barcelona, te amo

So, I’ve had a total of 6 hours of sleep in the last 3 days; Barcelona has defeated me. A group of us left the ship at 3:45am on Thursday, arrived in Barcelona at 9am, and hit the ground running. Honestly, the first day is now kind of a blur because it seemed like a never-ending string of events… I just know that at some point of the day, we saw all the tourist-y things you’re supposed to see (La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi architecture, etc.), minus the Picasso Museum and Park Guell (which I saw the next day). But that’s the boring stuff. Everything that’s worth mentioning occurred after dinner on both days, although I guess one could argue that that’s the case for most days, anywhere.

For dinner on our first night, we went to see a flamenco show, which was, in a nutshell, fantastic. Afterwards a group of us brought some drinks back to the hotel to hang around for a few hours, because in Spain, they don’t party until midnight or later… So, we’re all piled into one room, and we may or may not have been a little too loud, because our next door neighbor comes by and kind of hints to us that it’s getting late and that he’s sleeping soon because he has an early flight the next day. We learn that his name is Henry, he’s 30, and a DEA officer from Germany… and then we get him to have drinks with us… and then he proceeds to go to the bars and clubs with us for the remainder of the night. Now, to preface the rest of this story, there was a group of 16ish of us, and Henry didn’t really seem like a creeper. Until 3 hours later when he tells my friend that they should go back to the hotel and drink together in her room; or 4 hours later when he decides to have happy hands while trying to whisper (German?) in my ear. Yeah, suffice to say, Henry got ‘accidentally’ left at the last club we went to. Hope he made it back to the Deutschland on time, wouldn’t want the Germans to lose out on such an outstanding officer of the law.

Anyway, I would finish the Barcelona trip update right now, but there’s two more days to fill in, and I have two papers to write, so expect it sometime before Italy (hopefully?)!
Oh, yeah. Italy in 3 days. Hell yes.

Update:
Our second day was our free day to do whatever we wanted, so a small group of us decided to just run around and see as much of Barcelona as possible; fútbol stadium, Picasso, the Park, and a ridiculous amount of time on their transit system (which is WAY cleaner and nicer than the ones in the U.S… but you have to constantly make sure no one is trying to jack your shit, so it’s not that great). Because our trip was through semester at sea, and they kind of messed up on the hotel situation, we stayed at Hotel Melia, a 5 star hotel in the city. Shit was absurd; I didn’t find time to sleep, but I sure as hell found time to take a legit bath. Every time I shower on the ship, I feel like Will Farrel in Elf; so bogus.
But anyway, a dozen of us went to dinner out on Port Olympic, which was, by far, the best meal I had in Spain. The only weird thing was the fact that street vendors/sellers of crap things kept on coming around and trying to get us to buy their junk; one of the guys got bamboozled into buying roses for all the girls at the table because the guy wouldn’t leave him/kept on calling him names. It was actually kind of funny.
And, again, since the nightlife doesn’t even begin until midnight, after dinner, we went to the market, bought wine and liquor, and sat out on the beach that overlooks the strip of clubs and hung out/waited for things to actually wake up.
Occurrences of the night, in no particular order… because at some point, I ceased to remember the logical string of events (stupid), so I’d be lying if I tried:
- Two words: ICE BAR. Well, one word, really: IceBarcelona.
- Looking at my leg after my friend pointed it out, and seeing a flippin’ river of blood pouring out of my knee
- So, I guess ‘falling down’ would a reasonable event to add to the list (except I don’t remember it happening, and no one remembers seeing, so I’m not even sure how to explain the situation)
- Running into a billion other semester at sea kids at a rando club called Opium
- Saying ‘Razzmatazz’ over and over again because someone else wanted to go there (it’s another club that’s 5 stories tall and is actually like 6 clubs in one; so sick), and apparently, I thought it was a sweet word to just start repeating?
- Getting back to the hotel room at 4am, and seeing my roommate for the trip passed out on the bed with Spice Girls in Spanish playing on the T.V.
- Apologizing profusely to some Europeans about the death of Michael Jackson. They love him over here like a fat kid loves cake.

