My Trip to Barcelona: Part 2

So after our first day in Barcelona, we were all very tired, we had been walking all day! So we returned to our hostel for a little break, but we knew that we could not call it a night at only 10 pm. In Spain, you party until it's light outside. The only way people manage to do this I think is by taking siestas (little naps) from 2-4 every day. Anyway, it was the festival of San Juan that night so whenever we went out to go hang out at the beach, the streets were packed with people. And although fireworks are usually heavily restricted, everyone was allowed to use them. They weren't as much of a show as the fireworks for the fourth of July, but it certainly was exciting. We were constantly being startled by the loud CRACKS and a lot of people were just setting them off in the middle of everyone on the street. It wasn't exactly safe.

So as we were making our way down to the beach, we randomly bumped into a group of 4 guys from Manchester, London and we ended up hanging out with them all night. It was very nice to communicate with people whose first language was English. We had so much fun laughing at all of the really drunk people on the beach, talking about all of the differences between English and American people, and buying 1 euro cervezas and mojitos. I even went in the water, although it was freezing!

The next day was much more relaxed. We all headed to see the oldest church in Barcelona and the stadium that was built for the '92 olympics. We had a nice lunch and mostly talked about the night at the beach until we had to get back on the train to Alcalá.

These pictures are from the Olympic Stadium

Cadence

Meghan

Taylor

The oldest Church (It cost money to go inside so we opted out)

 If there is anything I am getting a bit tired of, it's churches (excluding the Sangrada Familia of course).

Some weird spire at the olympics

Notice how it is written in Catalan (In Spain, there is a lot of tension between central Spain and places like Barcelona, País Vasco, Galicia, etc. because those regions prefer their own identity to that of Spain) I thinkit must have been quite a statement to the central government that they chose Catalan for the Olympic Stadium.

P.S. If you are ever considering riding the night train from Madrid to Barcelona, Don't do it! It is not fun to try and sleep in a chair obviously designed only for sitting.