Tag Archives: La Rambla

Hello La Mercè Festival

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Wow, it’s been weeks since I’ve posted. Lots have happened and school has definitely kept me busy (I’ve already done 3 presentations already!! And with more to go!).

To finish where I left off, after coming back from a lovely weekend of shopping and sightseeing in Milan, my Sauder friends came to Barcelona for La Mercè. They are on exchange like me and I can’t really explain how nice it feels to see people from home. It was such a heart-warming reunion and plenty of crazy memories were made.

After my flight home, I met up with Ali and Lauren (who were staying at my place while I was gone) at Parc de la Ciutadella and because of La Mercè, the park was filled with concerts, shops, games, food, and wine. It looked like a mini fair. Since I’ve been taking so many pictures and I am pretty much a professional photographer (haha yeah right), I gave Ali and Lauren a mini photo shoot in front of the park’s fountain and Arc de Triomf. I wanted to take them to the Market near La Rambla to get some fresh fruits and juices, but we arrived too late and it was closed. Boo!

Happy family

Happy family

And in order to squeeze as much night life in their last night in Barcelona, we rushed home to get ready and met up with Shandon and Larissa, who I didn’t even know was staying in Barcelona and going to UPF. We were suppose to be at their place at 6pm (they live literally 2 mins away from Barceloneta Beach, so jelly), but clearly since we’re in Spain, we were running on Spanish time (10-15mins late is socially acceptable). We were an hour late, but we did bring our good friend Don Simon Sangria, so who can be mad at that? I can’t believe how cheap and great tasting it was (only 2.50€!!), my new favourite drink. Tyler and Meagan were both staying at their place and Miya was also in town! Huge Sauder reunion indeed. We went out to a restaurant (La Malandrina) near Barceloneta and boy, the food was unbelievable! The portion was huge (I had to split with Miya and we had streak with salad) and super affordable. I definitely recommend the creme potatoes and I am salivating just thinking about it. Their sangria is also good, but I would go for the Tinto de Verano if you want to try something different apart from the regular sangria (it’s like sparkling sangria but BETTER!).

After dinner, we wanted to join in on the La Mercè festivities, so we rushed to Jaume for a laser projection show and on the way, we found a drum parade and a firework parade. Let me explain, this was no ordinary parade. People in masks and costumes were basically holding giant sparklers and spraying everyone with the sparks. It was crazy, terrifying, and accelerating at the same time. I can’t imagine anything like this happening in Vancouver, it looked like a riot to me. Hopefully my photos will do it justice (taken with my iphone) and show you how intense this was. Poor Miya was so terrified.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8h3yRSqw0w&w=420&h=315]

And when we finally made it to the show, it was just beginning to start! Perfect timing. The laser projection was quite random, maybe too artsy and conceptual for me. I filmed a bit of the show with my phone, so maybe you can tell me what it’s all about.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92tWTco9p_U&w=420&h=315]

The whole day and night, I’ve been rooting for Chupitos (shots for only 2€!) and it’s a must-go if you’re in Barcelona for the night life. SO AMAZING. It is a bar and they have over 200 different recipe of shots and 90% of them are on fire. It is a hot spot for many exchange students. We did my favourite, “Boy Scouts” which was shots lit on fire and we had to roost our marshmallows over the fire and then dip it in the shots. All that for only 2 euros! It was so much fun. I also tried black absinthe for the first time and it tasted like spicy black liquorice. It burns though, like a lot. Easily one of my favourite bar in Barcelona!

Just to add the cherry on top to make the night even more epic, we went to Opium. We had a ton of free passes (they gave them out during the day) and most clubs in Barcelona are free until 12am-2am. This is because Spaniards party until 7 or 8 in the morning. Too intense for me, I would die. Although it was a sunday night, it was still packed! I loved every minute of it since they played top 40 remixes (yes, i listen to crap music and I like it) and we also met a couple of other Canadian girls from Queens (I think…) A memorable night in Barcelona and surprisingly, it was also my first time at a club in Barcelona (I haven’t partied as hard as I liked…). Ohhh—in regards to dress code, weekdays and saturdays are more strict for guys (Nice shirts, pants, and shoes. but please no shorts or sandals and expect to paid more than girls ) and for girls, they should have nice flats/heels, top, dress, skirt, and jeans. Pretty standard like everywhere you go. But sundays are more relaxed and you might get away with ugly clothes.

It was such a fun weekend but I’m sad that Tyler, Meagan, Ali, and Lauren all had to leave—oh well, hopefully we’ll plan a trip together and meet somewhere…

The following days after have been crazy as well since it’s the final days of Mercè. There was a giant human castle building contest, beautiful fireworks at Espanya, and not to mention, random street parties here and there.

[Short video of Fireworks]

Anywho, sorry for the late late late post (two weeks behind haha), but now that I’ve finished with my presentations, I have more time to work on this blog and hopefully relax.

Cheers,

Kevin

Hello old friends and new!

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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.

four canadians in one room

four canadians in one room

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