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It has been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. I know that many of y’all were begging me for new material so here ya go…

This past week was a vacation week for all of us on the program. I elected to stay in Barcelona for the majority of the week (except for the impromptu trip to Andorra). I decided to stay for a few reasons. First of all, I felt like there was a lot going on in Barcelona that I hadn’t been able to experience because I had been so busy taking trips to Italy, France, etc. and I wanted a chance to experience BCN without the business of classes. Secondly, and most importantly, traveling is expensive. Enough said.

So this past week was full of a lot of downtime, relaxation and a few crazy highlights that I am about to catch you up on. First of all, there was the festival of Sant Joan on Monday night (which I have already told you about). Then a good friend turned 21 on Tuesday so we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent catching some rays and visiting the Joan Miro museum up on Montjuic. The Joan Miro museum had a temporary exhibit from Olafur Eliasson, an artist who specializes in light and they cool ways that it can refract. Pictures should be up on Flickr soon. 

Friday was a catch up on work day and then my parents came to town on Saturday! I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with my famliy. Saturday we just walked up and down Las Ramblas and did some people watching (Las Ramblas has some of the best people-watching I’ve ever encountered!) A group of people from my program came out to a nice dinner with my family and I in Placa Reial and we all got helado for dessert. Oh, and my dad, Stephanie and I bought Spain jerseys in anticipation of the next day’s game. 

On sunday, we woke up early and headed out to Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain about an hour by train outside Barcelona and it sticks up like a giant serrated knife from the green countryside. It is also the home of a very old Benedictine monastery. It houses the oldest printing press in operation in the world and a statue of the Black Virgin Mary. According to legend, this statue was carved by St. Luke and brought to Montserrat by Peter in the year AD 50. Although other accounts which are fairly well documented claim the statue arrived at Montserrat around the year 700. Carbon dating suggests that the current statue in the basilica dates from the 12th or 13th centuries. No one knows the true story of the black madonna, or even exactly why she is black. All they know is that she has been in the mountains in northern Spain for a very long time. The monastery itself was very cool. It is even one of the most likely candidates for hiding places for the holy grail during the Middle Ages (Indy was wrong!) Anyways, we had a great time walking around the monastery and enjoying the incredible views of the countryside. For more info about Montserrat legends and the black virgin Mary, check out these links (you know you want to…) 

• http://www.amaranthpublishing.com/LlibreVermell.htm
• http://campus.udayton.edu/mary//meditations/olmont.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montserrat_%28mountain%29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_de_Montserrat

The festival of Sant Joan (or San Juan) on June 24th marks the summer solstice and 6 months before (or after) Christmas. Barcelona, however, likes to celebrate the day before a holiday, which meant this past Monday night was the night to celebrate. We had heard fireworks going off in the courtyard behind Onix every day for the past 3 weeks. Little did we realize that this was all leading up to an entire night of fireworks, the scale of which I had never before seen in my life. There were bonfires in every neighborhood, fireworks on every street corner and people everywhere. I’m pretty sure every home in Barcelona emptied itself onto the streets and beaches of Barcelona Monday night. 

A large group of us left Onix at midnight and just started walking towards the beach. With every block that we passed, the crowds got thicker and thicker. Once we hit the sand, there was hardly a place to sit down. Every piece of ground was either already occupied by people or resembled a battlefield strewn with used firework casings. I assumed everyone would have a few fireworks, shoot them off, hang with some friends, and then call it a night (similar to New Year’s in the states). Boy was I wrong. The kids shooting off fireworks started a little after sunset and didn’t stop or even slow down until around 3 or 4 in the morning. A group of us met some cool Catalans and we all hung out on the beach till the sun rose. The crowds had thinned some but there were still a significant amount of people on the beach. I was worried about something happening to my camera so I didn’t take it with me. Even if I had had it with me, there would be no way for pictures to really capture the scale of Sant Joan. Other people, however, have uploaded plenty of pictures to Flickr.

I suppose I have had my fun the past few days. It is time to take care of some homework while I have a chance. I want to make sure I have plenty of free time when my parents come to visit this weekend!

Disclaimer: I have been back in Barca since Sunday, I’m just slow in posting. This is a long one. I am very sorry.

