A trip over an ocean, to the other side. : This is gonna be a long post.

I have a lot to talk about from my days in Barcelona. Figuring out where to start is the difficult thing because I was able to see so much of the city. 
On Tuesday, Devonne and I decided to explore the "left side of the map", as I called it. We saw a big building called MNAC, which we figured must mean "Magical National Authenticity of Catalunya". It was really neat, but the multiple gardens beside and behind this building is what I really enjoyed. While walking through the gardens, I felt like I was in mini oasis'. They were so beautiful and peaceful, which was a nice change from the hustle and bustle of Las Ramblas (downtown Barca busy with tourists). After venturing through the the gardens we decided to find the free castle. We were helped along by a nice biker who gave us good directions.Most ppl took a funicular (side note: this word was new to me but was used so much as a landmark while I was in Barcelona and Lisbon I had to look it up) but Devonne and I decided to walk up. The road had quite a few switchbacks and I definitely broke a little sweat but it was a nice walk to the castle. The castle had an awesome view or the water and of Barcelona,  maybe even a better view than from Parc Güel. After snapping some pictures we headed to Mussol for some delicious food (that's where I tried ponnet which I mentioned in my food post). 
On Wednesday,  after visiting Sagrada Familia, we headed to the flea market. Alas, the type of shopping I wanted to do (the other stores were just typical clothing stores). This was the place where locals went to shop. So many little stands with so much stiff. I don't know how they put this stuff away at the end of the day because it was pretty disorganized and the vendors just had stuff everywhere. Anyways, it was really fun looking through everything and if I had room, I woulda probably have bought something a bit bigger, so maybe it's a goos thing I just had a backpack. After rifling theough stuff for a decent amount of time, we decided to head back to the hostel for some tea. We decided to watch the Barcelona vs. Paris Saint Germain match (Champions League quarter finals game) at the hostel instead of at a pub because we loved our hostel so much. What a game! Messi didn't start due to a hamstring injury, but they ended up putting him on in with about 30 min left in the game and he set up a beautiful play for a goal. It was mainly staff from the hostel and a couple of their friends, but what a fun thing to do in Barcelona!
Thursday was a pretty relaxing day because we had done basically all the big tourist things and we had walked everywhere so we had seen quite a bit of Barcelona already. We stopped at a cafe that had delicious hot chocolate which was literally just liquid chocolate, so maybe a tad bit rich. After that we walked along the water front and decided to check out a second hand store called Humana, which the owner suggested we could check out. We meandered back to our hostel for some tea and, for me, a siesta. In the evening we watched a flamenco show. There was such intensity in the dancers and the musicians. It was really fun to see and the lady who did most of the dancing was so talented! Kudos to her. 
Friday morning we saw Casa Batlló and went to the flea market again because it was just that neat. We tried to find the beach aftet that, but just ended up plopping ourselves down on a grassy area and relaxing in the sun. We decided to go to the "Magic Fountain" in the evening which is basically a big fountain that is played with music and lights. It was really neat and super busy. We then headed back to the hostel to pack our bags as we were heading to Lisbon the next day.

Saturday, the day we leave Barcelona and enter Lisbon. We didn't have to leave until 4 pm so we wandered around a park we hadn't checked out yet. I really appreciated these times when there were lots of trees because there really aren't a lot of untouched or green spaces at the places I had been to. When we finally said good bye to our amazing hostel staff, and arrived at the airport, the airline said Devonne didn't have a ticket, but we fixed that up super quickly. In the airport we had Catalana Creama Brulee and coffee as a farewell to Barcelona and then boarded our plane to Lisbon.

The end of the trip was fast approaching and neither one of us were ready to be done with Barcelona and to be heading to Lisbon quite yet.