Boy Scouts in Barcelona

I have fallen a bit behind on blogging so I have am going to briefly recap the last week and a half!

Monday: Worked and then met up with the quad at Las Iguanas for some food and drinks before Bridget's departure from London. They have a killer happy hour deal there. Then I rushed off to frisbee practice with Allie and Erinn which was once again, awesome! One of the girls from the team even asked me how long I was staying in London for (as though she were interested in me playing on the team!)

Tuesday: In my theatre class we heard from this fairly well-known British actress who spoke about her days as a drug dealer and cocaine addict, no joke. She was literally crazy but also wildly entertaining. Zack made some awesome homemade pizza that night and then I saw The Last of the Duchess at the Hampstead Theatre which had probably the best acting I have seen so far in it and a compelling story about journalism. I really liked it. Also, my friend Tom and I have made a pact to get ice cream at intermission for the rest of our theatre performances. It must be a British thing because every theatre sells ice cream here, it is great. I am also becoming more and more obsessed with my theatre teacher, Charles Duff, each and every day.

Wednesday: Crazy night! Finished up with work and then headed over to Covent Garden (which is awesome at night) with the usual possy and some of Jon's family. We were introduced to his "uncle" who we referred to as Chief by the end of the night. Let's just say he likes to have a good time. After buying gratuitous tequila shots for the entire group, we went to the OXO Restaurant on South Bank which is probably one of the nicest restaurants in London. My entree casually cost 30 pounds. The food was so good and there was lots of wine and champagne to go around. We also had an awesome view of the city right on the river. One of the best/funniest week nights I have had so far.

Thursday: Class at the Globe! SO FUN. Allie now understands why I take acting classes. You basically play games and do silly improv exercises the entire time. Our teacher is awesome, Trevor. He told us that we are doing a condensed version of Macbeth for our final performance and that we are all going to kind of share parts, so we will see how that works out. The class is awesome because everyone is really into the idea of acting and is enthusiastic to give it a shot. I forgot how tiring acting is, though. After three hours of games and lines and exercises I was worn out! This class is quickly becoming my favorite one, however.

Now... BARCELONA!

Friday: Left early for Barcelona! After our group touched down, we met up with Bridget and Michelle at our hostel. Our hostel was super cool. It was right in the middle of the city centre and was very homey with a really nice staff. We hit up Sagrada Familia (this crazy old church that is still not complete after a million years) which literally looks like a giant sand castle. Then we made our way to Las Ramblas, this famous big street, and hit up an amazing market. We all got smoothies and basically wanted to eat everything we saw. It was so colorful! We also stopped at a restaurant where we had our first taste of paella and sangria!

Sagrada Familia

Best smoothies ever

That afternoon, we went back to the hostel for our siesta aka nap. We woke up feeling refreshed and got ready to go out. Turns out about 15 of us from ND were staying in the same hostel (typical) so we knew we were in for a really fun night. We broke off for dinner and found this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Carpe Diem near our hostel. There was literally no one there so we basically took over the restaurant and had a photo shoot. We had a bunch of tapas and other Spanish foods and many pitchers of sangria, of course. Zack even somehow managed to barter with the waiter for cheaper sangria. After eating, we went to this American-esque bar while we waited for the famous Chupitos to open up. We had a variety of drinks at the first bar (courtesy of Jon...) and met some Spanish people who were really excited to meet us and immediately facebook-friended some of us. Once Chupitos opened, we had a field day. Basically, it is a bar with hundreds of different shots with cool names and ingredients and they light a bunch of stuff on fire. I had a Teletubbie, a B52, a Boy Scout and some other weird ones. The Boy Scout entailed roasting a marshmallow over a line of fire, dipping it in the shot, eating the marshmallow and then taking the shot which tasted like candy and probably had very little alcohol in it. It was the most fun thing I have ever done. A lot of the shots had whip cream and other cool things in them as well. I need to go back someday so I can try the Harry Potter. Afterwards, most of us took a cab to the beach towards the clubs. All the big clubs are literally right on the shore which is so cool. I love the ocean! We struggled to get into a few places at first and stumbled upon Catwalk for free for a little bit. As it turns out, Spanish people start partying at 3am so at 1am, the club was completely empty. We left the empty club and wandered around for a bit...I stuck my feet in the ocean. Then I stumbled into Club Opium with Allie, Sean, Dan and Bridget where we had an awesome time. It was a huge dance club with these sequin dancers on the stage. Afterwards, we ran into the ocean, and some of us literally went completely under either on purpose or accidently (Dan...Bridget...). The Mediterranean is my friend. Soaking wet, we returned by cab to the hostel at about 4am.

