Warning: this is going to be a MASSIVE entry. I'm putting headers in so you can read the parts you want to read and skip anything you may find boring (but my life is super interesting so you might as well read the whole thing).
Wednesday night: High Cube
After doing homework or maybe taking a nap or something to that effect, Kate, Erica, Rachel and I all went out to High Cube on Wednesday night. They were having some sort of event involving ties, I believe. Before going to High Cube, however, we went to El Castillo (as usual) to take advantage of their wonderful deals and avoid having to pay 8 euros for one drink at High Cube. On the way out, we somehow ended up talking to these two Spanish people -- both 18 years old and had just finished with their exams. They were hilarious and really really nice, and we had a drink with them at a different bar (since El Castillo had closed) before hopping in a cab and heading to the port.
I don't know if I've described High Cube before, but it's seriously so cool. The entire thing is basically a dock out on the water in the port. Which is awesome, because you don't get the whole in the club super sweaty everyone smells bad get me out of here effect that some places get. Anyway, we stayed there until probably 4 or 4:30 before finally heading home. Keep in mind this was a Wednesday night.
Thursday day: the struggle
In retrospect, I'm really impressed with the fact that I managed to get to class and survive through four hours of instruction on Thursday. Between classes, Will and I meandered over to Café de las Luces (as usual), where a very small dog peed on Will's backpack and I almost died laughing as a result. After I finished class, I met up with Jordan, Erin, Will, and Maggie, and we wandered around the old part of town for a little while -- Plaza de la Virgen, Plaza de la Reina, all that good stuff. We also went to a chocolate store and I finally got to try the famed churros and chocolate! They were delicious.
Thursday night: clubs on clubs
I eventually went home for dinner and laid in bed trying to decide whether I should go out or go to bed early in preparation for our 11 AM train on Friday morning. Obviously, I went out. Once again, we headed over to El Castillo to meet up with everyone. Rachel and I wanted to go to l'Umbracle again, since we had only been there once, but the general consensus was Las Animas, so we decided we'd just go with the group and see where we ended up.
Thankfully Las Animas was free admission, because it was honestly pretty terrible. They're really stingy about the number of people they let in at a time, and the result was this ridiculous most pit of people trying to get past INITIAL security -- basically the gate you go through to go wait at the gate where you pay your entry fee. Like I said though, we got in for free, so that was cool. It almost made up for the complete lack of anyone dancing and barely being able to hear the music (Las Animas is like a rooftop club, all open air, so if the music is low it just gets completely swallowed up by the sounds of the wind and people talking).
Everyone was kinda bummed about Las Animas sucking, so at around 3 or so we all decided to head out. Rachel and I immediately made the decision to continue our night and grab a cab over to l'Umbracle. This was an excellent choice. We got there, paid the entrance fee, and somehow met some French guys, and this Irish girl, that were all pretty cool. We spent a really long time trying to teach them how to curse in English, and they tried to teach us how to curse in French. It was a bit of a struggle, but hilarious nonetheless.
Eventually we all headed downstairs to the part of the club called Mya -- it usually has more dubstep-y type of music and stays busy a lot later. From then until 6:15 it was just a madhouse of dancing. Found some really funny British dudes and hung out with them for a while. I think Rach and I were just happy that we had taken our kind of lame night and completely turned it around. Anyways, at some point Rach went to the beach to see the sunrise and I walked back to my apartment with the Irish girl I had met before. Her name was Laura, so I knew she had to be cool. I eventually got in bed at 7:30, and proceeded to pass out.
Friday day: train, hostel, nap
I woke up at around 9:30 and rushed to pack and meet Rach at her apartment so we could go over to Joaquin Sorolla, the train station for the high-speed trains. We got to the station, got some breakfast (sort of), and hopped on the train for Barcelona at 11:05. I spent the entire train ride (a good 3 hours) trying to sleep, but I don't know if I ever actually managed to fall asleep. It was fine either way, I was just happy to be resting.
