This post is about our wild trip to Barcelona a couple weekends back. This upcoming weekend, we’re going on our wild eurotrip. We’re starting in Oslo, Norway to meet up with our good friends Kevin, Shane, and David and will be there from April 14th – 18th. While in Norway, we’re also going to Sensation White on the 16th which is basically the worlds largest dance party/rave where everyone dresses up in white and dances all night long! From there, we’re heading to Amsterdam from the 18th – 22nd, and then we will conclude our trip in Paris from the 22nd – 25th. Should be a wild ride, and we’re all super excited for what will likely turn out to be the wildest couple weeks of our lives.

Anyways, back to Barcelona!

Early Thursday morning we embarked on a journey to Barcelona that quickly proved to be one of the wildest vacations of our young lives. We left our residencia at around 5:30am to catch our 8 o’clock flight to Barcelona, and the madness began.

And so we meet again, RyanAir.

Our flight landed in Barcelona around 9:45am or so, and took off to meet up with Lauren. We took a bus stop to pretty Plaza Espanya (Catalonians can’t even spell their own countries name correctly) and hopped on the metro to the girls stop. The Barca metro system is great as it basically connects the entire city end to end, and we took full advantage of it. We bought a 10 metro ride pass thinking that would be enough, but the girls all live super far away so found ourselves taking the train far more than we could have anticipated. The train itself is really sweet in Barca, as it is actually just one extremely long connected cabin so that when the train turns you can look down the train and see it turning.

Crazy Long metro

We met up with Lauren at the Palau Riel metro and headed off to the girls place. We had a joyous re-union with The Hot Mess Express there. We all stayed at the girls place, as a bunch of the people in their building were on vacation so we just crashed in their friends beds. After dropping off our bags, we took off for the beach. We were fortunate enough to have incredible weather in the 70s all weekend, so really got to enjoy the city at it’s finest.

Reunited

We headed to a delicious Mexican place for lunch, and then grabbed some Sangria and snacks and all enjoyed a lovely afternoon on the beach. Naomi lives in a different part of the city, and so she met up with us on the beach and it was great to see her again!

Delicious Mexican at Rosa Negra

Sweet structure by the water

Soo Pretty

Beach Chillin

Barca had beautiful beaches

After the beach, we headed off to this awesome park called Parc de la ciutadella and hung out there for a little bit. We found this sweet elephant in the park and naturally we had to climb it so that was fun as well.

Parc de la Ciutadella

After the park, we were walking around the city for a while and ran into this sweet Rastafarian super chill reggae store and hung out there for a while. I bought some crazy Ethiopian pants to add to my collection of ridiculous clothing purchased during our European adventure. After some more walking around the city and exploring, we hopped back on the metro to get ready for the evening.

Rasta Store

Wearing my new pants and every bright colored object i owned haha

We were all so exhausted from our 5am flight and walking around the city all day that when we got back to the girls place all instantly passed out. We ended up waking up at around midnight, and hurriedly got ready and headed back to the metro to go out for the evening. We went to this epic discoteca called Opium that was right on the beach. It had to be the biggest and most fun club I’ve ever been to, with house music and hundreds of people dancing all over. We ended up running into what felt like 50 Maryland kids who were studying in Barcelona for the semester, and Sean and I even ended up in the VIP lounge somehow for a good amount of time as well haha. We were out till the club closed around 5am, and hopped into cabs to head back to the girls place. All in all, it was a great first night out on the town and we all had a blast. Unfortunately, i didn’t bring the camera out that night so no ridiculous pics from the crazy discoteca.

Next day, we all woke up groggy from the night before and began our second day in the city. We took the long metro ride back to the city centre, and then decided to grab lunch at this place called BoDeBe that the girls said was great.. We ended up waiting to get sandwiches at Bodebe for literally 2 hours and experienced some terrible customer service, but it was a pretty good sandwich I guess.

Cool Gate

Giant Vending machine in the metro

Not worth the 2 hour wait..

After we managed to move on from the bizarre bodebe experience, we met up with Naomi and headed off to Park Guell.

