Busy two days

The past two days in Barcelona were wonderful.

I am now sitting in the living room of the second hostel that is located a little further out of the city. Its much different than the first hostel. Its more like a bed and breakfast rather than like a hotel which was more of the feeling of the first hostel. Its nice because there are a ton of people around. Its very easy to meet other travellers.

We saw quite a bit the last two days. We started the day off Sunday at 9am at Palau de Musica. Drew for a bit then headed over to the Museo de historia de Barcelona. The museum was fascinating. It explained the development of Barcelona from about 8000 BC to present day. The city went under a major transformation during the mid-nineteenth century similar to the Haussmann plan. I want to do more research of what happened during that time. We went to the basement of the museum to find an excavated part of city from Roman times. Jenny would have passed out if she saw it. I was impressed with how well the museum preserved the ruins and the amount of effort they took to recreate what it felt like to actually walk through the city. It was very cool.

After the musuem, we had a wonderful lunch tucked in the medieval fabric. The food was so much cheaper than Paris and tastier too. We headed next to see Mies´s Barcelona Pavillion. I was pleasantly surprised to see how interesting it was. I liked the spaces a lot. It was an interesting compare it to Le Corb´s Villa Savoye since they were both built at the same time. We spent a good amount of time there. We left after I started nodding off while I was drawing sitting on the ground. We museum hopped to another free museum Caixa-something, that had an exhibit on Palladio. I developed a deep appreciate for his work in the hour that we toured the exhibition. I book in spanish.

My spanish skills are significantly improving. Andrea and I are trying to speak as much as we can in spanish. Its helping me a lot. I also am trying to speak as much as I can while I´m at. Although, I mostly am responded to back in english. Whatever. At least I get to practice.

By the end of the museum tours, we were exhausted. We came back to our hostel, got some beer and pizza, and hung out on the patio. The weather was perfect.

We slept in a little later today. We had to check out of our hostel to go to the one I´m at now. Its only a few stops away on the same line so it was easy to transfer our stuff. Leslie left Andrea and I on our own to pick up her friend Aaron at the airport so the two of us went into the city. We went to Las Ramblas first, which is ilke the Champs Elysees or the 5th Ave of Barcelona. We walked around a while. We found a starbucks, my guiltiest pleasure in Europe, hung out for a little bit, then continued along to find an art store. I indulged and bought a new water color set. It was needed. I was eager to use it so we found a bench and water colored for about an hour and a half. I spent the time experimenting with my water colors more than anything now that I could actually mix decent colors instead of the crappy paint I had before. Afterwards, we were soaked in sweat because we sat directly in the sun and we headed for some refuge in a restaraunt. We had some good food. King Prawns and Calamari. It was expensive but that was our nice lunch for the trip.

Oh the other night we created a budget that we are going to try to stick to. We already know that it the next few weeks are going to be ridiculous with the amount of money we are going to spend, but we want to at least be cogniscent of the amount of money we are spending. So we deciding to budget our meals, musuem visits, drinks and excursions. Most meals will be in the 6-8 euro range. Two to three meals can be more. (We had our two today) We have about 20-30 euro for musuems and spending money. And the rest goes to our hostels. I have begun to record each purchase so that I can see how quick my money goes. Its a little terrifying.

Anyway, after lunch we watercolored--oh I mixed it up before, we watercolored after lunch. Doesn´t matter. We ended up at Casa Mila, Gaudi´s apartment complex. It is one the coolest places I have gone to including all the places we went to in Paris. I have a bunch of pictures and drawings to show it. The main parti is centered around two interior courtyard. Its shaped very irregularly but somehow manages to still maintain a strong clarity to it. The light and air in the apartment is wonderful as are the interior spaces. We explored one apartment then went upstairs to the attic, which was full of canterary arches that were repeated about every two feet. The rhythmn was intense. It made some cool spaces. We progessed to the terrace which blew me away. It looked like a star wars mini golf course. It has these towers petruding from the roof that looked like the desert aliens from Star wars. It was very peculiar. I did a drawing of them but I didnt get to finish to because we got kicked out due to closing. We still felt satisfied.

We trekked back to our hostel to meet up with Leslie and Aaron. We played scrabble, Leslie and I both won a game, and called it a night. Now, I´m here taking a break planning our day for tomorrow. We are taking a day trip to Montserrat, a monastary located in the mountains about an hour a way which is supposed to be one of the prettiest parts of the region. We´re excited.

I´m going to get some sleep.