Andorra is a tiny country with a total population of 70 thousand. It declared war on Germany during WW I but has no military and was officially at war with Germany until 1957 because it was left out of the Peace Treaty of Versailles (hey, I’ve been there). It is a tax haven and pretty much everything there is duty free (which basically equates to a lot of cheap electronics and cigarettes). Although 80% of the country’s GDP comes from tourism, it doesn’t know whether to be touristy or not. The capital is Andorra La Vella and is three hours from the nearest airport and doesn’t have a train station. The largest and most recognizable building is a spa in the middle of the town in the form of a giant glass spire. The main street was impeccably lit and kept spotless. I honestly felt like I was in a Disney town. There are no homeless people in Andorra. Andorra is not in the EU. We heard people speaking Catalan, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and another language that I assumed was some mixture of French and Catalan. I also heard a little Italian but never English. We only found two people who could speak passable English the entire time.

We enjoyed having some delicious tapas, found a really cool jazz bar and enjoyed some incredible hiking. At the jazz bar on Saturday, we heard this great band. One of them was speaking English so we started talking to him after the show. Turns out he is from New York. He randomly met some musicians in Amsterdam while promoting a CD and they decided to make some music together and are now touring to promote it. Of all places to run into random American musicians from New York but a tiny tiny jazz bar in Andorra. The rest of the musicians were from Barcelona and have two shows this weekend on top of Casa Mila. Maybe we can get in free… 

For dinner, we found a great tapas restaurant that was a hole-in-the-wall locals place. Delicious. We recognized some of the names but after a while we started to get adventurous. Everything we tried was great… tuna, calamari, potatoes, mussels, fried peppers. We were feeling pretty adventurous so we decided to jump out on a limb and try something we didn’t recognize. Callos. It showed up as chunks of wiggly slimy white gelatinous stuff with honeycomb veins in a red stewy sauce. We debated back and forth what it was. Possibilities included pork fat, starfish, and any number of other sea-urchin like creatures. Well, when we got back, I googled it. Callos is made from tripe. Okay. I’m thinking that sounds like any other fish, kinda like Carp. So then I google tripe. Well, as it turns out we were eating the stewed lining of a cow’s stomach. Well, I didn’t really eat it. I took one bite, politely spit it in my napkin and let Kevin finish the bowl. Oh well, one bad dish out of 12. At 3 euros, you can afford to be a little adventurous.

We also went hiking up in the Pyrenees. We took a bus out to a tiny village called Ordino and just started walking. The lady at our hotel exaggerated when she said that there were only 10 houses in this village, but not by much. The mountains were huge on a scale that shames the Rockies. Incredible panoramic views of the valley that Andorra sits in. No wonder it is forgotten by most of the world, it is completely closed off and unless you knew where you were going, you would never find it. We hiked for several hours and enjoyed the incredible waterfalls and snow-capped mountains in the distance. Looking at a map later, I realized that if we had been backpacking and continued in the same direction for another few hours, we would’ve hiked straight into France!

All in all, Andorra is a pretty cool place. Made for a great weekend trip, only 4 hours away by bus. Oh, and if you have the choice between the bus that goes direct and the bus that makes a few stops on the way. Take the direct bus. On the way home we saw every tiny village between Andorra La Vella and Barcelona.

Today is the celebration of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, but I’ll tell all about that tomorrow. I need to go shower, we are going out for Kevin’s birthday tonight.

We got back in Barcelona just in time to watch the Spain v Italy soccer game. Spain won in PKs after a hard-fought 120 minute long game. There are fireworks going off like crazy in the streets. They were showing pictures of Madrid on TV, that place will be one giant party tonight. Tomorrow will be equally crazy with the Festival of Sant Joan, but I’ll fill you guys in on that soon. That, and details about Andorra after dinner.

I am going to Andorra today. I didn’t expect to go to Andorra today. I have no clean clothes or money. This should be fun. Back on Sunday.

If you want reading material between now and then, be sure to check out my roommate’s blog at http://gabybarcelona.blogspot.com/

Everyone decided to meet up and have a group dinner before people leave on our break next week. Everyone is bringing a dish and a drink. I went to the store to buy supplies. My shopping list?

