https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamfan2/123625558/

For spring break this year (called Semana Santa in Spain), I went to Barcelona (Spain), Milan, Florence and Venice (Italy) with Matt, Liz and Alexis. The trip was amazing. It took us forever to secure our tickets, but finally we managed to book a flight from Barcelona to Milan…our way to italy. So we started out from Granada, and took a grueling 14 hour bus ride from Granada to Barcelona. In Barcelona, we got a hostel centrally located in Plaza Real. Plaza Real is abou 10 steps away from las ramblas in Barcelona, and close to all the bars and clubs… it was great.. We even found this other hostel next to us called Kabul. Kabul was a normal hostel, except at night, the cafeteria area turned into an amazing ultra cheap travlers bar/party. So in Barcelona, we spent our nights partying at Kabul and going to different discos around the city, and During the 3 days there we visited the Sangrada Familia, Parque Guell, Joan Miro Museum, Parque Monjuic, Las Ramblas, and saw the GreenPeace “Rainbow Warrior” (see April 13th posting for photo and sarcastic comments). Barcelona was great.

Next, we hopped on a plane and flew to Milan, Italy. In Milan, we spent our 2 days there chilling by the Duomo. Milan was fun, and it had a signifigantly different “business” atmosphere, unline most of the other cities we visited. Another cool think about milan was that there were trains rolling around the city everywhere, on tracks embedded into the cobblestone roads.

Next, we took the train over to Florence. In florence, we stayed with Alexis’ friend Curt for a few days, sleeping on his wonderful tile floor. One of the nights, I met up with Nathlie P, who is living in Florence studying painting. We went out to dinner and she was nice enough to let me stay at her place that night. It was great seeing her, especially in Florence…. Nathlie is the best artist I know. (I’ll let you know if I can get any of her work online) Other things that we did in Florence included stting all of the museums, chillin by the duomo, seeing Michaelangelos David, and partying a lot at a bunch of cool parties. Curt was super nice for letting us stay with him for a few days and he also showed us around Florence.

Alexis stayed with Curt in Florence on day 5 of our trip, and Matt Liz and I went by train to Venice. Wow. Venice was incredible. We found a good cheap hostel room in venice, and spent our 2 days there really just chilling out and walking around. Venice is one of the most amazing cities i have ever been to. There are canals everywhere, and the buildings really are built coming right out of the water. Tourists on gondolas are everywhere, and there is also a venice public transit system, which consists of “bus stops” on the edge of the water, being serviced by large boats which cart people around venice, much like busses or the subway, but on water. It was amazing. After venice we spent 23 hours of continuous travel getting back to granada the next morning in time for spanish class. Amazing.