Week 1 of Barcelona went by so quickly that everything seemed like a blur. Having said that, there were some really interesting memories made on the weekend. As I mention in m last post, I am in the process of a two-week intro spanish crash course, and large majority of my classmates are from Singapore. Much like me, they are in basic spanish 1 (baby level) and luckily, most of them can speak english. I can’t even imagine not being able to talk to an english speaker, I love to talk too much. My friend Una (also my flatmate) is in a more advanced spanish class and she introduced me to a number of her classmates. They are all extremely social and loves to party, some more than others. I like them a lot because they are fun to be around with and always down for a good time.

The first time I was out with them, we went to Port Olímpic and it was my first beach in Barcelona. It is right in front of Opium (night club) and it didn’t take long to spot some topless girls. Well that’s Europe for you. It was nice and hot and perfect weather for a pitcher of sangria (my fave). And I swear, the whole ESADE exchange group (+100 students) was at the beach and we tried to play “keep-up” with a volleyball that we found, but after awhile, the group just got bigger and bigger and everyone started socializing instead. So like any person would, we went to get more sangria. Can never have too much. And that’s when I met up with Cicely and her heavy ass bike. It was definitely too big for her size. She couldn’t take it on the metro, so she biked to my flat where we met up with Miya and we went out for dinner.

The next day, we went to a near-by shopping center, Glòries, to shop for clothes because Cicely literally brought only one set of outfit for the weekend. So we hit up H&M, Zara, Mango and Pull and Bear. The mall didn’t have a lot of choices but she managed to find two dresses at Zara and then we were off to Plaça de Catalunya (major shopping/tourist district) to meet up with Miya to go to Mercat de La Boqueria (food market) for lunch. Cicely has been raving about this place and I don’t blame her since it was similar to Vancouver’s Granville Island. SO MANY FRUITS. It’s food heaven. I got some tapas, a seafood salad and a fruit cup for a total price of 8€. The market was also next to La Rambla, which is a major tourist street that sells everything from food, clothes, home furnishings to souvenirs. I wish we were able to explore further down the street, but it started to rain cats and dogs—there was suppose to be a rainstorm on the weekend. Boo, i know. 🙁

Later that day, we met up with other exchange students at a Japanese restaurant called Kaitensushi He. It was in a neighbourhood of Barcelona called Eixample. This was such a strange place, with no explanation of how ordering works, the moment we sat down, they already brought us salmon sashimi (not complaining or anything), and the waiter just told us to grab the plates of food. At this point, I had no idea whether it was all you can eat or charge by the plate. It was only after I found out it was AYCE, then that’s when I started eating. We had no order sheets or anything, so the whole night we got random food here and there like sashimi, sushi rolls, noodles, dumplings, oysters, baked salmon, lobsters, and this penis-shaped shellfish. It was a pretty chaotic scene, a table full of food, empty plates and mess. We also had wine and to top off, as a group, we all had sake shots. I could tell it was super watered down, but I was having too much fun chatting with other students to care. The bill came to 20€, which is reasonable considering how much we ate and drank.

Our group eventually spilt into two and half of us went to Lucy’s apartment to pre-game and possibly go out clubbing—oh yeah by this time, it was nearly 11pm and this would’ve been time to start heading to the club in Vancouver. But in Europe, clubs and bars don’t get bumping until 2-3am and people party until 7-8am, so we had plenty of time. Lucy had a really nice apartment and she was very generous to allow so many of us to drink, dance and be completely ridiculous. I was surprised that we didn’t get a single complaint, we were rowdy as fuck. Besides Una and I, we didn’t know any other Canadian in the exchange group until partying at Lucy’s. We met two other Canadian, one was from Toronto and the other was from Montreal. Both were very cool people and they definitely knew how to have fun. We had so much fun and with no suggestions, we ended up just staying at lucy’s until 4am, but thankfully, the metro runs 24hrs on the weekends!

Sunday was my siesta day. Finally time to myself where I can sleep in, work on this blog, catch up on my spanish, shop for groceries, do laundry, and Skype with my parents. It was a lazy productive day if you know what I mean.

I can’t wait for more adventures to come and weekend travels. I still have yet to visit all the famous spots of Barcelona and travel around Spain, but I’m not worry since I have 4 months. September is a very busy month for Spain since there’s the La Merce Festival to celebrate the end of summer and coming of fall. Apparently, there’s gonna be parades, fireworks, street parties, human tower building, fire dancing, and lots of wine! I might also be going to Italy next weekend (check out fashion week), so definitely never ending excitement, I just hope I have time to blog about it!

Anywho cheers and adios!

Kevin