C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien met here! And it's where Bill and I had lunch on Saturday :-)
That. is. not. a. dorm.
Cute cake!
Also not a dorm. It's Christ Church, which has the Harry Potter dining hall. People eat there. I don't get it.
A dining hall we were allowed to go in! I've forgotten which it was.
Need I say it again? This is a castle!!!
We came so close to buying this for JM.
Lewis Carroll's shop!
Winning trivia games is my specialty. I promise there's a trivia game in there somewhere.
Back in Paris, I went to the Christmas Market on the Champs with Jessen! It was beautiful!!
We went to La Durée because we were cold and had macaroons :-)
At the Opera at the Bastille! I literally got there two minutes before it started. They were ringing bells and it was very stressful. But get there I did.
Rue Daguerre put its Christmas lights up!!!
After a relatively uneventful week (well, Tuesday and Wednesday night), I jetted off to Barcelona. Getting there was an ordeal because it snowed on Wednesday and the runways weren't all clear. All day Thursday, I watched EasyJet flights get cancelled ahead of mine, but mine appeared to continue to be ok, so I headed to the airport anyways. At first, they told us we were delayed by an hour. Then they told us 4 hours. We left about 4.5 hours after our scheduled time, meaning that I got into Barcelona at 12:30 AM instead of 8 PM. Rachel got in around 11, which meant that I was going to have to wait for her, but instead she waited for me. The only good news was that they gave us meal vouchers to eat dinner, which I might have skipped otherwise since airport food is expensive and not that good. I also made a friend who watched my bag while I went to the bathroom, got food, etc. so it wasn't a horrific experience-- just a long day.
Friday morning, we started at the University, which was right next to us.
To the left is your first view of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished magnificent cathedral.
wow that's a blue sky! Also, first up close look at one of the towers!
The door has the text of Matthew on it. There's Jesus! We're friends :-).
Workers because it's still unfinished!
Barcelona really has a lovely sky line.
After Sagrada Familia, we still had some energy so we took the train about an hour out of Barcelona to a monastery called Montserrat. The views were stunning, even more so at sunset.
After adventuring to a Barcelonan club with three Germans that we met in the hostel that morning and spoke with later that night, we eventually got up to go explore. We spent most of the day in the Las Ramblas area, exploring markets and shopping.
We also rambled (haha) down to the harbor, where we were greeted by a large column with Christopher Columbus on top of it. Apparently he's a big deal in Spain...
Gothic quarter! Difficult to photograph!
Christmas lights!!
The next day, Sunday, we went to Park Guell, a park full of Gaudi architecture. This looks kind of like a gingerbread house!
Such a cool instrument, and they played it very well! These are the only street musicians I've given money to while in Paris.
See, I was there!
Eternal flame in remembrance of some martyrs. Not to be blasé, but I can't remember why they died. Interesting juxtaposition with the church, though!
Sunday night we went out with the Germans again, this time just to get a drink at a bar. The bar we went to had writing all over the walls, and they handed us a permanent marker and told us to go crazy. The blue writing that is circled and connected belongs to the four of us. One of them, Marc, wrote "bratwurst." I made a reference to wine, Rachel wrote in Spanish that she was there, and Pascal wrote the last line of a German poem. It's really fun to meet people from other places!
Sunday, we walked down to the beach and just walked around that area until time to head to the airport.
One other good story: I was pickpocketed while in Barcelona (it's notorious for that) but actually everything turned out fine. After getting off the metro, Rachel and I had to climb the stopped escalator (we found out later that it was stopped on purpose in order to set this trap), so I slung my purse on my back and started trudging up the huge steps. All of a sudden, Rachel's eyes got really big. When we got to the top, Rachel said, "Katherine, was your purse zipper open when you got off the metro?" "Of course not, I keep my passport in the-- oh no." She told me to go through my purse and figure out what I was missing while she chased him down. I quickly ascertained that only my passport was missing because he had only gotten to the front pocket. Just as I was about to help Rachel give chase, we saw the strangest thing. The man was returning to us, my passport in hand. He wordlessly gave it to me and then disappeared. He had no use for my passport, but had kindly chosen to give it back instead of throwing it on the ground somewhere, at some personal risk-- we could have decided to press charges but did not since he didn't keep anything. So I can now say I've been pickpocketed, the quintessential tourist experience, but that I didn't lose anything! It was a miracle.
Rachel and I also visited the Picasso museum that day, which was a really neat experience. It was in a beautiful building and contained works from every period of his life. It still failed to adequately explain, in my opinion, why Picasso made the somewhat abrupt transition to cubism, but I still really liked it!
And so ended my travelling. Since then it's been a rush of working, seeing people, and trying to cram as much into every day as possible. As I'm writing this, I have only Sunday through Thursday remaining in Paris. Carpe diem, here we go.
Happy Saturday!!
No comments:
Post a Comment