1. 5 kg bag of potatoes
2. 1 small tub of butter
3. 1 shaker of garlic salt
4. 2 Baguettes 
5. 1 bottle of Johnny Walker
6. 2 Liter bottle of coke

I FINALLY finished uploading pictures to flickr from Paris. I told you it would take a long time….

There are around 300 from all over the city. I took a few that will actually be great photos once I get the chance to tweak the color balance, contrast, and alignment in photoshop. I know my camera isn’t crooked, so I guess that just means I’m crooked. Oh well, there are worse things in life. One of these days I will get around to putting pictures on facebook and writing descriptions for all of them. Until then, just leave a comment on a picture if you want to know what something is, I’ll see it and respond.

So, I wanted to post something last Friday but I was traveling so I was unable. Many of you are well aware that last Friday was Friday the 13th. What are your opinions on Friday the 13th? Like it, love it, afraid of it?Personally, Friday the 13th is one of my favorite days. It’s almost like a personal little holiday that I celebrate on the inside and don’t tell anyone else. I honestly don’t know why I like Friday the 13th or what about it makes me happy, I just like it. Maybe that makes me weird, I dunno. Maybe it is because my birthday is on the 13th and every few years my birthday lands on Friday the 13th. Who knows. Anyways, tell me your thoughts on this day that most people are paranoid over. What is your opinion of Friday the 13th?

I am back from the land of Pepe Le Peu

And it was incredible. Paris was so much fun! I walked pretty much all across the city (which is a great way to learn your way around) and saw almost everything there was to see in Paris. Of course I hit all the big sights like Notre Dame, the Eiffel, the Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Hospital de Invalides, and a lot of the smaller squares and such. I even walked the entire length of Champs d’Elysées from about a mile north east of the Arc down through the Arc, to the Louvre, over to Notre Dame, back down through the Latin Quarter, past Hospital Invalides, and over to the Eiffel Tower. I had a blast just soaking it all in. It was really nice to be able to go at my own pace, walk fast when I wanted, walk slow when I wanted.

For those of you who don’t know about Hospital Invalides (I didn’t before I got there) it is a huge church in the middle of Paris with a dome that has 15 (I think) kilograms of gold leaf on it! It was built so that the king of Paris could go to the same church service as his army so there is a barracks built on one side. Part of it is also a working hospital. Currently it is the home of the World War I and World War II museums and the burial site of Napoleon I. Incredible monument.

The views from the top of the monuments were incredible. I was on top of Notre Dame during the day and on top of the Eiffel just after the sun had set. The very last night, I was eating dinner in a small cafe as the sun was setting behind me and the shadow of the Eiffel Tower crossed my table. It was hard to believe that it was real.

I had lots of good french food: delicious bread, fresh cheeses, duck,  onion soup, creme brulee. Mmmmm, its making me hungry just thinking about it.

The three things that I spent a lot of time at were the Eiffel, the Louvre, and Versailles. The Eiffel because it felt so surreal. The tower is so large on a scale that you cannot predict and it just blows people away. There is a huge lawn on one side where people bring food and wine and just hang with friends. It was a lot of fun and I met some really interesting people out there.

At the Louvre, the sheer volume of art that they have caught me off guard. I mean, I knew the place was ginormous but the volume of art is well beyond anything I could’ve expected. They have incredible artwork just chilling in corridors and stairwells because there is no just other place to put it.

On Sunday, I went out to Versailles and saw the palace of the French monarchy. Wow. The French know how to build palaces. I saw the Bavarian palaces a few years ago and I thought those were extravagant but the French put the Bavarians to shame. As I was walking through the gardens out back, I really wished I could’ve ridden through them on horseback with a flowing cape and had a name like d’Artagnan. (Any Three Musketeers fans?) Louis XIV built Versailles because he wanted to escape Paris and he did it on a scale that is unmatched in the world. The hall of mirrors, the gardens, the estates of Marie Antoinette. Wow. 

As I was leaving on the last day, I ran completely out of room on my memory card and my battery just gave out on me. (But at least now I can recharge my camera!). So run over to flickr and enjoy! (P.S. check back to flickr frequently because this volume of photos is going to take a LONG time to upload)

10 degrees warmer would be nice, but I’m not complaining.