My email, for whatever reason, will NOT send blog posts. I tried to send one twice, and it kept saying that the email server couldn’t connect to the other server or something. Whatever.
We have successfully crossed the Atlantic. It was a lovely nine days of blue water, sunshine, and classes. The global studies professor went to Oberlin, and that makes me have to like him a bit. He’s actually pretty fun and he tries to keep us on an art history/architecture topic, which is really nice. I was scared that it was going to be all history with no cultural considerations. Not so. He also gives about half of his class time to other professors so that they can come in and lecture on whatever they think is important about the cultures we’re discussing. It’s an efficient system.
My drawing class is amazing. I can’t say a single thing against it. I’m really enjoying it so much, and for the first time probably ever, I have work that I’m proud of. My psych class is interesting, but given that some people have very non-Oberlin opinions and given that the class needs to cover things like sexuality and gender, it’s a little tiring. That said, it really is interesting material, although I kind of can’t wait to try to get into a developmental neuro class to see the differences in what is taught and how.
I’ve joined GLTSBA @ Sea, the LGBTQA group on the ship. The people are super nice and a lot of fun, and I’m glad I decided to join. I missed Pride in Columbus, which is sad, because I really wanted to get to go this year, but we’re hitting the tail end of Pride here in Barcelona and almost all of Pride in Athens. It should be pretty cool to see it in this cool of places.
Barcelona is a work of art. The city itself is absolutely gorgeous.
My first day here, I did a tour of Gaudi’s works. He’s an architect who I’m convinced built King Triton’s castle. His works draw very heavily from nature, and use lots of color, even on the façade of the building. First we visited Parc Guell, which was a park he was commissioned to design. He wasn’t even supposed to design the buildings in it, but he went above and beyond to do that. Gaudi himself lived in the park in a house designed by someone else. It’s where his famous Salamander is. There were some random street performers there, including a flamenco dancer and a guitarist accompanying her. I took so many pictures that it’s not even funny. From Parc Guell, we headed to two of his famous houses. In one of them, you can even get an apartment (naturally for some ridiculous price.) And then from those, we headed to the masterpiece: La Sagrada Familia. It’s a church that is still being built. It’s projected to be completed in 2026. Antoni Gaudi has been dead for years now, just keep that in mind.
Okay, I’m going to be honest here, so don’t hate me dad. The outside of the church made me dizzy. Just looking up at it, I lost sense of scale and the ground felt like it was just completely off-kilter. While I could respect the size and the grandness, it didn’t do much for me. I’m not really huge on just hanging out with huge churches. Must be something about the whole not-being-catholic thing. But I was with a tour, they’d paid for my ticket, so frankly, who was I to complain? The sculptures on the façades of the building are grand, huge, and cover the entire outside- we entered through the façade of the birth of Jesus, and exited through the façade of the crucifixion. And while I could respect the work that went into designing and building a church of this scale and grandness, it wasn’t something that I was totally taken aback by. Nothing life-changing. The scale of the artwork and architecture that Christianity inspires is probably the only thing that makes me question my own personal disbelief. Devout Christians are often creating awesome displays of their faith. It’s just not new, even though it was spectacular. Furthermore, without the belief in Jesus as my personal savior, and without a close reading of the bible, I feel like some of the emotional impact the sculptures were meant to engender was completely lost on me.
And then I went in. I swear on my life, walking in, I gasped and put my hand on my chest like old ladies in movies when they’re startled. I spent most of the time we were inside with my mouth agape, and I don’t think I even said anything at the normal volume I speak at. And frankly, I said “Oh my God” so many times that I probably fooled a few people into thinking that I was there early for mass.
The inside of La Sagrada Familia was designed to look like a modernist forest. Each pillar was a trunk, and instead of the standard Corinthian order atop it like youd’ find in most Catholic churches of this grandness, where it met the ceiling was a giant stone set of leaves. If you didn’t know that’s what it was, it would’ve looked like a starburst. There are stained glass windows that don’t depict scenes of Jesus in the manger and the like. It was put best by the head of GLTSBA, Ryan, when he said, “This is what it would feel like to live in a rainbow.” There was a semicircle of stained glass windows around the central nave that was just a fade from color to color around the rainbow, and we happened to be there right at the light was streaming through it. There were spiral staircases and wavy balconies, and other than “oh my God” my most common statement was “I want to live in a world designed by Gaudi.” I swear I did not want to leave, and I couldn’t stop to take really well composed pictures, because I didn’t want to take my eyes off of anything long enough to turn my camera on, and I didn’t have enough time to take it all in so why would I waste the time I had on fixating on a specific spot long enough to figure out what would make the best picture of the place. As a result, my pictures do cover a lot of the inside, but the good ones are happy accidents, and I have a lot that aren’t so great.
