Driven by a vague desperation for summer, I flew to Barcelona after midterms and spent four gloriously stress-free days there. I didn't find sunshine until my last day, but it was wonderful nevertheless to let the foreignness of everything briefly sweep my worries away.
Our room at the hostel had five sets of bunk beds and a ledge at the window, five feet off the ground. We climbed up onto it and spent the first evening holed up five feet from the ground, scribbling in navy blue pocket notebooks and snapping pictures at nothing in particular, eager to document what little had happened. Come to think of it, it was something like this:
Our first night, we went to Nasty Monday and danced the night away, finally landing in our beds just before dawn. The next day, determined not to spend our vacation within the yellow walls of the hostel, we pulled ourselves out of bed and ventured into the city.
She looks so beautiful draped in string and bathed in acidic erosion. Don't you love that humanity creates works of art in an attempt to beautify the world, but is also responsible for the destruction of that beauty?
Ah, the disembodied cherub - a reoccurring motif in European decor.
The day brightened up significantly when we stumbled upon Happy Pills, a concept candy store. And then Casa Battlò, our first taste of Gaudi's imaginative brilliance.
Ancient Roman wall, meet tiny alleyway. 
This bizarre cross between an empty lot, construction site, and an archaeological dig was right next to the Roman wall.
In a narrow street we came across this mask shop, with its windows full of all different kinds of puppets and masks.
I was so pleased to see Jack Sparrow I didn't say a thing about the inaccuracies in his outfit or hair beads. Imposter.
Aside from Gaudi's architecture, my favorite thing about Barcelona was the food. We went to the same tapas place two nights in a row, which was awkward because they had the same two waiters running the place: the woman with the strong forearms (which proved to be not so strong at the end of the second night when she dropped some plates) and Paperman.
Hello sir. Greetings! Can someone explain the shrimp with ridiculously large claws? Excuse me, I meant claw, because each shrimp had one normal size claw and then a huge one.
The waiters in this place near the Museo Picasso were so happy and they kept blasting We Are the Champions, each time louder than the next. Then one of the waitresses lost her earring on our table, and another waiter couldn't handle the calculations required to give us change.
We played pool and foosball in the hostel game room until three in the morning. These guys have seen better days, but they don't call it armball for a reason. And culture shock of the week: a royal decree hanging in the hostel regulating the temperature and humidity in the building at different seasons.
This boy was all over the metro, with his shirt photoshopped into two colors for use on different posters. The purpose is kind of defeated when the posters, often ten in a row, are placed right next to each other.
On our last night, we went to the beach under the cover of fog and had fideua, serenaded by a jolly busker beneath the heat lamps while PSG played Nancy on a screen to our left.
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