Barcelona's Ending (or, the long awaited blog post)

It has been a very long time since I've posted here...Aside from that very short teaser message, of course. I think what we'll do is divide up this post by region since so much has happened.

Our last post was from Barcelona. We were expecting to leave shortly after that, but we ended up staying an extra night since we liked the city so much. What a good choice! La Merce meant that there were some fantastic events going on all around us. 

We wandered down Las Ramblas on Saturday afternoon. It's a huge pedestrian thoroughfare in the old town with some iconic sights. See my Facebook photo album for more on that - as well as the ridiculously awesome Gaudi houses we saw. La Sagrada Familia was also created by Gaudi, but is sadly not finished. We saw that later in the night. 

On Saturday night, we decided to hit up the Correfoc - translated literally, "fire run". Hey, it sounded cool. At first when we got there, we couldn't get through the crowds to see, but when we went farther down the street, we got in. It turns out that in the Correfoc, people dressed as devils light sparklers and hold them up on sticks. They spin around, showering the area with hot sparks. Depending on the devil, he/she will either run down the road or dance in the street while Spanish teens cluster under the spark shower and chant and dance. 

It doesn't get any more badass than that. 

We took some pictures and some video of the event, but you truly had to be there to understand. It was probably my favorite experience yet. (In case you're interested, I did go and huddle under the sparks with the other teens. And it was awesome.) On a completely unrelated note, one of my sweatshirts is covered in tiny burn holes. 

The second event of La Merce that we attended was the pyromusical on Sunday night - basically, fireworks set to music. Surprisingly, there were at least as many English songs as there were Spanish. It wasn't particularly remarkable as far as fireworks go, but I enjoyed it. We got some tapas and a glass of sangria afterwards to round off the last night in Spain. The metro had closed at this point - surprising since basically all of Barcelona had turned out for the last party of La Merce - and we had a merry time finding a night bus back to the Dream Hostel. 

In the morning we caught a bus, after much confusion over the unnecessarily complex ticketing system, and we were on our way to France. 

I can tell you for sure that I'll be back one day. I loved Spain too much to leave it forever.  ¡Hasta luego, España!

< Derek >