My friend Zac Fortier is a pretty lucky kid. His dad is a pilot so he can fly for free to anywhere in the world. Knowing this, I jokingly told him that he should come to Spain and visit me for his spring break. It actually happened! I left Friday morning with plans to meet Zac at a hostel that we had decided upon in Barcelona. After my five-hour train ride from Alicante, I weaved my way to this hostel in the gothic barrio of Barca. When I checked in I asked if Zac had made it and he had so I set up camp in he lobby to wait for him to get back from wherever he had gone. No more than 15 minutes later Zac Fortier, my buddy from Spring Lake High School, came walking in the door of my hostel in Barcelona, Spain. It was really weird to see someone familiar. After our initial hello, we decided to hit the streets and see what the city was all about. The first thing we wanted to do was find Las Ramblas. After walking up and down the crowded street we vowed to return at night to see the true atmosphere. Next, we decided to look for Gaudi’s park. Navigating Barcelona by metro, we made it to the station near the park, but for the life of us couldn’t find it. After running into another group of two American dudes, the four of us finally managed to ask everyone in the streets how to get to the park. There happened to be a handful of parks int he area. We are obviously a group of tourists so please stop directing us to the dog park, playground and futbol parks. We want to see Gaudi. We finally made it to Park Guell and we went to the highest point of the park, snapped some pics, went to the worlds longest bench, snapped some pics, went to the house/ museum of Gaudi and snapped some more pics. After the park, we split ways with Steve and Anthony and we headed down to a place a little closer to our hostel to search for a good tapas place (not a very hard task in any Spanish city). After some great tapas we returned to our hostel to rest a bit, hopefully meet some people and then go our for the night.
That night we made friends with the girls that were in our dorm style room at the hostel. One of them actually went to the same high school in Pittsburgh as one of Zac’s roommates. The girls went to Ohio State and were studying in Paris, so naturally we had a lot to talk about right off the bat. After hanging out with Sarah and Jessica at the hostel for a while we decided to go out to a couple of the famous clubs in Barcelona. Razmataz is the biggest club in Barcelona and that is where we went first. After an hour-long wait in line, we finally got in (paying a steep cover) and I was very surprised about how empty it felt. After letting an hour-long lines worth of people into the place it still wasn’t crowded. Another hour later and that had changed. The whole place was wall-to-wall people. Barcelona is very famous for its discotecas. After Raz we went to Shoko and while in line there Zac ran into his roommate from school’s ex-girlfriend whom he had actually flown over to Barcelona on the same plane with. She was with a friend, also from U of M, who is studying this term in Barca. We were amazed by the coincidental run it. After a short stint at Shoko we went back to the hostel.
We made it back to the hostel with plans of being up bright and early to take advantage of the daylight and everything that Barcelona had to offer, and to everyone’s surprise we actually managed to get out of the hostel at a reasonable hour! First stop on day 2- La Sagrada Familia. Right as we got off the metro stop in front of the unfinished church, we heard some people yelling to us from a short distance in English. A group of 6 girls walked up and pointed to Zac’s University of Michigan hat and said, “we go there too!”. They were in Barcelona for the weekend and studying this semester in Florence, Italy. We walked around the church with the group of girls, taking alternate group photos and laughing about how small the world really is. If only we knew what was in store for us later that night. After La Sagrada Familia we split up with the girls, exchanging numbers, and as they headed for Park Guell, Zac and I got tapas near the church and then went down the Barceloneta Beach. We walked the boardwalk, the beach, admired amazing sand castles, watched some surfers shred, and then headed back to the hostel area. We went to a grocery store and bought some supplies to lesson the financial burden of eating out and on our way back from the store we were literally engulfed by a mob protesting something or other. We made it through the mob just as a line of 10 swat vans came screeching in, all in a line. With a little adrenaline surge, we quickly returned to the hostel, made ourselves a basic dinner and started to meet new people down in the common room.
Tonight’s plans were to go to the most famous discoteca in Barcelona. Opium del Mar is know for having amazing guest DJ’s like Tiesto, AVB, David Guetta. It is a multi-level establishment located right on the beach with possibly the coolest outdoor terrace I’ve ever seen. We met up with the girls that we had stumbled upon at La Sagrada Familia and all went back to our hostel for a little pre-game with the people we shared a room with- now the Ohio State girls, two from Poland and one from Venezuela. After that, all of us grabbed cabs and went to Opium. When we got there the line was huge, so we decided to walk across the street to another club called Catwalk. After getting in FREE, we went up to the top floor and found out why the club was appropriately named ‘Catwalk’. Surrounding a giant dance floor was a mix of couches and catwalks, all adorned with beautiful, skimpily dressed women taking turns entertaining on the catwalks. No more than 10 minutes after we got there, one of the girls we met at the church screamed and told us she just saw here best friend from her Florence program whom she couldn’t get ahold of earlier. She dragged us through the crowd and “introduced us” to Kelly King. My jaw dropped! The world is way way too small! Kelly King is also a class of 2008 graduate from Spring Lake High School! Very shortly after this, the girl from our hostel who went to the same high school as Zac’s roommate ran into people that she had gone to high school with, one of whom was Zac’s roommate’s best friend. The stream of coincidental meetings was not yet done. The same girls that we had run into at Shoko somehow also made it to Catwalk! After a while at Catwalk, we decided to see if the line to Opium had died down. It had, so a bunch of us went in, enjoyed the rest of the night and then went back to the hostel.
Day 3 in Barca started out a little slower, but still not bad. We started out by taking a series of metro lines to the outskirts of the city in order to fine the FC Barcelona futbol stadium. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a tour on Sunday, but we did get to walk around it, take pictures and imagine what the streets would be like on game day. After that we decided to walk back- a very ambitious play due to the great distance between the stadium and main part of town. It turned out to be one the better decisions we’ve made. We had been hearing things about Plaza de España, but for the life of us couldn’t find it on either of our maps. It just so happens that the plaza was about half way between the stadium and the rambla and we stumbled right into it. Adorned with beautiful fountains, pillars, towers, an impressive art museum and just a ton of people, the plaza really is something worth seeing in Barcelona. By the time we were back towards an area of town that we knew it was started to get dark, so we headed to Las Ramblas to check it out, just as we’d promised ourselves. The place was a beehive of activity and we posted up and watched it all pass us by. With an early train in the morning and being that it was a Sunday, we decided that we were going to take it easy for the night. We went back to the hostel and ran into the 5 girls whom we were sharing the mixed dorm with and they told us that they had bought wine and were planning on going down to the beach to casually sip some wine and just relax. I couldn’t have thought of a better plan myself. They invited us to join them and we did- thus ending a great weekend in Barcelona. Next stop- Alicante! I couldn’t wait to show Zac my stomping grounds!
