As we finished up classes this week it finally hit me that we have two weeks to ourselves to just live in Barcelona and be a local. Through this time we will be able to see the city and its operations during the week now that we do not have school. The local cuisine is one of the best parts but quite expensive after a few weeks here. All of the food here seems to be very fresh, in the sense that it does not have preservative effects. Everything is very natural tasting and they do not use sauces very much to enhance the foods. They season them well and have more simple dishes. This week it was to my surprise how much money the tourism industry brings in. We have a classmate who did an independent study on tourism and the environment and it was quite amazing to see that tourism in Barcelona was about 1% of Spain?s overall GDP. When you?re talking about a couple billion, 1% is quite a lot. I have definitely noticed that some locals love tourist and others do not. We have been on many cultural visits to local places in Barcelona that have graffiti to explicitly tell tourist to, ?go away,? in a nice way of their writings. Then again, we have had a wonderful tour guide and very welcoming people showing us around. I presume that after COVID tourism grew quickly back up to what it was, disturbing the peace of many individuals. Next, I would like to say that I am getting very good at navigating the city. Mostly because I have to without a phone. I ended up getting pickpocketed at a bar and have not got a new phone yet. On the bright side of things, I know the city metros, bus stops, and main walking routes. It is very interesting trying to navigate based off of previous sights that you?ve seen, and it definitely makes it more of an adventure. I will be getting a new phone soon though for safety reasons. Now that we have been here 3 weeks I have been able to identify the ?tourist? spots versus the ?local? spots. The beach that we frequented when we first got here is long gone because we have found more local, peaceful beaches not too much farther. I would love to come back to Spain soon when it is not summer so that I would be able to see the city with the younger crowd still in town, since a lot of people travel in the summer. I cannot believe how cheap it is to travel in and around Spain. It has been a blast being able to do day trips to nearby cities for a relatively low cost. My goal for the next two weeks is to meet locals and try to get involved in activities and such when it is a comfortable environment of course. I hope to expand my horizons and learn a few things about the life of a Spaniard.
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