Plan B: The Road Most Traveled

Top (L-R) Boqeria Marke, Lunch

Bottom: My barracks for the night.

Top(L-R) The beach, Sagrada Familia

Bottom(L-R) Casa Batllo, first night living arrangements

So... I went to Barcelona this past weekend..

It was amazing... I'm taking all of you there.. (at your expense of course) except you have to "rough it" like we did [one pair of jeans, 2shirts, necessary number of undergarments, toothbrush, shamp&condit DONE..I literally fit into a Walmart sack]... and because Plan A never works (hence the title of this blog.. the B also stands for Barcelona... dual meaning.. clever; I know) I have Barcelona down pat. Before I begin this monster of a blog, I would like to list all of the places my friends and I traveled to in only 2 days:

• Casa Batlló
• Casa Mila
• Sagrada Familia
• 1992 Olympic stadium
• The Beach-Equity Point (our hostel)
• The Barcelona harbor (biggest boat/yacht expo in the world was there)
• Magic Fountain (funny story.. read below)
• Plaza Cataluña
• Casa de Les Punxes
• Mirador de Colom (the lion pics on FB... good times)
• Parc Grüell
• La Rambla/Boqeria Market

Maybe it doesn't seem like that many, but I will have you know that these places had to be traveled to... they were in no form or fashion in one general area... no sir-ee.

Day 1:

Thursday evening was an eventful one... it consisted of guessing which bus to take to the bus station and also catching it... easy right?... For the most part.. Right. The tricky part about the bus is that you have to know where you need to get off. Did we know? Nope. So... being the resourceful people we are... we come to the conclusion that this lady on the bus with a red suitcase is also going to the bus station (why else would she have a suitcase?) and decide to get off when she gets off. Well, she gets off and we look around and we don't feel it is the appropriate place to get off, so we don't. Mistake. Should have followed the red suitcase. Always follow the red suitcase.. what did we do... resorted to PLAN B (this will be the theme for this post if you haven't already caught on.) We decided to get off at the next stop except we were getting off in Spain's version of the ghetto or chabola... it was all good though we were less than a quarter of a mile from the bus station.. no harm done. Once we arrived to the bus station we plopped down in some seats in the waiting area and I started to journal...I wrote about how it reminded me of an old school romance movie with a man/woman running off the bus, through the steam, and mackin' on his/her man when they unite (ok so maybe those were trains; same thing) what the others did isn't important. Only me. :) kidding. When the clock hit 9pm it was time to board the bus. The bus ride was full of fun(ny) and exciting things. For example: Sarah's inappropriate "That's what she said" joke. It went a little something like this: (Rated PG-17)

Me: I think my jeans are about to rip.

Sarah: Right there where it's all faded?

Me: Yeah.. it's a coming

Sarah: THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!

UGH! I HATE That's what she said jokes. Like hate. After we had recovered from such an inappropriate joke, Sarah whipped out her SPAIN travel book and started making the itinerary... which we would then find to be utterly stupid... Why? .. we always use Plan B. Always. After and hour and a half on a charter bus that smelled of stale cigarettes, we arrived in Málaga. We were all very pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a Backstreet Boys classic... "As Long as You Love Me"... it was a good 2 minutes. Once we had re-lived awkward Jr. High days, we went outside and unfortunately hopped in a taxi to take us to our hotel. Taxis are freaking expensive.. that's all I'm gunna say.. hate them almost as much as I hate "That's what she said jokes". When we got to our hotel (Holiday Inn) our masterminds went to work... here was our situation:

We booked a 2 person room... we had 4 people... any more than 2 people in the room was extra money... we didn't want to have to pay that extra money. So....... the blondes (Sarah and Sam) went to check-in to our room while Evelyn and I (the brunette "Spaniards") waited on a bench outside. We figured the blonde girls would call more attention to themselves than 2 brunettes would.. Spaniards love blondes.. especially the men. The plan worked beautifully and we made it into our room with zero complications. Mom, Dad.. I don't know if you are proud or ashamed of me for this, but... it happened... please still love me.

While sitting on the bench waiting for the green light to try to go up to our room, Evelyn and I watched a super skinny (literal bean pole), probably drug taking, spandex wearing British man rant and yell swear words at possibly:

• the hotel
• the hotel staff
• someone in the hotel
• someone the thought was in the hotel

The man eventually approached Evelyn and I and asked in his very British accent, "Do you have a fuego?"[go ahead.. say it in your best British accent and see how funny it sounds] (fuego means fire... he wanted us to light [something] for him) it took everything we had not to bust out laughing at him. So once he left... we busted out laughing.. tears filled the eyes, lungs were deprived of oxygen, ab muscles were worked... it was one of the many things we referenced during the trip.

Once in the room we pushed the two twin-sized beds together and had ourselves a decent amount of sleep, well.. as much as you can have with 4 people in 2 beds and people *cough* Sarah and Evelyn snoring.

