I had a day off on Monday as normal and I was still shattered from the weekend before but it was relaxing and pleasant nonetheless. I had my Catalan class in the evening where I made friends with a very heavily pregnant French lady with whom I'm going to be meeting up with now and again to do a French-English language exchange. We went for a drink after the lesson (non-alcoholic obviously) and as there was no common language between the 4 of us, we spoke a mixture of French, Spanish and English which got very confusing but funny at the same time!
Tuesday is my 'full' day. By this I mean I work from 10am until 4.30pm with a 2 hour gap in the middle- hard life eh? The day was good as normal I was told to make a presentation about British film and television which was great fun to make!! I was feeling very nostalgic about and decided to watch a bit of Wallace and Gromit on youtube. Later on in the evening, (young) Maria and I went to the gym to try out tonestep which was great fun and hilarious! I'll definitely be joining this gym after this week as it's about 2 minutes from my flat and not bad value for money.
Sadly, on Wednesday, nothing spectacular happened. School until half 4 and then out to play with my friend Jade. We've found a cafe called L'Occita which serves xocolata defreta which is basically a melted chocolate bar in a cup. Oh my god it's amazing but it's probably not something one should divulge in everyday! Had the Catalan class in the evening again and had my first assessment which I most definitely aced as I'm 1 or 2 classes to low. The reason for this is that I've already studied Catalan at uni but there are no spaces in the classes above me so I have to go at a snails pace until January when I can change. You may ask: Why bother? Well I'll tell you- the classes are free and if I didn't go I wouldn't be speaking much Catalan plus I get to spend more time with my amigas so it's no bother.
Thursday didn't get very exciting until the end of the day when I decided to trek to the outskirts of town to where all the big shops are, to find a Decathlon. I spent a fair bit of money to be fair but it was all practical purchases. After this little trip, I embraced my new stuff and went for a jog around the city (that sounds impressive but it really isn't huge!). Jade came round for the evening but at about 9 we remembered that there was the demonstration for independence whereby 8000 candles are lit in the main square and all the patriots chant stuff about how awesome Catalonia is and how much they don't want to be a part of Spain. It was really great and the atmosphere was fabulous. The reason for this is that on the 12th October (the next day), Spain has a national holiday and whatsmore, some companies and schools will open for a few hours on the bank holiday in protest where the employees/children can make flags and anti-Spanish stuff. This is where the week gets more exciting...we went to Valencia!! The trip got off to a false start as we looked up the wrong train times due to the bank holiday so we didn't actually leave Barcelona until half past 2, having arrived there at 10.30. Either way, we hopped onto the super, awesome, cool, fast train down the coast to rainy Valencia. The day was quite long and stressful but we eventually arrived at the hostel and immediately went out for tea at an Italian restaurant. Valencia wasn't doing much for me at this point as it was dark, raining and full of annoying tourists (probably like myself). Once we were back at the hostel we prepped ourselves for a well deserved night out. We most definitely let our hair down and had a super night (from what I recall!)
Fortunately, the sun was well and truly shining on Saturday so, after a morning and a good hearty breakfast, we ventured to the city and decided where to take it from there. As we were pretty tired (hungover) we thought the best way to see the city would be by tour bus! This was a brilliant idea as we saw everything for 15 euros and met some absolutely hilarious Italian people. The city is lovely and really full of history and culture- the scientific zone, especially, is really magnificent. We took our time over these two tours, as they were an hour and a half each anyway, and we stopped for lunch in between them as well. This took us up to dinner time, so we went on the hunt for somewhere that did Tapas or Paella at a reasonable price. This proved more difficult than expected but we eventually found somewhere Tapas-y and it was lush but definitely did not fill me up! The plan was to go back out on Saturday evening but this did not follow through...we were far too tired from the night before and the day of Valencia-ing and our train on Sunday was at half past 8 leaving us not much time to sleep. It was certainly the right decision to make as we were still shattered on Sunday morning! we caught the train back up to Barcelona and then across to Vic to an awaiting shower and bed! It was a great week and a super weekend and very much looking forward to next weeks shenanigans too.
Ok, I said it was going to be a decent length but never mind. Also, I apologise for the amount and variety of adjectives but seen as the bus tour-guide only knew the word 'interesting' I am trying to be as diverse as possible to make up for her uselessness.
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