After our trip to Sevilla, we all took a much-needed chill week full of sleep and school. Not too much excitement during the week. I got my haircut and beat my easy Sudoku record(now at 1:15)! Then, this weekend, my friend Karthik took a trip to London to visit family and the rest of us stayed in Barcelona. We had those two friends from Madrid come to visit again and we spent the weekend showing them around Barcelona. On Friday, we took a trip to the end of the metro line and went for a hike around an area of Barcelona we hadn’t been to yet. We were just climbing higher and higher until we were at the highest visible point on this mountain. We found a bunch of cool stuff. There were ruins from some kind of ceramic patio where it seemed there used to be a structure. There was also a giant Cell Tower, an old rustic hotel that was out of business, and a bunch of these weird formations of caterpillars all walking on a connected path.
After our little adventure, we descended down to find somewhere to grab some lunch. We ended up in a pupusería. It was a tasty little spot. Then, we went back home and relaxed for a while. Later that day, we all took a trip to the Bunkers Del Carmel. This was a popular tourist attraction we had yet to come to. Ironically enough, my Spanish teacher was telling us it used to be considered a pretty rough area and most locals didn’t like to go up to the Bunkers. But now, it’s a very popular spot for tourists and locals where people gather, drink wine, and watch the sunset with a beautiful overlook of the city. My friend Dan and I decided to try and get a head start so he and I took a bus up to the closest drivable part of the bunkers. From here, we hiked the rest of the way up. At the top, it was very crowded. We didn’t anticipate there being as many people as there were but, considering it was a beautiful Saturday night, I guess it made sense. We looked around for a while and I spotted a sneaky little ledge where no one was sitting. We made our way over to see if we could claim it as our spot. We managed to traverse over and it was actually a super cool place to watch from. We even asked some of the people beneath us to snap some pics of us from our ledge.
I forgot to mention how interesting of a hike it was getting up here. The staircase that we took to get up to the top from the bus stop was crumbling and not so sturdy. Luckily, we made it up ok but we were nervous that after the sunset, it might be even more of a challenge. Luckily, we found the correct way to get in and out of the bunkers and took that way home. There was this cool little skateboarding guy.
We went straight from the Bunkers to this really cool pop-up festival that is held in Barcelona called the Palo Alto Market. Basically, it’s a free market they have at the beginning of every month with food, drinks, music, art, and more for sale. A handful of my friends had gone last month and we wanted to go with our buddies that came for the weekend. I didn’t get many pictures of the markets but on our way there I did spot the Hells Angels’ headquarters in Barcelona.
At the market, my friend Matteus and I devised a plan to maximize our experience by both buying equally priced food from different tents and then splitting it. He got some steak with little pieces of bread, and I went around the corner and bought spicy dumplings. It was delish! Another really cool Barcelona attraction is the light festival which is held during the first weekend of February. So, after our time at the market, we all took the metro a few more stops down the line to where the light show was being held. We saw some of the cool art installations and when we arrived at the big red tent with lights and electronic music, Dan and I had to stop for a while. We began dancing on top of these circular benches that were in the center of the tent. After a while, people began to notice us and follow along with our moves. We actually met some people afterward who sent us the videos they had taken of us so I clipped some screenshots from the videos they sent me.
Please excuse the blurry pictures. Then, after our fun at the light show, we went to a big club here called Razzmatazz that we hadn’t been to yet. It was fun, but kind of a fever dream. There were four floors and it was hard to find my friends because every room was dark with red and green lasers. Still, a really cool experience. I am writing this on February 12, but I think I will write another post about this weekend because it would be too much to squeeze into this one. Hope you enjoyed reading about our weekend in Barcelona!
Nick Henderson
11:04am
Barcelona, Spain