Grand Adventures in Spain and Sardegna!

Welcome to Part 2 of Kalen's catch-up blogging!

After leaving Marrakech, Kat and I left for Barcelona where we met up with an Italian friend, Francesco. He's studying in Barcelona right now so we stayed at his place and hung out with his friends. He probably thought I was kidding when I said I was going to post this picture on the internet:
Haha, someone took over my camera while I was still sleeping so I am not responsible for the taking of this photo. I am, however, responsible for posting it on the internet for the world to see!

While I've been to Barcelona twice already, Kat had never been. So, I was dubbed the official tour guide of the trip. I took her to my favorite places and showed her my favorite Gaudí buildings. I told her about how La Pedrera inspires visions of myself as a lizard-person climbing up the side of the building... she didn't seem to think that was as normal as I thought it was. Hmm.
We also went to Parc Güell, where I'd never been before! It's basically a huge park filled with works by Gaudí. I felt like Alice, walking through Wonderland - the place is crazy! I think Gaudí toned his artistic impulses down a little bit when designing the buildings downtown but here he was given basically free reign to do whatever he felt like doing. The result is a collection of beautiful but strange mosaics, long serpentine benches surrounding the main square, asymmetrical pillars, buildings with roofs and towers that look like gingerbread houses, and a huge dragon sculpture at the entrance to the park. What's interesting is that despite the strange architecture and bright colors everywhere, the park is still a peaceful place. The architecture almost feels like a part of the nature itself, with pillars that look like tree trunks leading up to huge sculptures resembling birds' nests. It really is an incredible place, and I stand by my previous theory that Gaudí was taking lots and lots of drugs...

My favorite area of the park was the huge open space underneath the main square, filled with pillars. It was perfect for hide-and-seek, and we had a great time running around and taking goofy photos.

After wandering around the park for a few hours, we met up with Francesco and his friends for a festival and parade. His friend had the honor of "pulling the dragon" which I thought would be just a normal float in just a normal parade. I was so wrong. This was the scariest thing since Krampus... first of all, the dragon was shooting off fireworks from all over its body. Second of all, there were demons with fireworks that they would shoot at the crowd. Then, there were the fire-breathing demons. Yeah, that was cool. Not to mention the scary drum music.

The parade is supposed represent the journey into hell, and probably did a pretty damn good job about what that would be like. Granted, I'm a wuss but at one point a demon cornered me, a mother and her small child against the door of a church and sprayed sparks in our faces! By the end of the parade I had tiny little burns on my arms and face but it was worth it for all the photos that I took. Fire-breathing demons might be scary but they're awfully fun to photograph!

We had a great night out (after the demons stopped chasing us) and I made a lot of new friends. Hopefully I'll be able to see them again someday!

Our next day in Barcelona was a much more peaceful one - we walked to a hill called Montjuïc which looks over the entire city and the sea. I expected more of park than what the hill has actually become which is a collection of Athletic stadiums and museums. The 1992 Olympics took place there, and you can tell that they're very proud of it. There are dozens of fountains, sculptures, incredible landscaping, there are even armed guards overlooking the city. Someone stole this one's pants, though...

The best part of the trip to Montjuïc was our ride on the Gondola to the top of the hill where we wandered around the Castell de Montjuïc. I'm not which part I enjoyed more - the fortress, which was built in the 17th century and is on a cliff overlooking the harbor, or the gondola ride itself!

It made me feel like I was flying and made Kat feel like she was on Star Trek. It was especially cool when I learned how to control the gondola with my mind.

I'm just not sure the fortress could compete with that, although I did take a cool picture of a seagull.


One of the funniest things about Barcelona, which I'd never noticed before, is the abundance of outdoor escalators. Apparently they don't think we tourists are capable of climbing the hill to Parc Güell or to Montjuïc. I boycotted the escalators (I called them "ridiculous") and walked instead. This experience gave me a new appreciation for the outdoor escalators...
We had a great time in Barcelona (my third visit!) and but were really excited to be back in Italy when we got off the plane in Sardegna. For those of you who don't know where Sardegna is, it's an island off the west coast of Italy. We spent most of our time in Cagliari which is on the southern coast of Sardegna and absolutely gorgeous! We got to see even more of the city than we normally would have because every morning our couchsurfing host got us up at 7AM and dropped us off in the city center where we groggily moaned and groaned until we either woke up naturally or drank enough coffee to induce a state of full awareness. Kat came up with another, more creative method to wake herself up:

The best part of Sardegna is definitely not the cities (although they are beautiful) - it's the beaches. Oh my word. The water is incredibly clear, and if you go even a small distance outside of the city, the beaches are almost completely deserted.

Somehow I forgot to mention that while in Morocco I managed to burn myself (well, just the back of me) to a crisp. The ironic thing is that it didn't happen in the desert, or in Fes where we spent all day walking around in the sun. Oh no, I managed to burn myself to a crisp while I was studying on the roof of our hostel, recovering from all my other ailments!

You'll be happy to know that I evened myself out in Sardegna and burned the other half of myself just as badly. The thing is, I was constantly applying sunscreen, but when you're as fair-skinned as I am there's just not much that can be done. Since the trip with Kat was essentially the first time I've been in the sun this year, there was no escaping my red, itchy fate.

Even though I was pretty badly sunburned, I spent most of my time at the beach, wandering around the rocks while Kat worked on her tan like a normal person who can be exposed to direct sunlight without bursting into flames! I enjoyed wandering around the rocks though. It gave me time to think, and I stumbled across lots of tiny, beautiful coves that were completely isolated from the rest of the beach.

I also discovered this cool rock, which I named "Kalen rock." I did discover it, after all.

Since we were exhausted from the rest of our trip, we spent most of our time relaxing on the beach. Not too many exciting stories, just three days of relaxing and getting ready to come home to Bologna. I was actually only in Bologna for 6 days, and it was just to take an exam. During those six days though, my friends Amanda and Carmen visited me for a weekend. We've been friends since high school so it was great to see them again and catch up. It's amazing how much can happen in a year, so we spent hours exchanging stories, reminiscing and laughing over a bottle of wine.

After they left, I spent 3 straight days studying for my Sociolinguistics exam. Luckily, I'd spent every minute of down time on the trip studying as well so I was already pretty well prepared. I went to the exam with my backpack, ready to take take off for my next trip. I was afraid that the professor would be upset by that, but he was just amused by it and the exam went incredibly well. I usually hate the exam system here, because the professors are in such a hurry to get you in and out of there that the whole process usually takes about 5-10 minutes and then they just hand you a grade. An entire semester of work boils down to how much information you can cram into a 10 minute oral exam! This time, I was one of the only students taking the exam that day, so the professor wasn't in such a big hurry to get rid of me. We ended up discussing the material for 40 minutes! I'm extremely interested in the Sociolinguistics so I had a great time. It became a conversation about what I found the most interesting and why, and at the end of it he gave me the maximum score! Woo! It gave me a little more respect for the Italian exam system because now I understand that in theory, it should work like that every time. The problem is that 99% of the time, it doesn't. Ah well, in less 2 months I'll be back to what I'm used to - essays and written exams. I can't believe that I'll be back so soon! I'm trying to find somebody right now to take over my apartment and then I'll be doing volunteer farm work for about 6 weeks. Then it's home sweet home!