Sunday 15 November 2015

Long Weekend To B a r c e l o n a !

Good afternoon, readers! Before I begin this blogpost, I just want to give you a heads up that this post will be longer than normal as it will be a documentation of my 4 day trip to Barcelona during my long weekend last weekend! I'll try my best to keep it as short as I can but if you get bored along the way, feel free to just have a look at the many pictures I took :)

Long story short; Esther's sister, brother in law and cousin booked a holiday to Barcelona for the beginning of November which fell on the same weekend we had a long weekend so we decided to join them for a few days. We're always up for getting out of Madrid and exploring new areas of Spain and Barcelona was one of the top places we wanted to visit for definite - now ticked off out list!

Friday, 06th November 2015
We left for Barcelona on Friday 6th November after work to catch the Renfe train at 5pm. The train journey was 2.5 hours long (not too bad) and I have to comment on the train itself. It was definitely the nicest train I have ever been on - this is not an exaggeration! There were leather seats with foot rests and you could also move the seat back like you can on an aeroplane. The seats were spacious and there was even a small tv at the front for people to watch. Pretty fancy hey! Unfortunately, I can't back my words up with any picture evidence ^^'

After what felt like a 'short-ish' journey, we arrived in Barcelona around 19:30pm and took the metro to the apartment we were staying in (all 6 of us). The metro station looked very old and run-down compared to Madrid! It took us no longer than 15 minutes to get to the station where our apartment was and there we waited for Esther's family members to come and get us. After being picked up, we walked to the apartment to drop off our bags and to quickly freshen up before we headed out for dinner. The apartment was very cute...consisting of two bedrooms, a living room, bathroom and a kitchen. It was actually my very first time staying in an apartment before - it reminded me a lot of Hong Kong! Small and compact space. After a quick freshen up, we all walked around the area in search for a restaurant to have dinner at. We ended up in a typical Spanish restaurant that offered standard dishes such as Tapas. Dinner was nice but we were just so tired so after dinner that we walked home and had an 'early' night. I couldn't sleep until around 3am the first night because I felt very uncomfortable and for some reason struggled to catch some z's. And to top it off, the neighbours were blasting music in the morning as early as 8:30am! That was definitely a successful wake-up call...

Saturday, 07th November 2015
Rise and shine! After a rubbish night's sleep we started the day early to go and get some nice grub! We walked to a breakfast place called Picnic which was about 15 minutes walk away - a nice morning/noon stroll. We ordered eggs Benedict and pancakes which were delicious! Perfect way to start the day :) it was lovely to sit outside and have breakfast with the morning fresh air accompanied with a nice hot cup of water. I hope to find a breakfast place like this here in Madrid!





After breakfast, we walked to the infamous Parc de la Ciutadella where the sun began to shine and brightened up our morning. The park is very pretty like Retiro Park in Madrid. We walked through the park where people were riding bikes, doing yoga and we eventually reached the fountain! I really love parks and nature surrounded areas...so this was a pretty special sight for me. 



Introducing; Florence (Esther's cousin), Jess (Esther's big sister), Carl (Esther's brother in law)
When and if I visit Barcelona again, I will definitely spend more time exploring the entire park! I reckon it would be beautiful during summer. After visiting the park, we walked to Las Ramblas which is basically a long strip of little market stalls with quite a few restaurants around it. 


Whilst walking through Las Ramblas, we made our way to the market. The market was huge; offering lots of different kinds of food from fruit&veg to freshly cooked seafood to different types of hams. It was very very busy and I noticed there were many American and British tourists there. Never have I heard so many people speaking English yet so far in Spain! ^__^' the market is great for people who really enjoy their seafood! They also had fresh fruit juice which I really really wanted to have (similar to ones in Hong Kong) but unfortunately, I still had quite a bad cough so I chose to be sensible enough to not trigger it with a mouth-watering watermelon juice! 




Following the market, we went to check out the Marina which was just round the corner (everything was within walking distance, so good!) It was strange to see the weather so smoggy... we actually couldn't see much in the distance - it was that bad. Nevertheless, the Marina was beautiful as expected. There were lots of boats parked up and the pier was pretty cool too. 




We took some time to appreciate the cool surroundings for a while and then decided to find a nearby café to sit and chill in. By this time, everyone was quite tired and just wanted to relax. Again, we walked back up towards Las Ramblas and managed to find a very cute/cool café on the corner that seemed appealing. The decor was lovely and they even had English Breakfast Tea! ^^ It was possibly one of the nicest café's I've ever been to. It was really nice to just sit and talk whilst sipping on a delicious cup of tea - I would definitely go back there :) The staff were friendly and there was even a little shop downstairs that sold merchandise such as cocoa etc. The stairwells were ever so pretty! 