On the way to Park Guell

Park Guell is a park that was bult and designed by famous architect Gaudi, and was probably my favorite place we visited in Barcelona. There was fantastic live music, vendors, and an incredible view of the city.

Park Guell!

Entrance

Incredible musicians

Amazing Views

So Cool

Awkward Tourist Sahil Rahman

Whatchu lookin at

Climbing stuff like usual

We decided to climb a small mountain to the top of the park, which provided us with an unreal 360-degree view of Barcelona. It was awesome being able to see the entire city, and the beach which laid right beyond it as well as the random mountains that were littered throughout the city. While we were up there, we met some sweet dudes from Sweden who Monica fell in love with that were there to film a skateboarding video in Barcelona for 2 months.

On top of the mountain!

Incredible 360 degree view of the city

Monica’s swedish love

After enjoying Park Guell for a while and walking around the city, we swung by a cool irish pub to grab 50 cent beers.

Afterwards, got some delicious stir fry at this place called Walk to Wok, and then we headed to the grocery store to get drinks for the night. It was at this grocery store where our night took an interesting turn, as Lauren found a GIANT 3L bottle of vodka which naturally, we had to buy..

WOK to WALK!

And so it began..

We were going to a discoteca on the beach called SHOKO.

The trek there was rather entertaining, as it was filled with metro flips and somehow I ended up with a nice velvet jacket that a random Spaniard gave me and refused to take back haha. It was a wild night, and after partying in the club and on the beach for a few hours we took the long hour metro ride back to the chicas place.

My new jacket haha

The next morning, we ventured off to the Labyrinth Park. We met up with Naomi and the rest of the gang, found a playground and had a sweet picnic.

Playground

Awesome picnic

Labyrinth!

The group!

For whatever reason, our first two days in the city we hadn’t covered as much of the as we had originally planned, so to make up for lost time we put Naomi in charge and told her to take us all over. We checked out Las Ramblas, a bunch of cool Plazas and the amazing marketplace in the city.

Hugo Boss building was Boss

In front of a cool Gaudi building

Cool Plaza

Las Ramblas was loco – so many strange street performers

Huge awesome marketplace

Tried Dragonfruit for the first time!

India won the cricket world cup so people were representing! Was a great day, and i even managed to get a free beer from a vendor by screaming we won in Hindi haha

More cool buildings

The Catalan region where Barcelona is located has been attempting to separate itself from Spain. Interestingly enough, we had the opportunity to walk right through the middle of the protest

After getting some more of the delicious Wok to Walk for dinner, we headed off to check out the Sagrada Familia, which was incredible. The Sagrada Familia is this epic chruch that was being built by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi when he died. He had a really unique, abstract style, and the city is planning on completing construction on the project by 2026, which is the 100 year anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Front of the Sagrada Familia

Maryland boys with the back of the Sagrada Familia

After the Sagrada Familia, we attempted to catch the famous light show but unfortunately we missed it. Regardless, there was an amazing view of the city and live music so it was still a good time.

Spanish music and amazing views of the city

Afterwards, we headed back to the girls place to grab our bags and then went back to Naomi’s place in Gracia to begin our pub-crawl! We started at a sweet African bar and learned some new dance moves and broke it down with some cool dudes from Senegal. After that, we headed off to another bar called the beer jungle and grabbed some delicious Belgian brews. Sean and i figured that since it was a pub crawl, we should actually crawl from one bar to another so we got down on all fours and crawled from one bar to the other haha. Finally, we headed to some other random bar to finished off our night and met some interesting people.

African Bar

Sean and i with our new senegalese friends!

BEER JUNGLE

Delicious Belgian Beer

Last Stop

Met an awesome dude that looked like a Spanish Jack Black. He told us that his brother had a restaurant in DC and got so excited we were from there he bought us a round of shots. In a very interesting conversation, he proceeded to tell us how he was from Catalan, not Spain and even had a tattoo to prove it.

Tattoo saying he was from the mediterranean (Barca’s off the mediterranean) not Spain.

