¡barcelona!

So I don´t have a ton of time to write at the moment, but since I´ve got WIFI (in Spain pronounced wee-fee, I still giggle everytime I hear it) I thought I´d give a quick update. As suggested by the title of this post, I´m in Barcelona! Classes with our program are Monday-Thursday, and most weekends we go on a day trip on Friday. This weekend, however, we´ve been granted a full four-day weekend so about twenty or so of us from the program decided to take advantage of the time to take a trip to Barcelona. I was a little bit hesitant at first to book this trip seeing as there are so many parts of Spain I´ve not yet had been able to experience and I visited Barcelona while on a school trip in the summer of 2010, but so far I couldn´t be happier with my decision to come here. We researched extensively to figure out how we wanted to travel, where we wanted to stay and to get a rough idea of where we might want to eat and what we might want to see while we´re here. I´ve tried to write myself a budget, or at least to give myself an idea of just how much money I´d be spending this weekend. It makes me feel oh so mature, haha. After class yesterday we booked it to take the Metro straight into the train station in Madrid from which we took a highly discounted trip on the AVE (Spain´s super high-speed train) straight to Barcelona in about a two and a half hour long trip. We spent our time taking a break from practicing our Spanish and playing an extensive number of card games (who knew the Turks had a version of BS that requires even more cunning and deceit than our American version). Five of us booked a very highly rated and well recommended Hostal that´s just out of the center of all of the commotion of Barcelona, while others from our program are staying closer to La Rambla (aka the aforementioned center of all the commotion). We thoroughly enjoyed a dinner of seafood and paella last night and a relaxing morning at the beach today. This has been my first experience with European beaches, thus the whole topless trend took a little getting used to. Caitlin and I chose not to participate in this aspect of the culture, though I would definitely say I´m impressed with the confidence level of all of the women on the beach. People have no shame, and, as far as I can tell, they love their bodies and aren´t at all afraid to show them off. Along those lines, PDA and social conduct seems much more liberal in Spain than in the US, but maybe I´m just slightly prudish... Regardless, in both Barcelona and Madrid, if there´s a couple within two blocks of you, they´re immediately going to show off just how much they, um, care for, each other. Anyway, we then went to the Mercat Saint Josef, a slightly touristy but still very awesome market, for a light lunch of fruit and freshmade pasta before heading out to rent bikes (6 euro for 2 hours) to see some more of the city. If any of you ever venture out to Barcelona (or Madrid for that matter), I highly advise taking a bike tour of the city. It´s a lot more bike friendly than any city I´ve visited and you can just cover so much ground quickly and inexpensively. We toured through a few parks, saw some great architecture and monuments, keeping the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, which is still under construction as a combination of modern and gothic styles, as our final destination. We then enjoyed a casual cafe in the Gracia neighborhood before heading back. More updates on the adventures of the weekend later!