The Journey Begins!

On my way to Barcelona, I stopped by Montpellier for a 2.5 hour layover so I got to see a few of the main sights. Of course I didn't get to see much, but here are a few pics anyway!

Aquaduct?

I arrived in Barcelona on April 30th at about 9 pm and the first thing I had to do was find my host that I found on couchsurfing. There was some confusion because our phones weren't able to call eachother (apparently I had to put a "+" in front of his number) so I went to find a hostel. I finally found one at about 11 pm and it was booked, but luckily they gave me a room that is normally reserved for tour groups. This meant that I had a room to myself in an appartment above the hostel, so I was prettly lucky!

The room I had to myself. I felt pretty safe here because to get to it I had to go through a locked door next to the hostel, go up one floor to open another locked door to enter a tiny patio where I go through the locked door to the apartment, which houses my locked room! (I also had a cabinet there to lock up my things)

View from my balcony. It's not much, but I love the European balconies!!

The next day I met with my four friends from my study abroad program; they were staying in a nearby hostel. We when to the top of one of the hills by the city for a great view and to see some sort of fortification.

 Here's the fortification (where I also took the next 3 photos)

It was windy outside... 

 Barcelona's busy port is hidden directly on the other side of the hill! 

I have no mercy in the heat of battle...

Afterwards we got lost for a while, but we eventually made it to El Pueblo Español, which is a small walled town replicating all the different types of spanish architecture. The buildings also house small shops and restaurants as well as a contemporary art museum. It was pretty cool, but maybe not worth 6 euro... That's one thing about Barcelona, all tourist attractions are expensive!!!

Each building is unique, this picture is about 1/15 of them.

 The art museum (which I didn´t visit) and on the left is a HUGE fountain (that wasn´t running at the moment)

A view from the top of the stairs! This is an impressive part of the city. In the distance are 2 big red towers, a huge statue in the middle of a traffic circle, and Barcelona´s impressive stadium!

That night I finally made it to my host's apartment where we made an amazing dinner of 7 kg (15lbs) of beef and a lot of rice mixed with tomatos and peppers. We shared this huge meal with his 10 friends who were all celebrating Spain's labor day. It was a lot of fun to meet everybody, and the interesting thing is that they're all from Paraguay! In fact, none of them knew eachother until moving to Barcelona, so I assume that it's a very diverse city.  Another surprising thing is that they waiting to go to the discotech until almost 3 a.m.! They stayed out until 6:30 and my host, Gerardo, let me sleep in his bed that night!

¡¡¡ !!! 

Delicious!

The next day I layed out on the beach with Lauren (the other three had to leave for Grenoble to resume their classes) and then we walked around the city for a while and found some of the main sights. That night I slept on Gerardo's comfy couch and then left for Zaragoza the following day (Wednesday May 2nd).

La playa!!

Barcelona´s arc (I didn´t have any good poses for this one) 

The last two photos are of buildings designed by Gaudí, a really famous architect who did a lot of work in Barcelona. His architecture is everywhere and is what helped make the city famous.