Day 2:

Day 2 had an early start... too early. After we had gathered all our things, put the beds back to conceal the evidence, we hopped in our taxi (yet again.. ugh) and made the 3min 10euro ride to the airport. Luckily, we found 10euro in the taxi, so the last person to ride in it payed for our trip (WIN!) Once in the airport we proceeded to lovely security... I got frisked... home girl was coppin' all sorts of feels.. can't say I blame her... MC's meal selections and bread have done wonders to this bod. After getting felt up by a Spaniard (unfortunately a woman.. lol kiding..she really was a woman) we went and stood in line at the RyanAir boarding desk... the way RyanAir works is that it's first come first serve so you have to get there pronto or else you are sitting next to a crazy... or someone you just don't want to sit by. Even though we were towards the front in line, we still had to sit next to a crazy, or at least Sarah did... the whole flight home boy was trying to sleep all over Sarah.. bleh. The airplane also had some in-flight entertainment. A movie? music? No and no... an emergency evacuation comic... according to RyanAir, you need to remove the following items before exiting DURING AN EMERGENCY:

1. Glasses
2. Jewelry
3. Shoes
4. and my personal favorite... Dentures.

Seeing how it was 8 in the morning and we had been up since 5... this was WAY entertaining.

1 HOUR AND 10 MINUTES LATER.......

WE ARE IN BARCELONA! I think we all had this great sense of accomplishment because we all knew how terribly wrong this whole trip could have gone. When we had made it to the exit, we faced our next obstacle... how to get from the airport to our hostel. We ask the information desk for a map and decided to sit at a table to figure out where exactly we were and what would be the best option for transportation. Well seeing how the map did not include the airport, it did us zero good. So... what time is it? Time for Plan B! Plan B consisted of me going up to the information desk asking "Puedo hablar en ingles?" (Can I speak in English?.. I knew it was dangerous for me to get directions in Spanish),showing her the address of our hostel, and telling her I needed to know the best way to get there. She did... except she gave me the wrong bus number to catch so, as usual.. we were wandering around downtown Barcelona looking for a bus that probably didn't even exist. After several questions of "Donde esta Plaza del Mar?" we finally make it to our ocean front hostel. At our hostel we checked in with Paulo.. an Italian who apparently left Italy to get away from the Pope (he was coming the same weekend we were there... we saw him a few times... mainly on signs and posters.) and he gave us the low down on the place. They only provide a pillow case and bottom sheet, so if you need/want a top sheet or blanket, you have to buy/rent them...seeing how we were "roughin' it" we chose none of the above. I slept with my jacket and folded the bottom half of the sheet around my legs. When it came time to take a shower, I dried off with a used shirt. It was so liberating. After we had settled into our hostel we set out for the streets. First stop, Casa Batlló... a very peculiar building designed by the oh so famous Antoni Gaudi. This successful architect has pretty much tagged every nook and cranny of Barcelona with whimsical buildings. You know a Gaudi when you see one. (pics above) Next stop was Casa Mila, and the host of the Pope himself, Sagrada Familia (pic above). The Sagrada Familia is a massive cathedral that, for some reason, is being worked on/renovated/finished and so all of my pictures of it contain cranes that really enhance the architecture. It was borderline frustrating. After all that walking and intense sightseeing we were ready to hit the sack to revamp for the next day. That night there was minimal sleep. Why? well there's a laundry list of things such as:

• Sarah and Evelyn snoring
• Girls asking the other girl if she knows the father of her soon to be born child
• The climbing couple bunking with us
• The random guy who also bunked with us.. we don't think he was supposed to be there... but we were happy to have him.

The next day was pretty much near perfection. After a breakfast of some of the most wonderful Coco Krispies ever, we all went down to the beach and literally just sat there for 2 hours... the weather was perfect and Sarah, Evelyn, and I had an absolute blast playing "Your Team" What is "Your Team" you ask? Allow me to explain:

Your Team is fun people watching game where you look for some of the strangest/goofiest/interesting people you can find and assign them to each other's teams by saying [insert player's name here], your team. The person being assigned a teammate can choose to deflect the person assigned to them if and only if the other player has not yet said shield. If the other player calls shield the person must keep the person assigned to them. We each had certain types that were constantly assigned to us they are as follows:

• Evelyn= people with long hair... so they can braid their hair together
• Sarah= the nekkeds.. nuff said
• Me= shorty shorts...mmmm