Our train got into Barcelona at around 3 o'clock, and Rachel and I took advantage of the free wifi at McDonald's to figure out where we were, and where our hostel was, and how to get there. After some struggles and detours to China stores (like dollar stores here) and Mercadona, we finally got to the hostel and met up with Adam, who had taken a 6 AM train to Barcelona and so had been there for a few hours already. Luke, on the other hand, was supposed to be on the same train as Rachel and me, but somehow missed it and so had to get on a later one. Either way, the three of us who were actually there checked into the hostel, went up to our room, and laid down to rest/nap until Luke got there.
Friday night: food, SONAR, taxi issues
Once we were all together, we decided that we should probably eat dinner before heading over to Sonar, so we took a bus to the old part of town (I think) and picked a restaurant and walked in. Our restaurant-picking skills were on point that night, because the food we ate was absolutely incredible. We chose to split two dishes among the four of us -- a creamy lobster and rice dish, and then a paella. And we splurged and got three desserts to share -- tiramisu, catalan creme brulee, and a chocolate molten lava cupcake thing. Once we finished, we asked one of the managers if he could tell us how to get to Sonar. He gave us some instructions involving a bus and a metro and we just ended up taking a taxi there.
Finally, we had made it to Sonar. Rach and I have been hyping this since like April or May when we had both committed to going on the trip, and it was so amazing to actually be there. The event location was really cool, it was basically four or five enormous interconnected rooms with a stage in each one. We got there a little early, around 9:30 or so, and walked through the whole place before going back to SonarClub, the stage where the first act was going on at 10:45.
While we were waiting for Kraftwerk, a German 4-man band that is basically the grandfather of all electronic music, this interesting duo of DJs called Raime was playing. Their style was very movie-soundtrack-esque, with lots of buildups and no dropping of beats. We decided that instead of dropping beats, Raime just kind of gently sets the beats down so they don't break. It was a very frustrating 30 minutes, but eventually Kraftwerk came on. Their show had a 3D screen behind it, so everyone got 3D glasses at the entrance to the venue. It was hilarious to see thousands of people all rocking those at the same time. Kraftwerk was pretty good, I prefer my music with more beats and less weird singing, but they really were one of the biggest influences on today's dance and electro, so it was cool to see them in person.
We left Kraftwerk at 11:30 or so to go over to a different stage (don't remember the name of that one, SonarLab maybe?) and see a dude called Nicholas Jaar, who was awesome. His stuff went between being really chill and relaxed to just absolutely insane, and I really enjoyed his set. We were pretty far back from the stage, but that was actually nice because we didn't get completely smushed by the crowds. Once his set ended, we headed back to SonarClub to check out Baauer.
Let me just say that I personally was completely unprepared for how absolutely sick Baauer was live. I knew he had Harlem Shake and that's fine, but I wasn't really expecting to be blown away. I was completely wrong. We walked in and most of the lights were on and people were just going crazy dancing everywhere. Of course, that's our kind of concert entirely, so we wove our way through the crowd and went crazy with the rest of the world. Baauer knows exactly how to work the crowd, and some of the stuff that he did was completely insane. I've never enjoyed a single artist so much. His set ran until 2:00, and I was sad to see him go.
That sadness didn't last long though, because immediately after Baauer it was time for Major Lazer. Their show had a very different feel to it than Baauer -- they had on-stage dancers and a lot of lights and fancy things, while Baauer was just a dude with his table. Anyways, Major Lazer also killed it. They were big on hyping up and interacting with the audience, which I found pretty cool. Also at one point Diplo got in a giant hamster ball thing and crowdsurfed/ran all the way to the back of the audience and then back to the stage (I think I have a video of that somewhere, now that I think about it). They had an awesome set, and ended at 3:15, at which point we decided that we needed water more than we needed to see Alvin Risk, so we bought some bottles and went to find a place to sit down.
The rooms that didn't have any shows going on in them had turned into little mini refugee camp looking things by this point. There were drunk people everywhere, people on harder drugs just kind of wandering around, this one girl cried for like an hour... it was ridiculous. We also saw one guy getting arrested/carried away while his crying girlfriend followed after him. It was definitely a good idea to just pause and take a little break for a while, plus we could still sort of hear Alvin Risk from the room we were in so we didn't really miss that much.
