Weekend #2 Recap

Another highly successful weekend here in Barca. A simple recap....

Thursday night: Margaret met me downtown at my work and we went to Dow Jones to meet up with all the girls for some after dinner drinks. I love this bar so much. It reminds me of a bar that would be in Madison or something....a little slice of home. Also, the bartenders speak English so we can sit at the bar and actually have full out conversations with them and talk about what's going on the upcoming weekend. After a few drinks at Dow Jones, Margo and I headed back to Bellaterra for dinner and went to bed. I decided that going out on Thursdays is not appropriate here considering we never seem to make it back before 6 am and I get up for work at 7 am. So some happy hour drinks and home to bed worked out perfectly.

Friday night: Because my work is so awesome and the guys I work for are so great I ended up leaving work on Friday at 2 pm. I mean it's Barcelona and its beautiful out so who wants to work on a Friday? My bosses names are Mike and Jason so I am just going to refer to them as that from now on. So Mike talked me into going to this festival on Friday night called Sonar. It's the world's largest electronic music festival and it takes place in Barca each summer! About 70 - 80,000 people from ALL over Europe come to this festival. So obviously....I had to go. Let's be honest I need some festivals in my life. So Margaret and I went to Sonar around midnight on Friday night. What an experience that was! Very interesting. Quite unlike any other festival I have ever been too. But it was still really really amazing! I'm really glad that I went because it was so different to be in a place with so many different types of people and hearing so many different languages being spoken.

Saturday: After getting back from Sonar around 5 am, we had a 9 am wake-up call for our programs' weekly sponsored activity. This weekend it was a tour of Torres winery and a visit to Monseratt. Seeing everyone on that bus at 9 am in the morning after a Friday night out was quite a sight! It was just so much fun because everyone was in the exact same boat.....struggling. We made it to the winery around 11 am and took a really cool tram ride through the vineyards and through some of the processing warehouses. We also saw all the cellars where the wine is stored while it ages in huge oak barrels. We then went inside for a wine tasting and tried a house red wine and white wine. Absolutely delicious! It was a really cool experience and it was refreshing to get out of the city and see some of the Spanish countryside. It actually kind of reminded me of Wisco or somewhere in the midwest except that all the cornfields were vineyards. (which is a major upgrade)

After the winery tour we ate a traditional lunch of paella, which is a Spanish rice dish with vegetables and sea food. I stuck to the vegetarian paella though because the seafood dish had shrimp and crayfish that were staring at me. In Barca I have yet to see shrimp served without their eyes, legs and shell. No thank you. I do like how the Catalonians eat their lunch though. A traditional Spanish lunch is two courses and a dessert. It's a very long and slow meal that is always finished with a dessert and coffee. That's why most businesses have their lunch breaks from 2-4. It's really relaxing.

Finally, after lunch we traveled to Monseratt. Since I already had been there I knew what to expect but I had forgotten just how beautiful it actually is. It is definitely my favorite thing that I have seen here thus far. The girls I was with all fell in love with the mountain and the monastery immediately. We all have vowed to visit it at least one more time before we leave.

Saturday night we traveled up to Tibadabo, which is a high peak right outside the city, where we went to a hilltop bar. The bar was almost all glass and you could see the entire city below. It was a super classy place and had a courtyard with a koi fish pond in the middle. This bar was a really nice change from the crazy downtown bars that we had been going to. It was really nice to just sit in the courtyard, order a bottle of wine and look out over the city that we live in.

Sunday: Margo and I got up early and met all the other girls on the Port Olimpic beach. I think this is pretty much going to be our Sunday activity because its our only totally free day of the week. We layed out all day and people watched.....there are SO MANY INTERESTING SIGHTS TO SEE ON THE BEACH! You have to see it to believe it. Perfect after a long, exhausting weekend. We then all went out to dinner at Rosa Negra because we were all craving Mexican food for some reason. It was super delicious and the perfect ending to a great weekend!

Work was great again today. It's just so relaxed and I feel so comfortable in the office and in the area where I work. I am going to take some pictures of the surrounding area to post because it's such an interesting part of the city and the architecture is gorgeous. I am so happy with my work situation..... I am starting to feel really lucky to be here!