Hotel + Gastehaus Gran Via Barcelona

... the top of a hill overlooking the entire city. Gaudi&#8217;s pretty pink house is located here, along with the very long mosaic bench, and the mosaic dragon. I thought that park was absolutely breathtaking. <br><br> Returning to our aparment should have been easy since we had already been there for two days, but we managed to get lost. After a long day of walking, it was rather bothersome for this to happen. However, we found our apartment and picked up Bev ...

... you want. Plus Barcelona has 'free pour'!!! This is when the shots aren't measured into the glass. So for every &euro;4 drink, you got about 3, or a half glass of spirits:) The atmosphere of this night out was probably the best so far. We were dancing from arrival to leaving, having group shots and doing some group circle dance offs. Later we got taxis home, about 3am I think. It was an absolutely awesome night out and everyone had so much fun.

... Mexican food is one of the things that we have missed while we were here so it was fun to get nachos and food there. Afterwards we went back and had a skype date with Jamie, Justin and Erich. We have skype dates with our friends back home from time to time and it is fun for us all to be together, kind of. Erich and Brandon decided its feels like a hologram because it is like we are there but they can't actually ...

... seemed to be filled with drinking pubs, ritzy cocktail lounges, and classy wine bars. Walking into one smoke filled pub, I passed a sign that summed up my experience while traveling and the City of Barcelona, &#8220;There are no strangers here, just friends you have not met&#8221;. I then walked downstairs into what seemed like a dungeon filled with empty barrels, wooden tables, and laughter that echoed upstairs. It had the same structure to it that the rest of ...

... we traditionally took our ´siesta´ (short nap)....keep in mind we have four people in two twin beds pushed together...ha ha ha...to save money---it´s super funny. We woke up and went to a very popular place called Pipperment, where we ordered two 6 liter beers (that´s about 4 gallons of beer)....SUPER FUN, we drank beer and watched one of the big soccer games that was going on. Afterwards we went back to the hotel took a short nap and then I begged ...

... houses that are at the entrance of the park. From that point it becomes a game of hidden spaces along a whimsical path up the hill. It was fun taking different paths that would lead to hidden terraces and places of repose in the shade or along the columns that were woven into the hill. Adding to the surroundings was the music of various ...

... but Sagrada Familia exerts a very strong spiritual pull. The concept, like everything that Gaudi designed, is unique. The newer parts, which have been designed by others, still seem to be part of the same aesthetic, but in a distinctly different style. It's so remarkable to be able to go through the site while it's under construction.

... amazing art. It was overwhelming. Next we went down to Notre Dame. It´s considered the most perfect piece of Gothic archetecture anywhere. It´s so beautiful that it can´t be described. I´m not at all religious, but I was tearing up a bit. Then we went and had a b-day crepe at a sidewalk cafe with a real snobby French waiter. Awesome. Everything in Paris takes a long time to do, so that took up the whole day. We changed and went to a Parisian dinner (I ate snails ...

Tonight is my last in Spain - I have a train on Sunday morning at the ungodly hour of 8:45! It's a long, 10.5 hour ride to Nice, France. I had been planning to skip France and go right to Italy, but the other day I was looking at the distance from Barcelona to Milan - it's a long way! I decided to find somewhere in between to stay for a few days, and came across an amazing ...

If this is messy, it's cause there's only the lights f/ the street to use, everyone's asleep. I napped f/ 9-11, dumb move, cause now it's dark, at least too dark to really move around, and I can't sleep. Went to Stitges, Spain today (it's actually Sitges). Was a lttle town, about 45 minutes out of Barcelona by train ($4.80). It was in the Let's Go book so we decided ...