Nikki Kelly Barcelona

One night Nikki and I watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, a movie by Woody Allen that is this random, that never happens in real life, movie starring Penelope Cruz and a couple other well-known actors. It was crazy to see “our” city and know all the places they went to in the movie. At one point they are up on a mountain overlooking Barcelona. This is from Tibidabo, an old-fashioned (and probably really old) amusement park on Mont Tibidabo. That was somewhere we still needed to go though.

Wednesday September 29, 2010:

LA HUEGLA GENERAL-The general strike in Spain. Maybe you heard about this, as the same was the case in many European countries in September, there were transportation strikes that affected many inner European flights and public transportation. Everything in Barcelona was shut down; the metro, the buses and even many taxis wouldn’t drive because of riots. Our señora forbade us from going down to Plaça Catalunya (the center of Barcelona) or Pasaig de Gracia (the fancy shopping street) because she thought it wouldn’t be safe and we might get in trouble/stranded. We figured that was a great day to sleep in and hike up to Tibidabo. We spent the day blazing trails up the mountain to the amusement park. It took us about 2 and half hours to get up to the top. It was a magnificent view of the entire city of Barcelona and other cities that surround the mountain.

We enjoyed looking around the old park (that still runs during the summer) and the church that is also up there (which looks like a castle from our apartment). We ate our lunch while overlooking the ocean and the city that had been home for exactly a month.

We enjoyed finding new trails for the hike back down that only took us about an hour or an hour and a half. We got back to the apartment, took showers and a great long nap. When we woke up we had dinner and then checked the Internet and via Facebook found out that all out riots had been going on in the city all day. Dumpsters lit on fire, rocks through store windows, spray paint everywhere, police cars jumped on, flipped and one lit on fire, and many, many people arrested and in trouble. Nikki and I had missed all the chaos during our great day.

The most bizarre thing was that the next day when we went to class, the only indication of chaos and striking were a few cracked windows here and there and a little bit of fresh tagging. No one acted any differently, there was no excess of police and everyone was just back to business as usual. It was very interesting to see but I am glad we took the hike out of the city for the day instead of into it.

Photo Album: http://kellystreeter.shutterfly.com/pictures/244