Full Days and Montserrat

Fridays in Barcelona are great. I have no school, so I can sleep in and then just meander around the city. My neighborhood is great because it's not touristy at all, and I can see the locals just going about their day. All the shops are open and I can wonder around.

As I wondered around on this past Friday, I ran into a a fruit stand and bought 4 of these (I had eaten 2 at the time of this picture) :Oh, and they're sitting on my bed, just to let you know. I wasn't really sure what they were, but they were ,30€ for four, so I couldn't go wrong. I thought they were some kind of green plum. I bit into the first one and juice sprayed everywhere. They were tiny, green orange-things. Tasty, but required peeling the very thin peel. Biting into them doesn't work too well, haha.

Later that day I went to the supermarcado and got some things, including horchata (or-cha-tah). Here's a picture of it and the meat and cheese that I was using to make a sandwich.
Horchata is a Spanish drink and it tastes okay in small amounts. I don't know if I can really describe it. Maybe after I have it more. Very unique. In fact, I'll pour myself a drink right now and have one with my housemate. We'll try to describe it. *pouring*

Housemate: "I really like it."

Beyond that, we couldn't really describe it so we looked up the ingredients and translated them (with the help of the terrible Internet here). It has chufa in it, which is tiger nuts. I still don't really know what that is, but it's what makes horchata in Spain different than it in Mexico (where it's made of rice, I guess).

It reminds my housemate of rice milk, but it is a lot thinner than it looks. Even thinner than the regular milk here. Has a slight minty taste as well.

Okay, moving on, I did some things Friday afternoon/evening, including planning our Montserrat trip on Saturday. This trip included waking up at 7am, which posed a problem. Some of my friends (read Derek) wanted to go to a club. In Spain, you can't really go to a club before 2am. At around 11pm, I decided that I would attempt to take a quick nap, wake up at 1:30, catch the metro, and meet up with Derek at the club.

Napping at night isn't the greatest (and I hate napping to begin with). I got up, passing my housemate who was coming in for the night, and left for the club. I had a lot of fun and left at around 5am when the metro opened back up. Got back to my house at 6am-ish and decided it would be best to not go to sleep. However, by 6:30 I was so tired that I had to.

At the kitchen table my housemate asked how I was doing, and for the rest of the day he would quote what I said to everyone we were with, "Dude, I went to bed 30 minutes ago."

He thought it was hilarious.

I was surprising fine though, and we got the the station right on time and met up with our group. They were friends and acquaintances of my housemate. Not people I would have chosen to hang out with, but it was good to be with new, different people.

As we took the 1 hour train ride, we were all excited to get away from the mopeds and get some fresh, mountain air. We stepped off the train and were immediately disappointed. It smelled out here too. Thankfully, though, once we got up the mountain it was good. The hike was wonderful. My lungs loved it, too.

Here's me on our way up to the Monastery that is halfway to the top
Some crazy stairs
The monastery and other touristy things
Me at the very top. Boy, I take awesome pictures!
Can't escape the Catalonia pride, even up here. It was very foggy and cloudy that day, so you couldn't see to far, but it made for some cool, maybe eerie, photos.
The woods were great to hike through After our hike we walked around the tourist area and the gift shops. Also went into the basilica. Here's a statue of Mary.
I'm not sure on all the details, but apparently someone saw Mary in the mountains back in the day. Actually, I hear all kinds of stories about Montserrat, but basically there's a monastery there with a statue of the patroness of Catalonia.

I also had this Catalonian food called queso mató. I guess the queso mató at this monastery is quite famous. It's "fresh cheese without salt" and honey. Very tasty.

We took the tram back down and then took our metro trains to home. It felt great to shower and shave (something I hadn't done in 2 days. Okay, so I let myself go for a bit there).

I stayed up late enough to see Nebraska win and Oklahoma lose =) and then went to sleep at midnight. Woke up at 10am feeling great. That's what a solid 10 hours of sleep will do for ya.

Now it's time for some homework and studying. Have a great week, everyone!