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