ROCK IT, BITCH

Sooo I haven't written in a very long time. I got too caught up in the Irish lifestyle.. too much Guinness. Anyway as I sit here procrastinating doing my science final paper I am going to attempt to recall all of my trips and dates that I missed posting about. Here it goes..

BAAARRRRcelona

Thursday March 10, 2011

Spring break begins! First stop Barcelona, Spain. A large group of crazy college friends doing spring break right. Except for one situation- DAWNSQUAD. The group consisted of good friends - Me, Kyle, Jordan, Katie, Ross, Emily, Bonnie, Sarah C, and Sean, and somehow Amber Dawn caught wind of our travel plans and decided to invite herself. She is very strange.. and it kind of put us all in difficult times having her there.. Anyway we landed and immediately were so excited to be in Spain that it didn't really matter. Bonnie and Sarah were the only ones that spoke any Spanish.. so it was little difficult getting around at first.. but we all caught on and picked up small phrases as they were needed. Since it was the first night, we all decided that we would take it rather easy. We hadn't been into the real city part yet.. our Hostel was out like 20 minutes from city center.. pretty quite, very cute, but not in a touristy location at all.. since we hadn't found out about the city yet we thought we should stay close to the hostel go get drinks at a local bar and take it easy. Half of the plan held up.. the taking it easy part definitely did not.

To start off our night, we all went out and bought bottles of whatever alcohol for dirt cheap. So nice coming from Dublin where everything is overpriced. Then we went up on the roof of our hostel and there was nice chilling place so we gathered around and had drinks. Then the wildness started. Many toasts were made, to spring break, to Spain, to bob saget. I don't know how it started exactly but the boys started taking their shirts off.. and things got really sloppy to say the least. Kyle ended up wearing his shirt like a dress-> and screaming.. "I'm a dainty lady, take me to a club!" We were very very loud and obnoxious.. at some point we left. Some of us.. me, Bonnie, Katie, Ross, Jordan and Sean adventured to the park and climbed to the top of this small mountain and found a Jesus cross. Weird things happened. then we met up with the others at a bar we had scoped out earlier in the day. We didn't realize how much these people do not speak English. It was fun and challenging ordering drinks and stuff like that. Jameson Y Ginge my fave. after many more drinks we were becoming more 'comfortable' with Spanish phrases and saying things that we would never say in English like "muchos muchos huevos senior" and singing "cuantos anos aqui" which is not how it really goes.... the best ones being "no mas" and "no se" they really stuck with us.. basically we made asses of ourselves.

Friday March 11, 2011

After a night like that we really didn't know what we were in for in the morning. We ended up getting spoken to by the manager who was not pleased with our actions. He was very nice and explained that they got NUMEROUS complains about us and that we were more then welcome to stay there but we had to control ourselves and take the party to the bars not the hostel. We apologized and told him that it was a one time thing. we were just really excited .. and it wouldn't happen again. That was a close one.

After the lecture we left and adventured around some parts of Barcelona. Everything was so friggen pretty. Literally everywhere you looked there was something beautiful. We went to Parc Guell which was very cool. From the top you could see for miles and miles. When we first got there we noticed all of these Hispanic men with items on blankets for sale.. whatever they were doing must have been illegal because a cop showed up and they all grabbed their blankets with stuff inside threw it over their shoulder and ran up the hill. It was hilarious. Then after about 3 minutes they were all back setting up shop again.

At the parc they have these two big buildings that are made to look like gingerbread houses. They looked so much like real gingerbread houses it was amazing. It looked like you could literally walk up to them and take a bite.

After the parc we hit up the metro and went to check out the the port. We walked around for a bit, and then found something fun to do. There was a big jumpy thing. They strap you in and you basically just jump on a trampoline, but its cool because you can do flips and jump really really high and don't have to worry about falling because you are strapped in. I didn't do it because I was scared, but some of the others did and they had a blast. I enjoyed just watching them.

