Spain Day 1 (January 28, 2009)

Got an hour of sleep the night before, woke up ported in Cadiz, Spain. Actually, three other friends of mine, my roommate and I stayed up the whole night just talking -- about everything. It’s pretty cool too, because we are the first students to have seen the lights of Cadiz, we went out to the observatory deck at 5:30 in the morning – I got some good video of it. The line to get off the boat was pretty long; it felt great to finally be on land though. Our group (four guys, four girls), walked around the streets of Cadiz for about an hour – first observation: a lot of stray cats. In addition, this city offers a number of amazing cathedrals; I was absolutely mesmerized just by the sight of them. I stopped by a small music shop to buy some guitar strings, which are way more expensive in Cadiz than they are in Champaign. It was a cool first purchase though. We headed to the nearby train station to catch a train to Sevilla; our flight from Sevilla to Barcelona was later that night. It is amazing how efficient the train system is in Spain and Europe in general. I had heard stories from my sister, who had lived and died by the train system when she was traveling throughout France and Ireland, but it really is amazing how many people use this means of transportation in these countries. The train ride to Sevilla was fairly calm and relaxing. When we stopped in Sevilla, we were all starving; so we walked the streets for a while in search of a lunch spot. The place we found was very neat. It was a small joint, looked exactly how I had pictured any small European bar-like restaurant to look like. There was a lot of cod on the menu (or bacalao in Spanish). The food was good, especially when accompanied by a certain native beverage, entitled Cruzcampo. After getting refueled at lunch, we continued to walk the streets of Sevilla.
The airport process was almost as simple as the train station had been. Customs is a lot stiffer in the United States than it was in Spain. I was a little nervous about the plane ride but everything went smoothly once we were boarded. I caught up on some sleep during the plane ride, recovering from the sleep lost the night before. Once we arrived in Barcelona, we caught a cab and rode to Matt’s friends’ apartment. The cab ride was my first site of the city of Barcelona. It was dark out so I couldn’t get a full view of the buildings and everything else, but it was still a beautiful sight. One of the most amazing sights the city has to offer is the Sagrada Familia, a massive Roman Catholic Church that has been under construction since the year 1882. It is still being built today and is honestly the single most impressive structure I have ever seen in my entire life. Matt’s buddies’ apartment lived close by. All of the guys that lived there were great, very generous for letting us crash at their place for a couple days. We got to know each other for a bit and then they showed us the Barcelona night life; which is absolutely nuts – an entirely different culture than back in the U.S.