Barcelona

I've been having a great Christmas vacation (vacances de Noël) these past couple of weeks.  All French schools have two weeks off for Christmas, which isn't as long as in the U.S., but they certainly make up for it with more breaks.  My next two-week break will be at the beginning of March.

Anyways, this break I've kept myself busy and traveling.  I spent time in Barcelona, Bergen, and Perpignan. 

Barcelona

The first day of vacation, I left promptly for Barcelona.  We took a covoiturage (carpool) to get there, which was a cool experience.  Covoiturage is much more common in France, and there's a whole website where people list their trips and can be reviewed by others who have traveled with them.  After our two-hour trip, we arrived in Barcelona and made our way to our hostel, the Barcelona Central Garden Hostel, which I would highly recommend.  We dropped off our bags and left to explore.  And explore we did... with hours and hours of walking!  We walked all through the oldest part of the city, a Christmas market, the fruit and meat market, etc.  After running on empty for a while, we finally found the perfect tapas place for the night.  I tried all sorts of delicious tapas, my favorites were the tuna, small fried fishes, and patates braves (potatoes).  I also tasted cava, the delicious Spanish champagne.

Returning to the hostel, we took a little bit to recharge, before heading out to explore the party scene.  We started in the old part of town at an Irish bar where I had the best sangria and ended up at a five-room (and DJ) club called Razzmatazz.

The next morning we finally got back to our hostel at 6 AM, so after some much needed rest, we made our way to Park Guell, the park designed by the famous architect Gaudi.  His architecture is very unique, with odd angles and designs, and he seems to be the best artist to represent the unique and thriving city.  The longest bench in the world (completely covered in mosaics) is in this park.

Later on, we went to another tapas restaurant that was recommended by the hostel... it was so popular that we weren't seated until around 11 PM!  Super delicious!

The next morning, we walked around a little bit more and found a tasty bakery before I headed to the airport to catch my plane to Norway...