In what city & country is your study abroad program located?
Seville, Spain
What is something you would like the blog readers to know about you that they wouldn’t know by just looking at you?
Many people who meet me do not realize the amount of anxiety and self-doubt I deal with on a daily basis. For me, Study Abroad is a huge opportunity to not only face my anxiety, but fight it and put myself into situations that I may not have the confidence to do back home.
What is one thing that you are most anticipating about your study abroad experience?
I am truly so excited to be staying with a Spanish host family. Spanish is one of my minors, and I think that this experience will really help me with my fluency and understanding of the language. Not only that, but I hope to build a cross-cultural connection with my host family. I can’t wait to learn about Spain and Spanish culture from them, but also share my experiences as an American.
Why did you decide to study abroad? or What inspired you to study abroad?
Growing up, I always knew that my life goal was to travel the world. I remember in Kindergarten, we had a cultural day, and speakers came to share with us stories of their culture and the countries they are from. This event sparked my passion for learning about people and my dream to experience many different cultures around the world. Study abroad is my first real opportunity to live out this dream, by immersing myself in a culture that I am fascinated by for three whole months!
If you just have just a weekend in Barcelona here is what you should do.
First start off the morning, grabbing a coffee or breakfast at a café. Honest greens is a great affordable, excellent breakfast/brunch spot. It is like the Sweet Greens of Spain except 100x better. Another one of my favorite brunch places is called Lady Babka. In general you can walk on any street and find a local coffee spot. Or an amazing brunch place. I usually like looking on maps to plan where I want to eat. But there are SO many restaurants in Barcelona, that you’re probably better off just walking by a place and deciding to go in. Everything is made so well and is so good.
Next, I would walk or take the metro to Placa Espanya. Here you can go into a mall, which was once the old bull fighting ring. Take all the escalators to the top. And have a gorgeous free 360° view of the city.
Then from there, you can walk right up to the national Catalonian art Museum. If you go after 3pm on Saturday’s it’s free. You can either explore here or walk around the hills and garden. There are so many free beautiful gardens to walk around, picnic, read or chill. You can even walk into the Olympic soccer stadium for free during the day, where Barca plays.
There is also a really stunning and impressive cactus garden about a 15 min walk from the museum. So plenty to see and do just on the hills on Montjuïc itself. There is usually a street musician and street artist up there too. When I was walking around there was this really talented African duo. They were so sweet and we stopped and cheered them in since no one was stopping. We learned a bit about them, and they asked us how we liked Barcelona. We said we loved it, and they said they’ll make a song for us. They sang this beautiful song about “saying hello to Barcelona” which made me so bittersweet because it was my last weekend there.
If gardens and walking aren’t really your things you can take a gondola ride around the mountain. Or a cable car over the ocean to the boardwalk!
Now you’ve done a lot of walking. Time for tapas. Best time of the day. go to TAPS bar. My favorite tapas place in Barcelona. Nestled in an outer neighborhood 5 minutes away from the museum. This is the ideal spot. Here is the best valued and priced tapas. And don’t forget the sangria. I recommend all the classics, tortilla de patata, croquettes, pan con tomate (or Catalan toast), jalapeños, Spanish style sausages, etc…
Next time to catch the sunset at the beach or head up to Tibidabo for sunset. Tibidabo is a cathedral and theme park at the top of the hills surrounding Barcelona. Make sure to leave 45-55 minutes for this. You’ll take the metro then a cable car, then a bus. But it is so worth it. The hills are stunning and the 360° views of Barcelona are unbeatable.
After this if you want to grab a light bite or take a nap, you have plenty of time to do so and still go out for the night! Most clubs don’t open till 12 or 1. So you don’t want to get there till 1 or 1:30 am anyways. If going out isn’t your thing, you can go get dinner or quickly stop in a Kepab shop or street food spot.
Walking around Barcelona at night is fun because all the locals and crowds are out, as Spaniards are inherently night people. Which is an aspect of the culture that I love.
Anyways that’s all for now! Here are some photos of these spots and my day spent doing these bucket list items! This was a perfect last weekend and I actually got to explore some spots I hadn’t seen yet!
