The first week of visiting Barcelona is almost done! While most of my peers arrived on Monday of this week I had the really cool opportunity of flying into Spain a day early. The first day was filled with quite a bit of panic and anxiety as I have never travelled abroad, however all the unsettling feelings were quickly washed away the moment I stepped foot into Barcelona. The city, the people and the overall feel is unlike anything I have ever experienced!
These first few days have been filled with seeing beautiful historic sites such as La Sagrada Familia, Cathedral of Barcelona, and Plaza Catalu?a, learning how to function in a city with a language barrier and navigating my way through the metro! So far I feel the food has been my favorite part (especially tapas) and I constantly have a surreal feeling of “is this actually my life??” while being in Barcelona.
While I would be perfectly content spending all of my time on this education aboard experience in Barcelona, we actually had the opportunity to travel to the smaller surrounding town of Sitges yesterday which was even more of a deep dive into Catalonia. In Sitges we met with Miguel and Raquel who work for/own Cellar Diaz – a vermouth producer in the small city. Getting to learn about all of the work and thought that goes into the making of vermouth from Miguel was an amazing experience as it was extremely evident how passionate he was not only of his company but of how he impacted others through his work. After touring Cellar Diaz our group ate lunch on the Mediterranean coast line with Miguel and Raquel where we visited, laughed and shared stories with one another!
This morning we woke up and got to visit the extremely well known Park Guell where we gazed at Gaudi’s art and home that he created in the early 1900’s. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that someone over 100 years ago had the knowledge and skill to design and create the buildings and artwork that Gaudi did, it was truly unlike anything I have ever seen before! After leaving the park we headed for lunch and grabbed tapas and soon headed back to the apartments (aka home). While today was a lot more leaned back and relaxed, it was nice to have a moment or two of silence where I got to reflect on the past few amazing days in Barcelona!
I can’t wait to see what this weekend and next week brings!!