Barcelona and France (2/2/23-2/5/23)

France

Another weekend, another trip and even more adventures! This week was an interesting one as I only had 3 classes this week. A shorter week meant a longer travel weekend but it also included a midterm and a presentation in class. Overall I think I did alright and will be curious to see my grades soon. What's interesting is that the grading scale isn't as clear and we get our grades as we go, so we aren't able to view them online. This is nice because it makes me work harder but it is sometimes stressful to not know what your grade is.

On Thursday we went with the entire USAC group for an excursion, where we went to southern France! The bus ride was easy and we went to the cutest town called Saint Jean de Luz, the town was little and the white houses with colorful trim was absolutely adorable. For the sake of my stomach and the boat ride, I stuck to pastries and held out for a big lunch in Hondarribia. For lunch I had delicious calamari and a kalimotxo (red wine and coca cola)!

---Lunch in a little bistro and bar---------------

--5 minute boat ride from France back to Spain--

---On the beach in France with my roommates (Damiana in the middle, Arden on the right)

This excursion that we did was on Thursday (which meant no class) and was amazing because it gave us all a chance to be together as a big group, since normally we are in smaller groups due to classes and schedules.

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Barcelona

We got back to Bilbao on Thursday around 5pm from the excursion, and I headed home to pack and prepare to leave to the airport that evening at 10:45pm. Payton, Damiana and I got to the airport and made it to Barcelona at 11;3o pm. Removing the glamorization of trips; the hostel in Barcelona was an absolute nightmare and they kept trying to split us up. Eventually I was so annoyed and fed up I told them they needed to fix the errors (there were too many to count) or I would like to receive some compensation back (not my finest moment), but that managed to do the trick and they gave Payton, Damiana and I are own room together and it was much better from there. The nice thing was that the hostel accounted for 2% of our entire trip. Instead we spent the days exploring and eating delicious food. We saw La Sagrada familia, Casa Batalló, Park Guelle, gothic quarter and spent time sitting on the beach underneath the sun. I will say that the city itself was a tiny bit stinky and some of the amazing architecture was ruined by ads and billboards or huge crowds of people. Regardless, one of the best things that we did was the Palo market fest, where local vendors partnered with aperol spritz and had food trucks, exhibits and jewelry/clothes everywhere. It reminded me a bit of the Oregon Saturday farmers market, but with a little bit more structure and a theme.

Friday:

1. Breakfast at a super cool and small vegan restaurant (no, none of us are vegan HAHA) with amazing pancakes

2. La sagrada familia

3. we splurged and bought tickets to a bus tour that was a double decker bus that took us all over the city; Casa Batalló, Hotel Colon, etc.

4. we got off on a few stops on the blue line and walked around to look at the cute shops

5. went to a fancy little lunch

6. ended the night by going to a club in barcelona (felt a bit like highschool, was alright but the venue was super cool)

Saturday:

1. Went to Billy's diner where I met the love of my life in the form of a waiter who had the coolest tattoos and I am pretty sure he was British, and the food was pretty great, with a delicious smoothie

2. Hopped back on a bus to go to Park Guelle

3. Gorgeous market in the Palo Alto Area - had an amazing empanada and bought a really cool pair of sunglasses

4. headed over to the beach where we played games, listened to music and stood in the waves (too cold to go past my knees)

5. Walked to the gothic quarter, where we had Mexican food for dinner and the BEST mango margarita of my life

6. For dessert; churros and chocolate!

7. early bedtime around 9:30pm because we had to get up at 4am for our flight home the next day

Overall: 9/10, the beginning was rocky, but the sights and food were pretty great and I went with some pretty incredible people!

--Be prepared for more pictures! My wifi is struggling to upload photos but they will be up sometime this week, feel free to message me on the website or on Whatsapp! (my regular 425 number)