Week 10: You Can Call Me the Best Barcelona Host

I spent this week exploring new parts of Barcelona as well as showing off pre-discovered ones to my friends who visited. Being a tour guide this week made me feel like a local who truly knows how to navigate the city, what is really worth seeing, and the best foods to try. However, I also learned this week that I may feel like a local, but that doesn’t make me indestructible to the negative sides of living in a city. 

Starting the Week’s Festivities

My roommate, Soraya, turned 20 on Wednesday! We celebrated by having brunch at La Papa which has become my favorite breakfast restaurant. The interior is very simple but in a cool way. It reminds me of Kim Kardashian’s house. The food is also wonderful. I find that most cafes only have pastries and coffee so when I find restaurants I like with real breakfast foods I get pretty excited. I got the mushroom truffle toast and it was delicious! The avocado toast also looked wonderful but I wanted to try something new. Afterward, we headed over to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. This museum is filled with Catalan visual art. One of the best parts of the museum is the location. It is on Montjuic Hill and in the Palau Nacional. Sadly, I couldn’t stay long because I had to study for my midterms the next day, but hopefully, I’ll get a chance to go again and spend more time there. We finished Soraya’s birthday by going to the speakeasy, Paradiso, where every cocktail has special set-ups and features, and then had a lovely Italian dinner at Soho House Cecconi’s. 

Visitors on Visitors on Visitors

My friends came to town! I spent Friday morning prepping for the madness that was about to start. We had 11 girls staying in our apartment which normally houses 4 and on top of that, we had more friends visiting but not staying with us. Before all of my friends arrived, I had four visitors come in the afternoon and we spent the day exploring Mercat de la Boqueria, La Rambla, and even went to the beach. I also got to show them Plaça de la Vila de Gracia near my apartment. While exploring the plaça I discovered my new favorite gelato/frozen yogurt store, Anita Gelato. Afterward, we got ready for the night and my two other guests arrived and we all headed over to Razzmatazz where we had ourselves a very memorable time. 

The next day we put our FCB gear on and went to the pub Michael Collins to watch El Clásico. I hardly go to pubs so it was fun having that experience. Before heading over to watch the game though, Soraya, shared a presentation with all of us explaining why El Clásico is so important, the main players on each team (aka the cute ones), and some important rules about how the game works. It was really fun getting everyone in the spirit. The pub was also close to Sagrada Familia (or as my visitors keep calling it, Sangria Familia) so I also got to show my friends the famous church. We spent the night showing them some of our favorite bars, Espit Chupitos and George Payne. At Espit Chupitos my roommates and I all surprised our guests with a shot that was more of a performance than a shot…. It was definitely something they will never forget.

When we set out for our day on Sunday, I expected a cute brunch. We ended up being out till after the sunset. It was truly an adventure. We started with brunch at Zenith Brunch and Cocktails. Our server, Felipe was hilarious. I felt like he was my friend which made the experience even better. We headed over to Gothic Quarter where Alexa and I showed our guests (or our little ducklings as we were calling them) all of the main spots. I felt pretty cool whipping my facts out about the churches and other historical spots. At one point, we stopped in a Starbucks to use the restroom and ran into two boys that my Madrid guests knew and I had met the night before! It was so random but then they ended up sticking with us the whole rest of the day. We showed them all around, then walked to our school and showed them our campus (or at least what we could because the doors were locked), and then walked back home and grabbed some tacos along the way. It was a great day of exploring but also very tiring after all of the going out we had been doing. 

A Learning Experience 

I was reminded this weekend that even though Barcelona is starting to feel like home, I need to be careful that I’m not letting my guard down. When coming home from the club on Saturday, I decided to take a taxi by myself. Some friends that I was with were with me until I got in the taxi but I took it home alone. While I could’ve waited for my friends, I told them I felt safe, I had my wits about me, my phone was fully charged, etc. and took a taxi by myself. At some point during the taxi ride, my driver tried to touch me inappropriately. I immediately grabbed his hand and took it off my leg, and then FaceTimed one of my best guy friends. I didn’t feel completely unsafe after either but was eager to get home. I completely downplayed the whole situation to my friends after and didn’t have strong feelings about the whole situation. It wasn’t until the next day that I was headed somewhere by myself again to meet friends and I had extremely bad anxiety the whole time. I realized that I was affected by the situation more than I thought and let on. 

The timing of this situation was a miracle. I think I was letting my guard down too much with pickpocketing and my safety in general. This was like a message/reminder to me. I’m sharing this because I want future students who study abroad or just young people traveling, in general, to know that it is important to take safety seriously, especially after you start getting comfortable. I did in the beginning and I got too comfortable which enabled me to have this scary experience. 

Although I had this experience, I still had a wonderful week with all of my best friends close to me. The taxi ride didn’t put a bad taste in my mouth for Barcelona or traveling, but it reminded me to be cautious at all times.