That night we still didn't make it into the city to go out. We stayed around the Hostel area, starting early on the roof because it was so nice out. We were quieter this time, and promised ourselves that we would leave early so we didn't get yelled at again, since everyone there already hated us. While we were up there a lady came up and started talking to us about our time in Barcelona. She was also American, and she told us she had over heard some very interesting statements coming from us the night before like, "No one wants to see your balls again we have already seen them" and "We're in MEXICOOOO" when clearly we were not. haha. Turns out she was an art teacher and really cool. we talked with her for a while and then she left. After that we met a guy and his girlfriend who were from England.. They were also really nice, and I could have listened to Jason for hours.. loved his accent. After meeting friends we went out to the same bar as the night before. Right beside the bar Me and Katie saw this big fluffy black dog that looked scary.. it was like a guard dog for this parking lot and it was behind a fence but the guy told us she was really nice so we pet her for hours.. Hola Jackie..Adios Jackie.. we tried to speak to her in her own language.

Saturday March 12, 2011

Rain rain rain... lots and lots of rain. It was pretty shitty that it had to rain, but we expected it and it looked like it was going to be raining off and on throughout the rest of our spring break. Whatever. We went out with our umbrellas and tried to find something to do for the day. We ended up doing a little bit of shopping along the Portal De l'Angel and then some of us (me, Sean, Emily, Kyle, Bonnie, and Dawnsquad followed) went to the Aquarium. As we were running around checking out all the little fishies and sea creatures, we realized that DawnSquad was surely way behind us and we didn't care at all. We got onto the the little moving strip that brings you through the underwater tunnel and had to take a celebratory photo because she was not with us. Yes, we are mean. Anyway the tunnel was really really cool. There were a lot of different animals to look at and some big big sharks that looked like they just wanted to rip your face off.

After the aquarium we went back to the Hostel. I'm pretty sure this is when we had a group nap session, where me and Kyle were laying in one bed and just kept giggling about the old lady bent over weird bouncing a little asking for change. And singing "cuantos anos aqui". Everyone was getting mad, but we had serious giggles and could not control them. haha. Finally we did nap.

After sleeping a little we all got up and got ready to go out for REAL in Barcelona. It had cleared off and stopped raining so that was good. We went down by the water and found a nightclub to go to. We went to a place called Catwalk that was huge. The layout was really nice. It looked so promising, and yet no one was there. There were literally like 5 other people in the whole club. Apparently in Barcelona the clubbing does not start until after midnight. We were a little hasty in our 11 pm entrance. While we were there we met up with some other kids from our school who happened to be in Barcelona as well. The bad thing about this place was that the drinks were like 10 euros a piece, and none of us were very drunk. The boys had their Kanye night.. spending a shit ton of their money. Well, a shit ton of their daddys money. Only a few of us ended up sticking it out and waiting to see the place blow up. Which slowly but surely it did. A few of us stayed out until probably 5 am dancing and going crazy. I basically had to carry sean to the taxi when we were leaving, which was challenging because I probably was in need of some assistance as well. When we got in the cab Sean passed out on my shoulder and I had the difficulty of figuring out how to get home and how to talk to the driver. Sean knew a little bit of Spanish, but he was of no help. Finally we got going but I still wasn't convinced that the driver knew where we were trying to go. He didn't seem to understand what the metro was or anything so it was confusing.. after a while I made the driver pull over because I didn't think we were going to get there and I wanted a different cab, so we got out and flagged over a different one. This time Sean remembers that he has a card in his wallet with the address of the Hostel.. seriously? you couldn't have remember that beforeeee! haha but yeah we made it home safely in the end.

Sunday March 13, 2011

Last real day in Barcelona =( We still hadn't been to the beach or anything, so we made sure that we were going to do that.. and it just so happens it was a gorgeous day out. It was by far the best weather we had in Barcelona. First thing we did was go Le Segrada Familia, which is in the process of being built, but is very very pretty. So we took a tour of that, then walked along the port, and then headed for the Beach. The beach that we went to was really nice. Watch out for the picture <- photo bomb coming in 4th person from the left. We spent a little time laying in the sun there, but since it was our last day we wanted to walk around and see as much as we could.

That night we took it easy. Our flight to ROME was really early the next day, actually we had to be leaving our hostel at about 4 am just so that we were at the airport on time.. We figured it would be a good thing if got some sleep and were rested up. We all went out to a nice sit down family dinner at Margarita Blue which was sweet. We didn't make it back to the Hostel until after midnight, so that was a very very short nights sleep we all probably ended up with 2 and a half hours of rest. Not good when you have to fly RyanAir the next day.