After a 17h journey of flights and stopovers in Dallas and Madrid, I finally made it to the Barcelona airport. For the first day, CEA had all its UPF students in the Hotel Arago. Out of around 22 students in this program, the vast majority are Duke students, but except for a few I´d never met any of the others before.
I dropped my stuff off in the hotel room and joined a few other Duke students for lunch at Tapes Gaudi, a tapas bar that had been recommended to one of us. In my mind, the tapas were so-so except for the olives, which they prepared quite tastily or just that they taste better here naturally. The waiters were clearly trying to get us to rack up a huge bill, calling me out for getting a water instead of a drink, and offering us the "seafood plate of the day" and other individual dishes rather than tapas to share.
With it being the first night in Barcelona for most of us, exploring the city was a must. After dinner we took the metro to the ¨Catalunya¨stop and arrived at Plaça de Catalunya, the center of the city and the beginning of the famous ¨La Rambla¨, a street full of life and famous sights in Barcelona that stretches down to the harbor. We traversed through La Rambla and then walked along the harbor, eventually ending up at Platja San Sebastian (platja = beach), where some of us waded in before we taxied home.
The first week basically served as orientation: we had the CEA orientation Tuesday morning and moved in to our apartments and residences afterwards; Thursday we had our Spanish placement test at UPF and Friday we had a UPF orientation. This left us with a fair amount of discretionary time.
Most of the CEA students living in the Residencia Onix (my residence) didn't move in til Friday because they were with different programs. So, one other Duke student and I explored the area around our residence. Most of our needs are covered by the local supermarket, Mercadona. The exchange rate may be painful, but I feel like we can find a lot of good deals on fresh food at the Mercadona - for example, they sell a bag with 3 baguettes for just 1.20 euros, and many items can be had on the cheap if you buy from the generic brand "Hacendado". The other cool store nearby is Bazaar Oriente, which has the feel of a mini-Wal Mart but one step closer to the factory. The shelves were totally crammed with products, including toys, school supplies, kitchenware, converters, and much more, and again everything was quite cheap.
Tuesday evening we walked down Carrer de Sardenya (the street my residence is on) to the beach Platja Passeig Maritim home to some of the most famous clubs in Barcelona, like Opium Mar and Shoko. That's the same beach where I saw the talk bubble featured in the first Catalossary. The album below here has some photos of Opium Mar and a bar called Sotavento. You can click the Picasa logo in the lower left to view the album in Picasa.
On Wednesday, we walked up to the Sagrada Familia, a famous church designed by Antoni Gaudí, whose name is synonymous with Barcelona because of all the famous architectural works he has made here. Because it was hot we didn't go in, but I took a lot of pictures of the exterior. The church has been under construction for decades according to Gaudí's plan; Gaudí was run over by a tram early on during the project. Afterwards, we went to Park Guell, a huge park that also features the work of Gaudí. Clearly, I'll need to revisit both of these places just to soak in their full magnificence:
Thursday we had a tour of the Old Quarter through CEA. The captions explain what each sight is. One thing to note is with the mailbox: According to our guide, the Catalan's other national sport is complaining, especially against the Spanish. Thus, the turtle you see in the lower right of the mailbox is a jab at the slowness of the new national mail system that Madrid had forced upon Catalunya. The mailbox was made by Barcelona's second most famous architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The Arc de Triomf and the bus station (last two photos) weren't part of the tour, but are near my residence and so I stopped by them on the way home:
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