People were camping out at the airport haha

Our flight was at 6am that morning, and so after the pub crawl we called a taxi and headed off to the airport to conclude our exciting, exhausting, and entertaining trip to the wild city that is Barcelona. Barcelona was a fantastic city, and was pleasantly surprised by everything i saw there. Was great seeing Naomi and our good friends again, and got me really excited to head back home and party with everyone in the states!

Hasta Luego,

Sahil

Hola amigos,

We got back from Barcelona last night and had an absolutely incredible weekend vacation. Was great to see all of our good friends and the city. I’ll do my best to get details on that trip posted sometime in the next couple days. Mike threw together a short trailer for a trip video that he’s working on to give you an idea of the shenanigans that took place… Take a look!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150147658362267&ref=notif&notif_t=video_tagged_by_non_owner

In this post i’ll attempt to summarize the wild week or so that took place from around March 17th – March 27th.

The night before we all went off to Extremadura happened to be St.Patty’s Day. All the API kids met up at the river and formed a giant sea of green, with something like 30 or so awesome people who were ready to party. Our friend Robyn was visiting from Oxford so she joined us, and we all hung out by the river for a while. After some time we all went home to get ready for the late evening portion of the festivities. Decked out in ridiculous amounts of green, we had a big pre-game at the Suncy girls place and then headed off to a discoteca called Abril!

Mama Rosa was ready to party for St.Patty’s day!

Giant API pre-game at the Suncy girls place

The crazy night was part of the reason it was so hard to get up for extremadura haha..Just posted about that trip but here it is again if you wanna read more about it .. https://sahilrahman.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/extremadura/

The weekend we were in Extremadura, our good friend from Maryland, Laura Rogers (more commonly referred to as Tequila Rogers due to a certain drinking habit of hers..), had arrived in Sevilla to spend her spring break with us! She came over to the residencia after we got back on Sunday, and it was great to see her!

Tequila’s in town!

**On a side note before i forget, here is another sweet video trailer Mike made the other day about Sevilla. It’s only a minute long so definitely take a look when you get a chance. He got a new camera and the HD quality is awesome**

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150134016752267

Anyhow, We spent the rest of the day hanging out with Laura and getting mentally prepared for the ridiculous marathon of partying that was sure to ensue over the course of the following week. It was Maryland spring break, and there were a bunch of friends from school visiting Sevilla so we had a nice dinner with them at a tapas restaurant to kick off what would be a wild week..

Yummy Tapas

Maryland Amigos!

Monday happened to be our buddy Jared’s 21st birthday, so that night we all went out to celebrate. We started at one of our favorite bars on Betis, Alambique, and all seemed to fall victim to the .70 cent tequila shots being offered that evening. Afer that, we headed off to a discoteca called Abril for a wild Monday night API dance party. Safe to say Jared had an awesome 21st birthday haha

Tequila in our residencia

Birthday boy!

Tuesday afternoon was awesome. We don’t have classes, so after lazing around for a while i got bored and hit up my homegurl Helen to see what she was up to. After all was said and done, we ended up going to the Chino store down the road and left with these sweet little guns which shoot out these big ping pong ball things and a Hula Hoop. Naturally we headed back to my place and ended up having hula hoop competitions and shooting each other with ping pong balls for a couple hours haha.

Our New toys

Helen Benson: Armed and Dangerous

Things started to get a little crazy when we combined both activities haha

Afterwards, we met up with our friend Chelsea, who was also visiting from UMD and hung out by the river all day

Eating some yummy paella by the river

At night, we went out for a fun night on Betis. We hit up a cool shots bar I’d never been to called Long Islanders, which was an extremely American bar. They had a shot for all the 50 states in the US, and so naturally we had to try a few of the Maryland shots. Mark Kane and co. had joined us out that evening so was fun to go out with more Marylanders again. Afterwards, we went to another extremely American bar called fundacion. It was a good time, but rather strange being completely surrounded by Americans, and felt like we were bar in CP at cornerstone or something opposed to a bar in Sevilla.

At Long Islanders wearing my funky italian shirt

Lucas and his buddy from school won a beer pong competition!

