Hola,

I haven't blogged in a really long time, but I went to Barcelona last weekend!!!! It was really fun and pretty relaxing.  They don't have a huge amount of museums to go to so it was pretty cool just to hang out in the city.  We got there thursday night and the hostel we stayed in (called St. Christopher's) was really nice.  I swear the bed was bigger there than my own bed in Florence.  They had a bar downstairs and a really awesome menu, and the food was delicious.  We ended up eating there at least three times. That night we just hung out at the bar downstairs, and then went to an Irish pub.  On Friday, we walked around the Montjuic mountain and it was pretty.  There was a huge palace with lots of waterfalls on the way up.  After we climbed up a little bit there was the 1992 olympic stadium that you could go in.  This mountain was a pretty view of Barcelona.  We went to a lunch place and I ordered cheese tacos and bravas. Bravas are fried potatoes with a spicy sauce on them.  The cheese tacos were literally just blocks of cheese, it was hilarious, obviously bad translations on the menu.  We walked to the harbor and the beach and it was awesome.  We took off our shoes and put our feet in the sand and just sat for a while, it was so beautiful.  We also put our feet into the freezing Mediterranean.  We ate at the hostel on Friday night and then we went out to a well-known club.  At the club, there was a concert going on, so that was fun. The clubs were very very expensive in Barcelona.

On saturday, we went to the market, and they had so much seafood it was insane.  Almost every other stand was seafood.  I ended up getting an empanada and a smoothie, and they were both great.  We then walked to Sagrada Familia which is built by the famous Gaudi.  It was one of the coolest churches
I've been in.  It was anything but traditional.  Gaudi had a passion for nature, and he designed the church to have a lot of natural light, which is a lot of stained glass windows, and the ceilings are huge, with the pillars intended to be trees.  It was very beautiful.  After that, we started walking to park guell, and we got really lost.  It ended up being a lot farther walk than we thought it would be.  When we finally got there, it was worth it.  It was an absolutely amazing view of Barcelona from the top of the mountain.  This was a park made also by Gaudi.  It has the famous mosaic tiled benches, and a few cool looking buildings.  It's a really cool park and we spent a while just walking around and taking pictures.   We started to walk back to the hostel and it ended up taking us an hour, which was rough when we had just been hiking around the mountain.  We grabbed dinner at the hostel and I got a mexican salad which was so delicious.  We relaxed after dinner and then we headed to port olympic which was a harbor area we hadn't been to.  It was a great night life there.  They have a ton of restaurants all outside and then clubs right on the beach.  We went to a restaurant and I got a dessert and we had some sangria.  It was relaxing, and we thought about going to a club on the beach but it was just so expensive.  On Sunday, we packed up and checked out of the hostel.  We walked around and went into the Barcelona Cathedral.  It was pretty traditional, nothing like Sagrada Familia.  It was pretty but a lot of it was blocked off because mass was going on.  After, we saw a marathon in the streets, and there was this St. Patricks Day dressed band playing in the streets.  It was fun.  Then we did a little shopping and made our way to the airport.  We got home around 5.

My week was good.  My classes are starting to get more difficult because they're assigning many final papers, so I need to pick some topics for those.  Volunteering was so fun this week because the kids we're working with are doing plays in English that they will perform in April.  The 4th grade is doing the Wizard of Oz and the 5th grade is doing Alice in Wonderland.  I got to help them recite their lines and play their roles.  It was so cute, and they speak English so well.  With my family business class this past week we took a field trip to the Gucci factory.  It was really cool because we learned that Gucci makes everything by hand for the most part.  That's why it's so expensive!!!! We got to see some of the leathers which are made out of snake, crocodile, deer, etc.  We then watched some of the workers cutting the leather for the bags, all by hand. To get a job in cutting leather, you have to have at least 20 years of experience; it's insane.  Then, we saw them assembling some of the bags.  The one guy was working on a trunk with only one other man.  They said it takes them about a month just to make one.  Those were in the made-to-order area though, so it's for very high profile clients.  We also saw how they make the bamboo handles.  It's a very intense process to pick the perfect bamboo stick because it has to be the exact measurements and the knots have to match up.  They throw out so many bamboo sticks.  They use fire to bend and set it.  It was a really cool field trip.

This past weekend I stayed in Florence, but it was a really nice weekend.  On friday, we took a bus to Fiesole, which is a town about 15 minutes outside of Florence on the hills.  It is a very small and quiet residential town but it has one of the best views of Florence.  We found a park, and brought food that we bought at the food store to have a picnic.  The park was just a woods, and after we ate, we did a lot of hiking.  We hiked to the top and it was again, an awesome view.  There was a rock up there that was apparently where Leonardo da Vinci launched a flying machine.  We kept hiking and found the Etruscan ruins.  They were just little houses made out of stone.  It was cool because I learned about the Etruscans in my history class.   They were one of the first to settle near Florence in 300 BC.  It was a really great time to hike around the woods and relax.  It was nice being around green and it reminded me of home.  When trying to take the bus back to Florence, we were told that there was a bus strike.  I knew strikes happened often but it was so bizarre that it happened within the 3 hours that we had just taken the bus.  We asked tourist information what we should do and they said that a taxi would be very expensive, and that it was a nice walk back to Florence and not too long.  So we decided to walk.  It was a nice walk and we saw the beautiful, huge, practically mansions, of Fiesole.  We also got to see the sunset which was pretty.  But, instead of the half hour walk we thought it was, it was about an hour and 15 minutes.  We were exhausted when we finally got home.  I looked up the distance and it said we walked 4 miles home.

On Saturday, we went to Mama's bakery with a bunch of our friends.  I got a bagel with cream cheese!!!! I was so excited to have a bagel.  I also got a cupcake that I had been craving.  It was a nice change from croissants and I will absolutely be going back.  After that, we went to Boboli gardens and just hung out on the grass.  It was really fun, and I got to catch up on some magazines. It was a really nice day.  I felt so lucky, because not many people can say they just sat in the palace gardens all day reading and overlooking an awesome view of Florence.

Next weekend is Easter weekend so we have an extra day to our weekend.  I'm not really sure what I'm doing as of now.  Either I'm just going to stay in Florence and hang out or I might go to Cinqueterre, which is a coastal town.  It's supposed to be very pretty, and you can hike a lot around there.  It won't be too warm, but it will still be nice.  I think I'm going to plan that today!  I'll try to keep up more on this blog haha!

Ciaaaao,
Katie