Day 3 (I know, Barcelona seems to be never ending; bear with me), we had to check out of our rooms by 9am and go to the wine cellar that is the official provider of wine and cava to the Spanish royal family; such a hard life. Except, it was kind of difficult, because at this point, I was running on about 3 hours of sleep, woke up still feeling retarded, and didn’t have enough time to grab any food or water. So, long story short, I had champagne, and a cracker for breakfast. My sweat smelled like red wine.

We then went to one of the oldest monasteries in Spain on top of a mountain for lunch and to sightsee. But, before I go into detail about this, let me go off on a tangent really quickly and ask, why did semester at sea think it was a good idea to schedule a wine tasting at 11am? And more importantly, who thought it was a good idea to go straight from a vineyard to an effing monastery? I felt like everything I was doing there was sacrilegious. The mixture of dehydration, sleep depravation, altitude, and bottles of alcohol was a killer.
We didn’t get back to Cadiz until about 9:30pm that night, even though port time was officially 5pm. When I saw the ship for the first time in 4 days, I’m pretty sure I now know how Muslims feel when they go to Mecca; I was so ready to crash and sleep for the next three days until we docked in Italy... and then I remembered we have classes. Ugh.

cabin fever y cadiz

We seem to have crossed over some invisible line of demarcation that separated the 'shitty waters and tempests' in which we were previously sailing, into the ‘pleasant seas and sunny skies’ area, which I hope is never ending. Great news, because the anticipation is over (you guys have no idea how long everyone has been waiting to just see the sun), but bad news bears for my (already lacking) studies. I brought a book out on deck to read today… I was outside for four hours… I got from page 23 to page 27. I did, however, find out the enormous amounts of boatcest that’s going on right now (obviously the far more interesting and important matter). I mean, I figured it was bound to happen, it’s a flippin’ floating mattress with nothing but locked doors, so I don’t think it would take a genius to realize (who)what 700 teenagers are willing to do, but I didn’t think it was going to take three days. Seriously, ladies, can we keep our vaginas in our pants until at least we’ve docked at the first port?

Whoever said that semester at sea academia is a no big deal, obviously took classes pass/fail. I have two papers and a midterm next week. Well, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, one of the papers is kind of a joke (2 pages double-spaced. Really?) and the midterm is in a class covering topics that I took when I was a freshman in high school, but I mean, work is work… plus, direct credit transfer means my GPA is affected regardless. Kind of bogus. But that doesn’t even matter, because at the moment, I’m in Spain, sitting in an outdoor internet café, sipping on jack and coke, watching Los Estadios Unidos beat the crap out of España in fútbol; 2-0 is a beautiful thing to see. However, the Spaniards weren’t so receptive to the sound of crazy drunk college kids screaming “LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS SON MEJORES!”
So today, I got to explore Cadiz with my first SAS friend that I met on the plane. Background story about this city: super old port town in Spain that used to be rich, but now not so much; fun fact, it’s actually where Christopher Columbus sailed from when he stumbled upon the Americas. Random happenings/things I’ve learned while I’ve been here:

- An old Englishman from Davonshire named Colin Gibson (picture) is in Spain with his wife for a few days. He’s originally from Plymouth, which is also where Sir Francis Drake was from, and in the 1600s Drake fire-bombed the Spanish Armada in the Port of Cadiz. You might be asking yourself why you’re reading this, because it’s relevant to no one, and therefore, no one really needs to know this. And if you feel this way, then welcome to my life, fifteen minutes into the conversation that I was having with this man. All I did was say ‘hello,’ which may have been followed by ‘how are you?’ Mistake. Don’t ask open-ended questions.
- 6 pitchers of sangria in a day more detrimental to your health than you might originally think.
- Playing the piano, alone, when you’re drunk is no fun.; having your drunk friend try to play The Phantom of the Opera for you while he’s drunk and making up words is way better.
- They only serve good food on the boat on days when you’re not even on it
- Topless beaches... I'm pretty sure it's just a European excuse to screw in public