Relaxing made everyone sleepy...^^' so we chose to head back to our apartment to have a rest/siesta! To be honest, I think it did us good...a bit of time to rest and to catch up on a bit of sleep before we headed out for dinner. So in Barcelona, I think it's quite popular to have 'stick' food for dinner... which is basically tapas on a stick (i think)! Since there were so many food on a stick restaurants literally just around the corner from our apartment, we decided to enter one! These 'restaurants' are very small and cramped with little spaces to sit. They have a bar full of different types of food on a stick and the majority of them are just 1 euro each unless specified differently. The most you had to pay was 1 euro 80, I think! It was a cool thing to try :) and I'd definitely do it again. Unfortunately, I don't have any images to show you what it looked like! We managed to finish dinner fairly quickly and the night was still early so we went to a bar for some drinks. The bar was a little on the mature side so we went to another one near our apartment that was a lot more lively and sold more drinks that were to our taste. It was a very funny night consisting of lots of cocktails! ^___^ it was nice to sit and drink with good company. I finally tried Sangria! which to me, was not the greatest drink. The taste was too similar to red wine... I can't remember what time we arrived home but I know it was a late night! ^^' 

Sunday, 08th November 2015
After a night of drinking, we woke up late (oops) and went straight for brunch at a nearby modern café that offered perky dishes - stuff like bagels and fancy toasts. 





Flo, Samra, Esther and I went our separate ways to Jess and Carl as we wanted to different things. We went to visit Camp Nou (Barcelona's football stadium) which was only about 15-20 minutes from where we were. It was so so cool seeing the stadium with my own eyes and not just on tv! There was a match on later that evening so the stadium was very busy...full of tourists and football hooligans. It would have been amazing to watch a football match but sadly we weren't able to get hold of tickets and it we weren't in Barcelona long enough to waste half a day on football ^^'. The big official store was amazing... football shirts with a name on the back were 100 euros and plain shirts were 80 euros. 





The weather was superb, really hot! It would've been bad for us to not visit the beach! And everyone knows that I love beaches... it didn't take us long to head back to the pier and from there we walked towards the beach. It felt like we were walking for ages and the beach was nowhere to be seen ^^'. Along the way were people selling cheap/fake goods...just like they do in Madrid. By the time we reached the beach, it was getting quite chilly and the sun was beginning to set. It was still a beautiful view but I could imagine it to be even more beautiful during the summer...








It was really lovely to walk along the beach during the sunset as you can see in the pictures, the sky was beautiful. I will most definitely come back to Barcelona when the weather is hotter to embrace this beach! I actually think it was nicer than Valencia's... :O 

For dinner, we chose to go to a Chinese seafood buffet that was supposedly really good...and a place to try out whilst there. I haven't had Chinese food in two and a half months so this made me slightly happy. There were tons of different seafoods, sushi, rice...ah. The first few bites felt like home! I also had some snails too... xP the night ended with some ice cream from a nearby shop near our apartment and we decided to have a early night in preparation for our last day (sob). 

Monday, 9th November 2015
Our last day in Barcelona... T__T we wanted to be as productive as possible during our last few hours left in Barca so we took the metro to where Segrada Familia was. I don't really know the history behind this building but you can Google it if you want to know more about it. It was quite breath-taking to be honest... there wasn't much to do there, but look at it. We wanted to go inside, but the tickets were all sold out. 



After taking several photos of Segrada Familia, we had some lunch in the park next door to it which was nice. A warm picnic in November... strange eh? Only in Spain! There were lots of souvenir shops around the area which I was able to barter with the owners to buy what I needed! The salesman was very annoying - kept following me round the shop and telling me to buy this and that. But now I know that as soon as you head for the door, they will chase after you and give you as much discount as you want! A great tip for bartering abroad! ^^ 

Our next destination was Montjuïc. We walked up many hills to get to the top of the hill that greeted with an amazing view of Barcelona - made the walk so much more worth it! There was quite a bit to see at Montjuïc...but our main purpose was to see the 'magical' fountain... to which we found was not even working that day! Massive fail... but the museum behind the fountain made up for it :) we didn't enter the museum, just admired it from the outside! 











Our last hours in Barcelona were coming to an end sadly and it was time for us to head back to grab our bags and leave for the train station. But before we did that, we went back to the same café we had bagels at for some drinks. The weather was so good on our last day...and I was wearing skinny jeans >__< 



My trip to Barcelona (first time) was one to remember. I thoroughly enjoyed all four days spent there and that was all down to the great company. It was a pleasure to meet Esther's family who were very nice and welcoming. I hope they had lots of fun too! 