Skrillex was scheduled to go on at 4:15 so at around 4 we left our camp and headed back into SonarClub to find a spot. We stayed pretty far back for his set, which was fine with me because at that point my feet were trying to leave my body and I was a little danced out. BUT, Skrillex also put on a great show and had this really cool spaceship looking stage thing. Also he had some sick lasers.
After Skrillex, Diplo came on at 5:30. We stuck around for 10, maybe 15 minutes before decided that we had experienced enough and were ready to call it quits. After walking around a puddle of what I'm pretty sure was the contents of an overturned portapotty (yum) and weaving through crowds of people, we finally exited Sonar, 8 hours after entering. We tried to grab a taxi, but the taxi drivers were doing this AWESOME THING where if you lived too far away for their liking, they would just say "No" and drive away. So it took us almost an hour to find a taxi driver that would take us back to the hostel.
Saturday: Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, and heading home
After showering off and sleeping for an hour or so, we began our touristy day in Barcelona. We all headed down for breakfast at around 9:30 or so (the hostel included breakfast -- if you're ever in Barcelona I would definitely Alberg Pere Tarres Youth Hostel) and planned out the rest of our day. We decided on Sagrada Familia first and Park Güell second. Both of them were designed by Gaudí, one of the coolest architects ever.
I saw the Sagrada Familia when I was in Barcelona last time, but they've completed so much more of it in the past three years. The entire left side of the church I'm pretty sure is new (I could be completely wrong though). We didn't want to pay to go inside, and the outside is absolutely gorgeous as it is, so we finished taking pictures and hopped on the metro again to go to Park Güell.
It took a little bit of time to get our bearings once we got off the metro station, and some nice people carrying a TV helped us find the escalators up to the top of the hill where the back entrance to the park is. I'm glad we went in that way -- last time I was there our tour bus dropped us off right at the front, we saw the chameleon and the columns and all of the important stuff, but this time we spent a long time wandering around the paths up at the top of the park and seeing a lot of really cool sights. The park is so high up that you can see Barcelona perfectly from multiple places inside it. We also met some Australian girls that hung out with us for a while in the park. Near the end of our park adventure, we sat down in a cave-thing and listened to a guitar-violin duet (they were incredible).
After Park Güell, we ate lunch at a restaurant right next to the park and eventually made our way to a metro station to get back to the hostel. We had already checked out, so we just kind of hung out in the lobby area (free wifi what up) and played cards and made friends with this Australian dude. Also, the hostel was nice enough to let us leave our stuff in storage there all day while we wandered around the city.
Our train for Valencia left at 7:30, and since we weren't on the high speed train it took a whopping 3 and a half hours instead of only 3. Is my sarcasm working? Because Spaniards don't understand sarcasm so I feel like I might be getting out of practice. Anyway, our train got into Valencia at around 11, and I eventually got home, showered, and completely passed out for a solid twelve hours. It wasn't until after I woke up that I realized I had slept for 9 hours between Wednesday morning and Saturday night.
Sunday day: the aftermath
I woke up a few times this morning and considered getting out of bed each time, but eventually decided to get up at 12, at which point I finally sat down and started writing this massive blog post. Mi madre and sister got back from shopping at around 2, and we had lunch together before everyone went off to siesta, which is what I'm about to do right now.
This weekend was insane. I'm so stoked we got to go to Sonar and see all of those amazing artists, and I was really happy to get to tour Barcelona again, since last time I went we got straight off the train from Paris and did Sagrada Familia and Park Güell in like two hours.
My feet are definitely feeling the events of the past four days (they're definitely swollen but it's going down) and I'm like 90% sure I picked up whatever sickness Rachel and/or Luke had/have -- pretty much everyone in the program is sick at this point though, and the Mediterranean sun does a good job of beating the sick out of you so I'm not worried.
Today begins my last week in Valencia, so I'm going to try to do as much as I can in these next five or six days. I can't believe how quickly time has flown. Keep an eye out for pictures from this weekend, I'll try to upload them after a nice long nap.
Hasta luego!
