Spring Break finally!! Me, Rachelle, Katie, Phuong My, Jean, Susan, Rita, and Brandon;
Barcelona - Madrid - Barcelona:


First photo: the cool light clock in the sidewalk


This is shortly after we lost Rachelle and Brandon... for the whole day
Same..


So we hopped on a bus tour that ended up being SOOO long.....


Fountain background before we left


Shades


Jean. Jean likes to pose for pictures by herself. I have a lot of them.


I don't think anyone can make faces as funny as Phuong My. And that's a compliment!


Our first Gaudi building sighting


The Sagrada Familia. We saved going in for our second stop in Barcelona. It's supposed to be done in 15/20/25 years (depending on which guide you have)


More Sagrada Familia...
This too...


And the park! I cannot even tell you how HUGE this place is. It goes on forever. We went there a couple times, spent a few hours there each time and never saw it all.


When you first walk through the gates


Jean et moi


Jean and Katie up a level


Katie in the long cave-like area


Katie and Susan reinacting Romain Duris and whoever the girl was in l'Auberge espagnole


Part of the bench again. The area behind is where the pictures of Katie earlier was taken


This was after we walked by a cello player who was dressed like he was from the 18th century... anyway, we found a fun tree, although it was very slippery. Can you tell I'm falling off?!


Up higher in the park


And more of the park


This was just outside Gaudi's house.. in the park


And no longer in the park. Arc de Triomphe (I don't remember how the spell it in spanish, so you get the french version)


This is what we found when we were looking for the bus station.


A random tile pyramid that kids were playing all over


Appartments designed by Gaudi. We got there too late to go up on the roof, but the outside was pretty cool.

And on to Madrid:
Random church in Madrid


Outside the Prado museum where EU students are supposed to get in for free, but the guy wouldn't let us have the discount because we're originally american even though we showed him our EU student cards... seriously... anyway, we saw lots of Goya and such including "the most perfect painting from the 17th century" which I can't remember the name of.. I'll come back to that if I can think of it.



fleurs


It was much hotter in Madrid than in Barcelona. So we went to a big park to catch some sun. This is Jean with her flower crown that you can't see very well.


I just thought the flowers on the statue's foot were pretty


And then I forgot to unzoom my camera.. so here's Jean and I really close


The big big lake where you can rent rowboats! I'll get back to that later...


In some random square. The clouds looked really cool, especially in Jean's sunglasses.


More clouds minus the camera


The Royal Palace.


Crazy helmet in the armery


A view from the palace


Phuong My and I across from the palace and in front of the cathedral


Inside the palace there was apparently no pointing allowed. The guard was actually posing in this picture but when Rachelle walked up he walked away :(


Random guitar in the room with pianos "for your pet monkey" according to Susan


Brandon made friends with the short beer guy


Outside the museum where we saw a lot of Dali and Picasso including Guernica.


And then we got lunch and everyone had a strange obsession with the peppers on my sandwich


Then we revisited the park because...


we wanted to go row-boating! I went with Jean and Susan and the plan was that Jean and I were going to switch of rowing. I started off and thought it was fun and didn't want to give it up, but I did. Then as it turns out Jean sucked at it, so I won and ended up rowing for us the whole time =) Susan got to just sit there like a goddess.


Yay team! What you can't really tell is that we have the chapstick that I bought that pretty much is just white on our cheeks football-player style.


Then we finally found the first (and only?) statue depicting the devil, or diablo if you will.


Little demons around the bottom


Us being demons


Jean with the pretty devil flowers


This is Phuong My's fault for not centering the picture


Phuong My straightened everyone's hair before dinner just for fun because we were hanging around the hostel


All in green with the kind of green walls


Jean et moi


And back to Barcelona. I didn't document the first bus ride, but this was our stop during the second. FYI it's about 6 hours and it's really not too bad, especially because on our way back to Barcelona we got to watch Brokeback Mountain and National Treasure dubbed in spanish. I hadn't seen National Treasure before, but Rachelle translated the whole thing for me so it ended up actually being quite enjoyable. Plus Diane Kruger from Joyeux Noel and Les Brigades du Tigre is my idol.


The "light show" only not really just some random lights fanning across the sky.


On our way walking closer to the lights


And back to Sagrada Familia to go go inside.


This is pretty much all we saw inside: the stairs. There really isn't much besides scaffolding, but there were some pretty views of the outside.


I went out a random ledge and found myself right next to this stained glass window. That was worth it because honestly just walking up a bunch of stairs where you have to wait 10 minutes every two steps is not worth the 5 euros.


And in the end we made it to the beach although I was pretty chilly the whole time. I think Rachelle was determined to get a tan because she actually braved it in her swimsuit. It was pretty, I'll give it that.