Wednesday after a full day of classes and another delicious fajita night we got ready to go out once more. Wednesdays is hip-hop night at a discoteca called Bandalai, so met up with some API amigas and pre-gamed at the girls place and then headed over to the club for a fun dance party that night. Bandalai is always a fun time because we met this ridiculous club promoter named Simon, who absolutely LOVES Americans. He always gets us in to the club for free and gets us all rounds of drinks, and has some crazy dance moves and loves to scream ENERGY all the time. We also happen to see him what feels like every night we got out for some reason or another haha

Made some new Spanish amigos that night

Thursday night, we botellon’d for a bit and then hit up Buddha for the first time in while. Thursday also marked what must have been the 3rd or 4th night in a row that I wore a tie that week. Not quite sure why, but regardless of where we were going, I wore a tie for what felt like every single night haha.

Tequila and I at buddha

Friday may have been the wildest day of all. I started out the day by going to this amazing market in Triana which was filled with fresh vegetables and fruits. Laura got some delicious strawberries, and we hung by the river for a little before lunch.

Triana Market!

Fresas delicioso!

Cuties

Ran into Monica’s adorable dog named Gitana (Gypsy) haha

Friday was a giant Primavera (Spring) festival in the city, which basically meant that thousands of young people would be gathering outside together to have one incredibly large botellon or all day party. Friday also marked the first day that Oliver’s family arrived to town to visit for a few days! We met up with them and the a bunch of Ah-Pee (API) kids by the river and began our afternoon that was full of cruzcampo treinta y cuatros and fun!

River Chillin’

Oliver y Anne!

After a while, we headed up to the open-air international food stalls that are set up by the river and Oliver started buying us drinks. One thing led to another, and next thing I know I ended up on stage dancing to Shakira’s “Waka Waka” with a bunch of performing Spaniards haha.

Oliver and I right before he convinced me it was a good idea to dance on stage

Enjoy…

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1959795234357

Afterwards, we ventured off to find this giant botellon. Kari Treasure and I managed to get separated from the group, and ended up wandering through crowds of hundreds of Spaniards for a while. We ended up hanging on a dock by the river and then after what felt like hours finally made it back to our casa.

Triana Bridge at night

My friends Sara and Anna were visiting us from Alicante, so met up with them to grab dinner at a great tapas restaurant called Taberna Macuro. It was real nice seeing them and we all had a good time. Afterwards, we headed to Alambique and Demo for a little before calling it a night.

Dinner at Taberna Macuros

Saturday was a rest & recovery day after our ridiculous week of partying. Met up with Sara and Anna by the river for a little bit, and then went exploring with Caitlin for a little bit. We grabbed some pizza at a little restaurant, and they had one called the erotica pizza so naturally we had to order it haha. Afterwards, we met up with Ollie, Hirsh and Henry at the river. That night, Anne (Mrs.Shepard) treated us out to a delicious dinner at a fantastic restaurant called Coloniales, marking the end of our ridiculous, fun week.

Sara’s sunglasses really completed my outfit haha

Sweet new structure in Plaza de Encarnacion

Caitlin and I with our Erotica pizza…it turned out to be delicious too!

It was a really cool experience seeing so many friends from Maryland in one week, and it was interesting because we would literally run into different friends from UMD every night, some of whom we didn’t even know were in Sevilla. Had a blast spending time with Laura and the Shepards, and the whole week got me excited to see friends back in the states!

Oliver with all his parents

Adios Laura!

Que Precioso!

Cheers,

Sahil

Super behind once more on updating the blogg, but this posts about our weekend trip to Extremadura a couple weeks back! We just got back from Barcelona last night, which was incredible, so will be sure to get to that at some point soon.

Mike made another awesome video about the trip that’s only around 5 minutes, so if you have some time would highly recommend checking it out.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150113110197267

This past weekend we all went on our last excursion with API to a sweet region of Spain called Extremadura. We woke up real early on Friday morning extremely exhausted and somewhat inebriated from the shenanigans that took place the night before at Abril. After throwing a handful of clothes into a bag we headed off for the bus stop. We met up with the rest of the program there and headed off to the town of Guadalupe. It was about a 3-hour ride, and we were fortunate enough to have perfect weather all weekend. When we got there, we went to check out the Roman ruins in the city, which were amazing!

