I've experienced nothing more 'in-between' than being in transit to another country. Especially when that journey takes 27 hours. Okay, well, 10 of those were spent in the strangely deserted airport in Reykjavik, Iceland.
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| Why is no one else here?? |
I would have liked to spend some of those 10 hours exploring the capital, but the actual city was an hour's bus ride away and it would have cost me the equivalent of 30 bucks, so I camped out in the airport for the day instead.
I think traveling for roughly a whole day actually worked out okay, because I didn't suffer much from jet lag once I arrived in Barcelona and had a good night's sleep. The next morning I woke up to a pretty decent view of the Mediterranean from my good friend Adrià's summer house...
Day One was spent in Tarragona, Adrià's hometown, south of Barcelona. Since I'd just been on a plane for ages we took it easy and mostly walked around, taking pictures of the old Roman city.
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| People come from all over to 'tocar ferro', or touch the iron rail we're leaning on. It brings luck! |
Day Two and Three were saved for exploring Barcelona. Here are a few of my favorite sights from the city:
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| This is how they do churros in Spain. YUM. |
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| Adria and his sister, Anna, at Parc Guell. |
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| A drawing of us in front of the Sagrada Familia. |
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| Inside the Sagrada Familia -- my favorite part of the Barcelona experience. |
After thanking them profusely for hosting me, I said good-bye to Adrià's family and took an overnight train to Granada, in the south of Spain, to meet my friends Nua and Marc. The main attraction in Granada was La Alhambra, an old Moor palace, but somehow the three of us managed to forget our cameras... so here's a picture of it the next day:
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| Myself, Marc, and Nua outside La Alhambra at night. |
Finally, I thanked Nua and her family and took a train to meet my friend Martín in Madrid, where I spent the last 16 hours of my time in Spain. Since my flight was early the next morning, we stayed up all night exploring the city.
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| The Crystal Palace in Buen Retiro park. |
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| The sunset light was beautiful. |
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| Don Quixote! |
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| Martin (in the middle) and his friends showed me around the city and helped me practice my Spanish! |
By 4am I was waiting at the airport, exhausted from the whirlwind of the past week but more than ready to make the leap toward a year in England. Spain, I'll be back soon <3