Chupitos

Saturday: Barcelona is a really cool city. Unfortunately it rained most of the time we were there, but we still managed to have a great time. It is a good balance between city and beach. Saturday, we woke up and went to this giant park north of the city with everyone. You walk up a bunch of stairs (or in my case, Zack carried me on his back), and get to the top of the hill where you can see the entire city. There is also a bunch of stuff designed by Gaudi over there which has a very interesting design style. We sat on the "longest bench in the world" and then headed down back towards the city. We walked around, Allie and I downed a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream for lunch, and we found the coolest gummy shop in the world where I obviously bought gummies. We made our way back towards Las Ramblas where we bought some things from the markets and took more pictures. Then we went to the ocean...and in the ocean! Even though it was cold, we pretty much just went for it. The waves were actually really strong! We played around for a while until we could no longer feel our frigid bodies. Allison also took adorable pictures of us by the water. We took some pictures in front of the sunset and went back to the hostel to shower and get ready. We did so, and then took the metro to the Magic Fountain, which is this giant water fountain that lights up different colors and does a show to different types of music. It reminded me so much of Vegas and the Bellagio! We danced and drank sangria in front of the fountain. We then found a tapas place to eat nearby. I had an assortment of tapas and a seafood paella which would later come back to bite me (see my notes about Sunday...). We then got some gelato and went back to the hostel once more before going out. Turns out we were all so tired so it was difficult to mobilize. We still managed to make our way to the Dow Jones bar which is super cool because the drink menu "crashes" just as the stock market would certain times throughout the night and drinks get really cheap. We also met up with our Spanish friends we had met the night before. The night was a bit short-lived, though, because we were so tired.

Photo shoot post-swimming in the sea

Sunday: So I woke up on Sunday and felt pretty sick but didn't think much of it. As we continued to walk around, the fact that I had food poisoning became more and more evident, bad times. Luckily Barcelona has a lot of trash cans everywhere and I found myself running to them throughout the day. We still managed to tour the Gothic area in the morning which was really pretty, but besides that, I basically felt terrible. Luckily I have the best friends ever and they took really good care of me.

Monday: Somehow recovered and went to the work! The Michael Jackson verdict came out and turns out Dr. Murray is guilty. It's always cool to be in the newsroom during big verdicts. Also, there is speculation that Kate Middleton is pregnant which I definitely hope happens while I'm in London because the media will be going crazy!

Tuesday: Toured the Victoria and Albert Museum during theatre class and then went to Jumpy at the Royal Court Theatre that night. Jumpy has been my favorite performance so far! It was about a 50-year-old mother and her teenage daughter and was super modern and borderline inappropriate. I was cracking up the entire time.

Wednesday: Actually did real school work! I got very behind on reading over the past few weeks since I have been crazy busy and it came back to bite me. I have been working on a paper nonstop for the past couple of days! What is real homework?!?!

Thursday: Globe action once again! So much fun. Also made a pretty legitimate dinner. Preparing for Prague as I type this!

London has gotten a bit chillier recently so I am literally just now starting to wear coats. The weather, overall, has been so great since I have gotten here. The past few weeks have been totally crazy with school and traveling! I'm definitely excited for Prague this weekend. Why are there only 5 weeks left?! :(