Roman theatre!

More Ruins

And some more..

Guadalupe

Found some interesting new snacks..

After exploring the town and checking out the Roman ruins we hopped back on the bus for an hour ride to our hotel for the evening. Turns out that our hotel for the evening happened to be an amazing monastery!

Our Monastery!

Had amazing views

We had a sweet 3 person room with what must have been 25 foot ceilings that Sean, Mike and I shared for the night. We also got an interesting free dinner at the monastery, which included a soup that we were convinced was a strange combination of breakfast foods in a broth.

Our Room

After dinner we all met up in this sweet loft area, which you had to take a spiral staircase to get to for some pre-gaming before heading out. We played this awesome interactive drinking game, in which you count in a circle to 21, and everytime you get to 21 someone makes a rule for each of the 21 numbers. Took a second to get the hang of, but was a lot of fun and we had some absolutely ridiculous rules haha

Tight Dinner Crew

We had heard from the group who went on the trip the weekend before that there was a sweet karaoke bar in the relatively quite city, so we decided to check it out.

A sign of things to come..

Turned out to be a great decision as the karaoke bar was a blast, and API basically took it over. Not sure quite how it happened, but I started dancing with this older woman and we started breaking it down! After a couple minutes, I guess others seemed to take notice and next thing I know her and I are in the middle of a giant circle of people cheering us on. We ended up dancing for a full 3-minute song, and were breaking out some pretty epic dance moves so really enjoyed that.

Awesome dance partner for the night!

That wasn’t the end of our elderly women exploits, as Scott, Ollie, and I attempted to pick up these three 60+ women at the same time, and all got rejected which was pretty funny. Everyone was dancing all night, and naturally we all went wild when Waka Waka came on. The whole night we were making friends with the random old people who seemed to be the regulars from the city, and we even saw a baby at 2:30 am at the bar…gotta love Spain haha.

Ah-pee getting down!

Then the karaoke started and things got crazy. Naturally, Sean grabbed the mic and started belting out Let it Be and was melting hearts throughout the room. The highlight of his song was definitely him finishing the song and just going “America, America…America,” and then facing his beer haha. After breaking it down to the backstreet boys and some random tunes for the rest of the evening we all headed back to our monastery to call it a night.

Ciaonn killing it, Ellis clearly had backup vocals

The next morning we all grabbed breakfast at the monastery, and embarked on our super sweet 10 mile hike! The hike was amazing, and we saw some incredible views. At one point, we got to a pretty big river and Ellis decided it would be a good idea to jump in the river. He hopped in, and I followed afterwards and the water was absolutely freezing! Around 10 of us total hopped in the freezing water and it made for a fun, memorable experience on our long, hot hike.

Fotos:

Playing Leapfrog with Colleen

Grupo

Men with rocks

Incredible views

After the hike, we all went to this sweet 4-star hotel in a small town called Trujillo. The hotel was really nice, and again Sean, Mike and I were sharing rooms. The rooms on our wings had balconies, and from the balconies you could climb onto the roof so we all had some fun with that. Also, had a pretty solid view of the city from the balconies, and saw a bunch of storks randomly hanging out on the bell towers of a couple buildings.

Storks

Rooftop party

After grabbing some Chinese food for dinner, we came back to the hotel and chilled with API amigos for the rest of the night. Allison and Kara somehow managed to get the Inca Suite, which was basically this huge suite for the two of them in the hotel, so we proceeded to all spend the night in there and had some drinks and sophisticated, and at times not so sophisticated conversations before passing out.

Sophisticated young adults in the Inca Suite

The next morning, we went to check out an amazing Castle in Trujillo that was within walking distance from our hotel. Once we climbed to the top of the castle, we had some absolutely incredible views of the city.

Kings of the rock

Soo pretty

Amazing

After the castle, we packed our bags and headed back home to sunny Sevilla. All in all it was an awesome weekend trip, and once more API hooked it up with a sweet excursion.

More to come soon on the visits of the Shepards & teuila Rogers/ our barcelona trip!

Cheers,

Sahil