Shadows/Volume/Illumination/Multiplicity

We did end up going to the ice bar! Yay for following through with plans! It was so much fun and extremely cold, of course. I got some kind of fruity drink that was “free” but you had to pay 15€ to even get it so there was nothing free about it. We were only able to stay for about 30 minutes. I was wearing sandals and my feet were going numb, haha. We attempted to go to the casino after that but we found out you need your original passport to get in. Womp womp. Now we know for next week.



After being turned away from the casino, we all decided we were pretty hungry. We had seen some delicious looking paella being eaten at a nice-ish looking restaurant we we decided to stop and have a bite to eat before going back to Resa. Well, the food was good. The service SUCKED. There was a big mishap with the waiter and he brought us more food than we had ordered and then said that it wasn’t his fault and refused to take it away because he would have to pay for it. Poor Jenifer argued with him for a solid 20 minutes and he refused to do anything about it. It ended up being good food but geez…just absolutely terrible, terrible service. I guess they don’t abide by the same policies as American restaurants. The waiters don’t get tipped so they don’t care if you’re happy or not. In the end, the waiter claimed that he gave us a break by giving us the bread for free but it still was just the principle…it was a pizza, he could have taken it back.



Sunday it rained on and off all day so I literally stayed in all day and eat, slept and read. I took two naps, talked to Carson, and read Redeeming Love. I might have left once to get some food, I don’t even remember. It was kind of nice to do nothing. Oh, I did go to a Vegan restaurant for dinner, now I remember. Molly and I split a basket of bread and I got a fruit smoothie, haha. Not the best of meals.

Monday I got my package from Carson! I woke up early (on my own, no alarm, at 7:45…booya) and waited in the lobby for the UPS man. I sat in the terrace and just stared out the front windows. An hour and a half later, he walked in and I pounced on him! Everything inside the package was so incredibly thoughtful and sweet. It’s definitely going to make the rest of my time in Spain much easier. I woke Danielle up with all my excitement, so she and I went to Carrefour so she could get a fan and we both got some groceries. Probably the last time we’ll have to go since we’re only in Barcelona for another ELEVEN days. That’s it. 20 days total left of the trip. The whole time I was tried to not smile (still excited about the package), which, now that I think about it, probably just made me look weirder than smiling for no reason. Oh well.

The rest of the day was filled with nonimportant, dripdrying situations that I won’t go into detail about. The washing machines take forever and blah blah blah. Class Monday was all logistical stuff. We discussed our city projects and chose the street and plaza we’re going to do our final presentations on. Danielle and I chose the Plaça de Sant Jaume and Passeig del Born. I’m excited about these two things because: 1) the plaza is close & it’s at the end of one of the biggest shopping streets & there’s always something going on and 2) Born is where probably my fav restaurant is in Barca so yay for eating good while working on a project. We have to research these two places and try to make our presentation as visual as possible, which will be a challenge for me for sure. In business everything is so explicit. That’s why I like this trip so much…it has absolutely nothing to do with business, haha.

Today was for sure one of my favorite days by far. We woke up and met at the Parel-el Metro station with Marcel and headed over to Montjuïc, which is a hill overlooking Barcelona that has a castle on it. It was absolutely beautiful and standing on top of the castle led to some breathtaking views of the city.



We stopped by the Fundació Joan Miró. This was basically another art exhibit that I didn’t understand anything about. There was literally a painting that was an entirely white canvas with a single blue dot on it. I want to go nuts, splatter paint a couple canvases and have a building dedicated to me. That’s all it takes, right? I don’t appreciate art, apparently.

After we walked through the Olympic museum and stadium, we headed to lunch at the Palau Nacional which was SO good. I’m trying very hard to order things that I would never think of ordering at home and it worked out in my favor today. I had excellent soup that was so filling that it didn’t even matter that my Carpaccio was again kind of slimy today (it was Salmon this time instead of beef). My dessert wasn’t chocolate but it was still good and finishing with a cappuccino just makes the world seem like a beautiful place.

Lunch took about 2 hours, which I’m getting more and more used to here in Spain. I think the fact that we travel in large groups really intimidates these poor Spaniards and they just go nuts when they see us. We pretty much always get bad-ish service in restaurants and the other day at dinner they almost turned away because they didn’t have enough seating. (BS) We visited a temporary photo exhibit in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (which is inside the Palau Nacional) called Prague, Paris, Barcelona. I LOVED the photo exhibit, it was al about modern photography from 1918-1948. I wish I had written down some of the pictures I really liked so I could have looked at them now but I just loved so many. I’m always shocked at how much nudity is in them. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in Europe or what but…these pictures were all from the 20s and stuff. Weren’t people supposed to be like hella modest back then? They wore clothes from their ankles to their necks…yet they’re butt naked in all these photos. I got inspired for my photo projects and I have a couple ideas now, which I’m really excited about. I need to think about them a little more and make sure I can execute them well and not just throw them together but I’m moving in the right direction, I think. We’ll see what Marcel thinks.



After the photo exhibit we stopped by The Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, which was built for the 1929 Barcelona International Expo. It was incredible to see the differences between it and the Palau Nacional, which was also built for the expo. This was built by germans and had clean, simple lines that made a lot of really neat shadows. There was water everywhere, not fountains but just water over rocks and tile. It was interesting to see the contrast.



We finished up the day at the CaixaForum Barcelona to see the exhibit about children around the world and the Jacques Henri Lartigue photo exhibit. Both were really cool and neither was in English. There was another exhibit that I tried desperately to sneak a picture of because I want to potentially use it for my project but the museum lady kept catching me everytime I went to take the picture. I shouldn't have gone alone...I needed someone to create a diversion. Now I know for next time.

Tomorrow we are flying to Bilbao. The big deal there is the Guggenheim. We're staying in a hotel which I'm SUPER pumped about. I'm only taking my backpack though which means no computer, which means no updates, and no pictures on Facebook until at least Friday night.