Last Thursday I woke up to a stereotypical British morning, all sorts of gray. Blah just feels like the perfect word to describe it; it speaks volumes to the social standing of gray. I borderline emotionlessly meet with eight friends at a bus stop, most of them are excited or at least passionately complaining about all the gray. I couldn’t be bothered with neither the excitement nor the complaining for the moment for various reasons. I was tired, the day before my soccer team at Queen Mary won the league, so I was still coming down from that plus not much sleep, plus all the gray. My friends’ conversations just turned into white noise for me, drifting in and out of contributing to the content.

I wasn’t at the forefront of planning for this weekend. It was more relaxing. I didn’t necessarily know all the information and I didn’t need to. The bus came when they said it would and it was taking us to where we were supposed to go. Good enough for me.

The bus takes us to London Stansted, a smaller airport on the outskirts of London. I really wasn’t as enthusiastic as I should have been. I always love arriving to airports; it means I’m going somewhere.

A few hours later, we were wheels down in Barcelona. Gray clouds replaced with vibrant sunrays, barren trees with palm trees. Here comes the excitement. I found myself in Barcelona where it was just under 60 degrees and sunny, and once I was outside I was just uplifted. The only bad part is that we’d be here just two nights. There was a lot to see and not enough time.

Our first night was a bit lackadaisical. We tried to find dinner at a tapas spot, even though I didn’t know what tapas were, I was still in backseat mode so I was just along for the ride. Unfortunately we didn’t find it, and settled somewhere else. From there we walked around aimlessly for a while just taking in the sights.

The next day was the only day we’d wake up in Barcelona and go to sleep there too; this was the day to see everything. In the morning we walked to the beach then up the boardwalk for a while. Living down the shore in New Jersey, this was a welcomed, familiar, and beautiful sight. I couldn’t imagine how crowded this beach gets when it’s summer. I broke off from the group with two of the guys to do slightly different things than the rest and we ended up walking 13 miles that day.

We saw the Catedral de Barcelona, a cathedral. It wasn’t in the same class as Notre-Dame de Paris as far as cathedrals go, but, nothing really is. Nothing I’ve seen, at least. After lunch we took the underground to Camp Nou, the home of  Futbol Club [FC] Barcelona. FC Barcelona is one of the biggest clubs in the world and their 100,000 seated stadium reflects that quite well. It was like its own suburb of the city. The grounds included an indoor soccer pitch, a stadium where the city’s basketball, handball, and roller hockey teams play and on the other side of that, the FC Barcelona training facilities. Their trophy room was bigger than most homes. This is and has been an incredibly successful club, home to the game’s top player. We got to go down to the field, up to the commentary and VIP boxes, through the infrastructure and more. Of course they emptied us into the club store, hoping to persuade us to buy something. The stadium tour was a bit overpriced at 22 euros [23.89 in American dollars].

From there we walked up a deceitfully tall hill to the Montjuic Caste, a site overlooking both the sea and the city. The views were absolutely incredible, it really can’t be described. Neither words nor pictures could ever suffice. The walk was pretty tough and if we weren’t being so stingy we’d have taken the bus up the hill, but, as stubborn 19 year old guys, we figured we didn’t need any assistance. We swallowed our pride and took the bus down the hill to the village.

The next night it was time to go. Just as I got used to being warm and always seeing the sun, we had to go. When we landed back at Stansted and walked onto the tarmac, it was cold and raining. It was night, so at least it wasn’t gray.