of the large gardens in Barcelona's city center.

I loved this harbor!

Barcelona's Big Ben?

On day 2 in Barcelona, we took a cable car ride across the harbor! This is one of the towers.

Woot woot for physical fitness! Loved this statue/sculpture!

Kelley and I on the beach!

Barcelona is famous for having lots of random sculptures, and this is just one of the many we saw over the course of two days!

This is no doubt my favorite picture of Barcelona, and one of my favorites from my entire trip! I really loved how we managed to watch many sunsets in beautiful places, as you will see in upcoming posts.

While we were walking down Las Ramblas, we saw lots of beautiful buildings like this one, as well as lots of street performers and shops!

This is the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, and it was so beautiful! I stood in the middle of the street to take this picture! (no cars were coming, of course!)

Day 2!
On the second day of our 10 day adventure, we woke up early and had breakfasts of CHAMPIONS! Also, we weren't sure how much we were going to stop to eat during the day, so we prepared accordingly! We walked over to Sagrada Familia, which is a beautiful, unfinished cathedral that is famous for being a little over the top, thanks to Gaudí! It was so tall! Unfortunately, the reason it was unfinished was that Gaudí was hit by a tram in 1926.  However, the city of Barcelona is working on finishing it.

This was just one of the many sculptures on the outside of the Sagrada Familia.

Loved all of the stained glass windows!

To me, this catedral was refreshingly different to all of the other cathedrals we had seen. As beautiful as they are, you can really only see so many cathedrals before they start to all look the same!

Lots of different languages!

These two photos show the differences between regular Spanish that is spoken in most of Spain, and also Catalan, which is spoken in Barcelona. Catalan is spoken in the image below.

A view from the other side of the cathedral.

In the museum that was below the Sagrada Familia, you could see all of Gaudí's sketches, including of the sculpture I took a picture of earlier. As far as I know, I don't think this particular sculpture had extra significance, but I liked it because I am such a sap and love love!

More awesome Gaudí architecture that we walked by!

Here is a picture from Plaza Catalunya that we went to last night but now during the day! It is so beautiful, and all of the pigeons walking around definitely gave it a European feel to me!

This is the entrance to an absolutely amazing market that was filled with over 300 vendors selling a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, nuts, olive oil, wine, bread, and lots of other things!

The market had the yummiest juices ever!!!! They were only one euro each, natural, and they had so many flavors!! I got mango, raspberry, and a strawberry-guava!

We stopped in another cathedral on our way to the main cathedral. It was nice. Here are some smaller details from the overall place.

Then we moved on to the main cathedral! It was so gorgeous on the outside and on the inside! Also, there was a courtyard inside with all of these funny ducks! They were fun to watch, and I loved their fluffy little mohawks! :)

Gorgeous. Just gorgeous!

 I loved all of Barcelona's random street art!

Our next activity was taking the cable car across the city! As soon as we heard about the opportunity from the guy who ran our hostel, we were very excited! Also, it was convenient logistically since we were able to get across the city and up in the mountains a little bit to prepare for the magic fountain festivities that would take place later that night. The cable car ride was truly magical, since we were up very high and had an amazing view of the city!

 We could even see the Sagrada Familia from a distance, towering over the rest of the city.

 Once we made it to the other side, we had a lot of fun looking around and exploring. We suddenly happened upon a municipal pool, and I thought it was awesome that it looked out over the whole city of Barcelona!

 There was a gorgeous park that we found and walked around in! The sun was just starting to set a little bit! Also, it was amazing that in such a huge city, we managed to get away from it all, since there were very few people where we were!

 Just climbing this really cool tree that was growing sideways!

 Now, looking back on this whole 10 day adventure, I know for a fact this was my favorite part of the trip! We visited the old Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. For some reason, it really hit me and blew me away. The empty stadium was beautiful and almost a little eerie, in a cool way, if that makes sense. The whole place was huge, and there were literally just a few other people there in this huge expanse of land, with the sun setting and a perfect temperature with a soft breeze blowing. Just amazing.

 Here is the room with all of the old flags.

 One of the palaces off in the distance.

 As we walked around the stadium, we were basically alone and walking downhill into this gorgeous sunset!

 The plaza itself in front of the stadium was huge!

I was not aware of it, but Elle took this picture of me when I was internally freaking out of joy as I was sitting on top of the fountain thing while I was watching the sunset.  You can also see a little bit of the Barcelona cityscape in the horizon.

 Still part of the Olympic park!

 Now we were heading to the Magic Fountain as we continued down the mountain! The Magic Fountain is basically a regular fountain (yet still very impressive) most of the time, but on weekends from 9 to 11pm it has light and music shows every half hour!

 This is still when we are up high by the palace, but you can see the Magic Fountain behind the 4 pillars!

 And now, the Magic Fountain show! First, for the 10pm show, we were sitting on the steps to the Palace, and then we moved closer for the 10:30 show!

 And that was the end of day 2 of the 10 day adventure!!

The next day we woke up early to visit Park Güell, which was also designed by Gaudí.  It was very high up in the mountains, but we took the Metro to get there, and it was sort of funny since there were escalators going up to the mountain, which was interesting.  It was a little cloudy, but we were still able to get great views!

 One thing I loved is that everywhere we went, you could see all of these love locks, in which couples lock up a lock in a beautiful part of the city somewhere and throw the key either into water or off the mountain, etc to signify that they will love each other forever! Being the sap I am, I absolutely love this, so I hope to have a lock somewhere in the future! :)

 Two of Gaudí's buildings that look a little like gingerbread houses to me!

 Elle and I "kissing" this lizard sculpture!

Kelley and I in this cool archway/tunnel/awesome architecture!

And that is Barcelona! Wow, sooo long. I have decided that I should probably not make all of the other posts this long, or maybe at least break them up by day. We will see. Thank you for your patience, time, and support!  You rock!! Have a day as great as you!