Barely in Barcelona

I went to Barcelona because it was cheaper than flying to Madrid. I studied in Argentina because I wrote "Mendoza" on the line above "Santiago, Chile." This same logic landed me in Russia.

I was content with visiting Barcelona. On the contrary, my Valencian co-traveler was a little bitter.

Diego: Sorry. We are not spending any money here or supporting Barcelona's economy in any way.

Me: Why do we not like Barcelona?

Diego: Because they are (insert translation of explicit Spanish word) Catalonian.

Me: (Rolling my eyes and not my r's)

We spent a couple days in Barcelona. I was able to go sightseeing like I wanted, so I was happy. Diego was happy because I was happy going to parks and walking around (read: free activities).

There aren't many photos of the city because I mainly saw it in the evening. My sleeping schedule was thrown off due to exhaustion from jet lag and a difficult fall semester. Also, being a vampire is a trendy thing now, so it's cooler to walk around at night.

San Francisco's hills do not compare to the giant hill leading to Park Guell. I laughed when I saw outdoor escalators. I stopped laughing because I ran out of breath while climbing it.

A previous post from Moscow showed pictures of inscribed padlocks. Why buy padlocks when you can carve your names on cacti? Poor cacti.

I was perfectly comfortable walking around Park Guell even though it was raining. Why? Because there was a snow storm back home in the US at this time and I was not there.

Some points of interest that shouldn't be missed in Barcelona are the buildings designed by Antonio Gaudí. Watch this documentary that solely focuses on these buildings if you won't be able to come here soon, or if you're too lazy to walk around. They do the walking for you and you can do the looking.

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Coming from New York, I wasn't surprised to hear Spanish speakers all around me. Sure, the accent is distinct, but the language was no different than what I hear back home. What did shock me was that all of the signs were in Catalan, not Spanish. I stand by what I said before, Montreal was a bigger cultural shock for me.