It's All Relative

Barcelona

WE have been in Barcelona for the past two days. Spain is great and Barcelona is crazy. We head from these Canadians we met that it is the Spanish version of London. I have never been to London (not yet...) but that seems right to me. It´s so trendy here. All the girls were those black leggings with big baggy shirt/dresses. Reminds me of a punked out version of Lindsey Lohan.
Barcelona didn´t get off to a good start however. We got into the city at around 10 pm and had made arrangements with our hostel to check in later, because they closed at like 9 or something. By the time we found the hostel, which took a while because we had some sketchy directions, it was 11:30. And, the address that we had was this random apartment building with no sign or anything on it. WE buzzed all the buttons on the intercom but no one answered. So yeah, not a good feeling to be in a foreign city with no where to sleep at midnight. Luckily there was another hostel down the street that I ran into and asked if they had rooms available. They did so we stayed there instead. It was pretty ghetto, probably the most ghetto place we´ve stayed, but the guy that owned it was cool. He was Argentine and looked like Heath Ledger. He also had a pet parrot so you know, that was cool.
Our first day in Barcelona we rode the metro (love the metros over here) up to the Temple de Sagrada de Familia, which is this famous temple built by a guy named Gaudi. He was this total radical architect who basically paved the way for modernism. This temple is insane. It looks like a giant candle just melted down and formed this huge temple. It´s the most intricate thing I have ever seen. Every inch of it is etched with detail. It´s crazy. You need to see it.
After the Temple, we walked along a path that our travel book recommended. It passed by a lot of examples of Gaudi´s work. Michelle, one of my travel friends, is way into architecture and so we had to see all of these places Gaudi built. We stopped at Le Perdera, which is a famous apartment complex Gaudi built in the 18th century. It kinda reminds me of Alice in Wonderland. WE got to walk around one of the aparments which was all decorated like it would have been when it was lived in. People actually still live in that complex today, which must be annoying with all the tourists, but still.

After the Gaudi tour we ate at this really good and really cheap restaurant..... and then we found H&M.

Now, I have never been to an H&M and I cannot believe I have this long without it. I am obsessed with it. Such cute clothes for so cheap. I couldn´t believe it-there must be a catch I thought. But no....everything was legit. We probably spent like 2 hours in the store. I ended up buying a really cute cream dress, a sweet polkadot shirt, a pair of black shorts (for 9 euros!!) and a funky black tank top with some weird graphic on it. I think I spent like 60 euro for all of that. Crazy. I love H&M. Where are they in the states? Does anyone know????? I must find out.

Later that night we went to the magic fountain (Thats really what its called) over by Olympic Park. Its really a sight to see. They do this light and laser show with the fountain, all to music, about every 30 minutes. Its really cool. Except the music they play is really random. They played that one song from the Nutcracker, the theme from Star Wars and even Battle Hymn of the Republic. Hmm...weird. But it was really cool.

We crashed that night and this morning we went to church. We found some missionaries while walking around and they gave us directions. They actually told us they'd meet us, but we were late so we followed this guy in a white shirt because we figured he must be going to church too. He was, and lent us his hymn book in Sacrament which was nice. It was really awesome to go to church in a foreign country. It´s funny, being there you realize that even though everything is in another language and I could barely understand anything, its still the church. Babies still cry, people still follow along in their scriptures and the Bishop still falls asleep. It´s really cool.

Anyways, we are going to the beach now. We are taking a night train tonight to San Sebastian.
I´ll check in later. Adios!