BARCELONA

I’m back, back, back again!

I’ve totally been a bad blogger lately. I have been knee deep in school work and then last week we had our week long travel week. While 10 days of gallivanting around Europe is so liberating, it’s also absolutely exhausting. Moving from city to city, unpacking, repacking, and touring 3 cities, in 3 different countries in that short amount of time can be so draining (but so much fun!).

While my workload here definitely isn’t as heavy when I’m back at Furman, it’s also crammed into a shorter time period. It seems as though I have multiple papers, projects, and presentations due every week, and the next thing I know I’m behind on blog posts, emails, and sleep! Unfortunately, that means that Prep Avenue ends up getting pushed down the to-do list.

While I would love to be able to consistently post 3+ days a week, sometimes it’s just not realistic. I always end up juggling too many plates and most of the time one has got to give. Instead of being hard on myself for not making time for my blog, I have to understand my priorities. I’m a 20 year old college student and right now my school work will always come before my blog. I started my blog for myself as a creative outlet during a rough time in high school, and I need to remind myself of that when I feel guilty about not posting. It’s been so fun to reflect on all my study abroad adventures here and I want to continue to do so I can look back at these years down the road!

Now if we rewind to the weekend before my travel week, I headed to Barcelona! I had been to Barcelona once before when I was younger, but I was excited to go back and get more time to explore the city!

While I’ve had some interesting experiences in hostels while being over here,  this one was unique and super cool! I had a great experience!

I went with my friend Kayla (seen in most of my study abroad pictures!) and we got in late Friday night and spent that night exploring the area where our hostel was located and getting dinner! We window shopped in all the designer stores and picked out all of our favorite items.

We woke up early Saturday morning ready to hit the road hard and to hit almost all the major sites in in one day! We walked over 13 miles that day (God bless my riding boots), while singing cheetah girls most of the way! We had perfect weather, which made the day even better!

Recognize this place? This is where the cheetah girls ran down the steps! So of course this was the first place we visited.

After exploring a food market and getting a quick lunch, we stumbled upon beautiful gardens and decided we must rent a paddle boat and recreate our favorite notebook scene. Everyone else in the pond was making fun of our lack of paddling skills the entire time and we couldn’t stop cracking up at how terrible we were. Aside from our terrible paddling skills, it was a beautiful setting and probably one of my favorite things we did on the trip!

We slowly made our way back to the northern section of the city and of course made a stop to visit La Sagrada Familia. Look how cool this article is I found after our visit. I guess I’m just going to have to go back!

One of our last big stops of the day was Park Güell. While it was a long hike up there, it was definitely worth the view. The architecture is breath taking and the bright colors had me in love. 

We left Sunday morning to head back to school. While it was a quick trip, it was still a nice break from campus and such a cool city to experience! This weekend I'm headed to Slovenia so be on the lookout for pictures!

Remember,

xoxo

S