Barcelona has a completely different feel to Madrid...it feels more of a holiday destination whereas Madrid is just all about the city life - similar to London. I would like to visit again sometime in the future with my family or friends! 

I hope the post wasn't too long! I have already cut it down a lot shorter than I planned to make it ^^'... I decided to include more photos so hopefully it didn't bore you too much. 

Thank you for reading! ^___^ 

-Tiffany 







Monday 2 November 2015

Parque Warner | 25.10

It's nearing Halloween so we (Samra, Esther, Slavena and I) decided to check out one of the main theme parks here in Madrid - Parque Warner. The other one is called Parque de Attraciones (which we may visit too!) The website for PW looked pretty cool and with the help of YouTube, we were able to see what the rides were like.

I'm an individual who enjoys theme parks a lot and I'm not really scared of any rollercoasters/rides unless it has something to do with horror (haunted houses etc). So you could imagine how excited I was to go! PW currently has their Halloween theme going on so it was expected that there would be some 'scary'/horror themed rides or attractions (I definitely wasn't prepared for it). 

It took us about an hour to get there by metro, train and bus. We ended up getting a taxi to the theme park as we arrived at the train station because the PW bus took a very long time to come and quite frankly, we had little patience ^^'. It was just a 10 minute drive away so we were there in no time! The weather was decent (thank God)...after it had been raining most the week! Lucky us...

This blog post isn't going to be a text-based one as I want to show you what the theme park looked like :) - I hope you enjoy the pictures! 



Of course we had to take a group selfie just in front of the entrance whilst we all looked 'normal' and awake! OK so, the new addition to the selfie is Slavena. Slavena is Samra's roommate from Bulgaria :) she is also a teaching assistant in Primary just like myself. 





This ride is called Stuntfall and was probably one of the best rides there - definitely in my top two! Check it out on YouTube if you want to see what it looks like in action! Or maybe I can post a video up myself ^^. I managed to get the front seat of the ride the first time I rode it and thinking back at it now, I don't know how I didn't crap myself! I guess you'll only understand what I mean if you go on the ride yourself...but yes, even though I am not the type to get scared over rollercoasters, I was definitely a little nervous on this ride ^__^' 




Typical of these two to have an ice cream break whilst Samra and I went on the extreme rides 'Batman' and 'Superman'! hehe

OK, so as the night went on, the scarier it got. Zombies started to come out and other people seemed to be very dressed up for the Halloween occasion, whereas us? We seemed to have missed the memo ^__< The park looked very pretty lit up! It kind of reminded me of Disneyland! 


We actually queued up for about an hour for this attraction called "Viernes 13" which translated to English is, "Friday 13th". You can imagine what kind of attraction this was...yep, you guessed correctly - a horror 'walk in the woods'! T__T just queueing up for the ride got my heart racing ^__^' 
We walked through in a group of around 8 people and we weren't the only ones who were scared...even the two guys in front of us were holding onto each other! It was quite an experience...people running out of the dark to scare you with blood down their face and charging at you with chainsaws... we ran (literally) out of the exit! I will never do something like this again xD 




The street above was a street strictly for adults...and now I know why. What happened was a parade of zombies came by, lead by a police car. I honestly thought they were just advertising themselves, showing the audience how good their makeup is...until the music stopped and the zombies came to a standstill. We were in twos at this point - I was stood with Slavena and Esther was with Samra further down. Slavena and I looked at each other in confusion! We were wondering why they had stopped and were just staring at us... As soon as the music started again, the zombies charged straight at us! Forcing us to turn and run for our lives...their makeup was VERY good...and it was extremely scary. I mean, we all know they're poeple...but with their makeup and scary facial expressions...I couldn't help but run, run and run. This was equally as scary as Friday 13th T__T 




The last two pictures are shots of the aftermath of going on the main water ride at Parque Warner. It was pretty much a mini 'Tidal Wave' at Thorpe Park, UK. But, I actually think you get way more wet on this ride! We were even warned before the ride to go buy a raincoat first before going on because we were going to get drenched. We got more than drenched and it's a good job the weather was decent so we were able to dry off fairly quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed that ride! 

To conclude, I definitely would recommend the theme park to anyone visiting Madrid. The queues were very good and the theme park itself was well worth 25 euros. They also had a end Halloween Parade at 10:30pm but it wasn't great. For those of you who have been to Disneyland and have seen the Disney Parade, you'll be very disappointed! But still visit the park :) I haven't got pictures of all the rides I went on (including the extreme rides such as Superman and Batman) but you can always check them out on YouTube! 

I apologise that this post has been published again - I had accidentally deleted the original one and struggled to retrieve it. Thank you for your understanding and I hope you all had a enjoyable time celebrating Halloween :)

- Tiffany 




Photo credit: TeenyTinyMui