That night, I was due to go to the Ice Bar with some friends, but given a few things (namely that I wasn’t really interested in getting drunk, it was a 15 € cover fee, and that I didn’t know how to deal with the potential of being hit on [which has happened plenty of times in Spain] and thus couldn’t deal with it), I ended up staying in and just handwashing some clothes and relaxing. The laundry service on the ship is $6 a bag and I’m way too cheap to do that unless I get lazy or it’s pretty much do that or not wear clothes. Then I’ll do that. But until then, I can handwash things here just fine. The Ice Bar, by the way, is kept at -5° C and they give you a free drink, plus you borrow a giant winter coat and gloves when you enter. The entire interior is carved out of ice. It actually does sound really cool, and if I’d been going with people I knew a bit better, and it hadn’t been over $20 just to get in, I probably would’ve gone.
Yesterday I toured the city with Morgan. And by that I mean, we had maps and planned out places to go, but ended up wandering lost in the business district for two and half to three hours before finally getting back to the Barri Gotic, the gothic quarter of the city and the home of the gothic cathedral, and figuring out where we were. We started off wandering around the Marina and eating food. We took a random turn figuring we’d explore a bit, and then figure out where we were and get straight back to the main street. We stopped in a museum gift shop, where there was a gorgeous version of Alice in Wonderland (no, parents, I didn’t get it, I just (
Finally we found a marked street and got back to the Barri Gotic, where my foot spontaneously developed a blister, which then promptly popped painfully. We went into a supermarket and got Horchata (thanks, Kristin) and bandaids. We explored the shops around the Barri Gotic, stopped to get milkshakes, and wandered into the cathedral, but people were in there praying and we felt that it would be disrespectful to wander through more, plus we’d seen what we wanted to of it, and were getting tired. We returned to the ship for dinner and were going to take a nap before going out to see some fountains and explore las Ramblas, the main walking street with shops that connects all the districts. There is a fountain show that is every night from 8-11. We went to sleep at about 7ish, and despite alarms, didn’t wake up in time to get there on foot.
So instead, I went out with another group of people, Shelley, Vicky, Stephanie, Carla, Taylor, Wendy, Brooke, and Michelle. We went out for tapas and sangria- I got queso manchevo, a kind of super rich Spanish cheese, and had a glass of sangria. It was my first time having sangria, which was pretty good. Shelley had a bit more than she intended, and ended up crying and telling us how much she loved us, which was cute. With a bit more food in our systems, we headed to a McDonalds (keep in mind, this is 1 AM) to get some free wifi and work on booking things for further legs of the trip (or, in my case, to check twitter and facebook just because I could). Shelley and Vicky decided to leave around 2, and I went with them. We took a taxi back to the ship because it was a long walk, and we were leaving because we were tired, so taxis seemed like a good plan (it’s about a 2 mile walk just from the entrance to the harbor to the ship, nevermind the amount we’d walked on las Ramblas.)
While out, we saw stilters, a bunch of people selling these things that roughly equaled a slingshot with a lighted skydancer doll (does anyone remember those?!) that you shot out of it, and a building marked as containing a peep show/ sex store. We didn’t go in. Barcelona is known for it’s pickpockets, and I was definitely eyed by a few (in fact, Michelle warned me of one because often if you look at them pointedly, they’ll go away real fast,) due to my camera. Still, everyone I know has kept themselves safe. In fact, the friends I went out with last night had a brilliant plan that I plan on emulating. They were carrying their laptops into a busy city at night, in backpacks (which anyone who knows anything about fending off pickpockets knows are the least practical things and are not very defendable. Annoying, because they’re so easy to carry) but they put a luggage lock on the bag that had the laptops. Sure, they could’ve still had the whole bag taken, but nobody could’ve snuck in and grabbed something without them knowing. I’ve usually kept things in a zipped cross-body side bag, but I have my camera strap around my neck, and then I hold the body of the camera with my hand, usually cradling it in my arms like a real baby. I think if I started singing lullabies to it, people might be confused and not notice that it’s a camera. I suppose I’ll try.
Anyway, on the way to the taxi, we had a British ginger offer to take us all to a bar, pay all our covers and get us all drinks, but we used the phrase we’ve all come to know best in Spanish- “no gracias” and went on our merry way. I got back to my room and fell pretty solidly asleep.
So that’s what’s happened so far. From here, it should be easier to update as I’ll have access to internet connections that work, so I won’t have to rely on the shipboard email deciding not to screw up sending this. It won’t be daily, naturally, but at least I know for Spain and Italy, McDonalds has free wifi.
Hope you’re all doing well. Two more days in Spain and then we’re off to Italy! Sorry this is sort of a novel, but it does cover nearly 2 weeks.
Love, Chelsea
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