After we had gotten our fill of the beach, we headed to meet up with some other girls from our same program who also ventured to Barcelona at Plaza Cataluna . Upon arrival, we find our friend Caitlin surrounded by 3 Indian men asking to take a picture with her because they think she looks like Shakira.. she doesn't really look like Shakira... she just has big hair like Shakira.. it's awesome. I got bored waiting for the Indian men to leave her alone and so I began taking "stalker pics" of some genius little boys. They were feeding the pigeons rice.. (which I'm pretty sure is bad for birds but whatever), in a very creative way.. they had formed a circle with the rice and so they had a circle of pigeons around them...which was really more like The Circle of Death... I think that's what made it the most amusing for me. ha. Once the Indians were done with Shakira, we made way for La Rambla. On La Rambla there was a literal plethora of things... tons of street performers, vendors of flowers, pets, jewelry etc. and my personal favorites... ARTISTS! gosh I wish I were talented like that... I was so envious of their skills. Once we made it to the end of La Rambla we went to Mirador de Colom. Mirador de Colom was a monument with massive lion statues that you just couldn't help but climb on them.. they reminded me of climbing on the lions at the San Antonio Zoo when I was little...only thing was, was that they weren't so easy to get up on.. there was literally no way to get on and off them gracefully (scope FB pics for a visual) I've never laughed so hard in my life... it's really entertaining watching a girl in a knee length denim skirt get on lady-like.. ha.. gosh.. so funny. Moving along.... next stop was the harbor/yacht expo... amazing.. I love boats.. especially sailboat and watching them come into the harbor on such a beautiful day was absolutely wonderful... I could have done it all day... but then we got hungry so we went to find some food. The next stop was the Boqeria Market.. this is the largest market in Europe and it had literally every kind of nut, fruit, vegetable, cut of meat, seafood, etc. you could ever dream of. I literally loved every minute of it.. I'm pretty sure I said "this is so COOL" a million times. This was also the place where our lunches came from. My lunch consisted of a huge fruit bowl full of melon, grapes, mango, kiwi, figs, and a fruit I'm not sure what is called (pics on FB) and to drink, fresh kiwi juice. Pure bliss. Next stop was Parc Grüell... yet another piece of art by Gaudi himself. We had to book it there because the sun was setting fast and we wanted to get there in time to get decent pictures. We barely made it. Why? Because of the MASSIVE hill we had to walk up (we had our "luggage" with us at this point because we were leaving for the airport that night.. luggage=backpacks)... luckily at some points of this hill there were escalators.. my butt is still feeling that hill... it hurts so good. We made it up the endless hill and it was well worth the hike. The view was amazing and so was the sunset... it was one of those things that make you sigh... those are always the best.

Once the sun had set and it was pretty much dark outside we decided to meet Caitlin and Tiffany at the Magic Fountain, but not before we ate. We found this cheap Chinese bar and chowed down on some paella and spinach tortellini and then killed time by making a Cootie Catcher out of our paper place mat and amusing ourselves for a bit. Using our handy dandy map... we successfully found the Magic Fountain only.. it TOO is under construction. We were all ticked... we spent money on a metro and wasted energy (which at this point was in short supply) to go to this place far away from where we needed to catch our airport bus... yep you guessed it.. Plan B Accepting our defeat, we walked back to the metro and went to meet the other two girls for the airport bus. We successfully get to the airport at approximately 12am and decide to be homeless people up until our flight at 630am. We found refuge behind the airlines' information desks. Some of us set up beds made of clothes, some of us journaled, some of us read Spanish Cosmopolitan (more entertaining in Spanish I'll admit)and some of us could not pull ourselves together to shut up and stop laughing (ahem Sarah Moe). :) To help aid in the staying up process, Sarah, Evelyn, and I made our way to the coffee vending machine to load up on caffeine. While walking to the vending machine we see this army of men all dressed in grey suits with baby blue ties walking into the airport... we then see a few people get up from their seats and go take pictures with some of the guys... this sparked our interest and we rubber-necked all the way to our original destination. After we managed to get our caffeine, we waved down a worker on a Zamboni like machine and asked him who this army of nicely dressed men were... he informed us that they were Malaga's professional futbol team. Playa say what!? we were in the presence of Gods... I mean they weren't the top gods like Real Madrid or FC Barcelona, but they were still pros! I totally would have asked for a picture, but I looked like a bad train wreck and it just wasn't worth the embarrassment. Needless to say, we walked back to our shelter star struck.

The caffeine did nothing for me.. it put me straight to sleep... for a whopping 20min... I was SO ready to be home in MC's house, but I knew I still had quite a journey left in front of me. It finally came time for us to head to our flight only... we were at the wrong terminal so... we had to take yet another bus (free of charge) to the correct terminal in order to go through the correct security. Speaking of security, I got frisked again... I'm tired of getting felt up by women... not to mention unnecessarily beeped going through the metal detector. The rest of the day is pretty standard and uninteresting so I'll skip to our arrival to Granada......... So.. we make it to Granada.. yay! home! and find out the buses are all jacked up due to a marathon happening downtown. Great... Plan B yet again. I eventually make it home, kicked Colleen out of our room (not really she was super nice and just went and chilled somewhere else), and I was asleep by the time my head hit the pillow... I was awoken by Colleen telling me lunch was ready and I was happy to see MC had made my favorite meal (white wine chicken) especially for my arrival [speculation]. After lunch I went back to bed woke up for dinner and then got ready for bed yet again.. it was a glorious, glorious day.

Dos besos,

Courtney