Barcelona y Sitges para Carnaval!

Day 54- 2/25

Last weekend some of my friends and I went to Sitges, Spain to celebrate Carnaval. It is the Spain/Europe version of Mardi Gras. It's a long weekend to celebrate (as in get all your partying out of your system) before lent begins on Fat Tuesday.

We flew from Valladolid right to Barcelona and took the half an hour train ride to Sitges. It is a small village right on the coast of the Mediterranean---Beautiful!!


My first time walking up into an airplane like this, exciting! 

The whole area of Catalonia was filled with French, Spanish, Catalan (technically a dialect of Spanish, but they would really rather be their own country), and English! British English of course, so we enjoyed some of the interesting translations.

We got there right when the sun was setting. Here's a panoramic of the beach!

There were a lot of huge sandcastles that people made trying to make some money on the boardwalk.

We went out the first night for Carnaval. We saw a lot of interesting costumes. Drag is very popular.

The next day we went back into Barcelona and visited the houses of Antoni Gaudi, he was a Spanish-Catalan modern arquitecture.

We went to his cathedral, the Sagrada Familia. He started building it in 1882, died in 1923 and it is still being constructed. It was supposed to be done this year but because of the economical crisis it is being postponed until 2015.

Front. The steeples on top keep getting added to so it keeps getting taller!

Here's a picture of vault on the inside. I didn't go in it because the line was extremely long and I think I would have had I studied his architecture more in school. But the outside was amazing!

             

Here's the back across the pond. This is more of the original structure.

   

 Then we walked around Park Guell. It is another one of Gaudi's works.

 

This is all carved out of the side of the hill!

He did a lot of ceramic tile designs. And a lot with lizards.

 Climbed all the way up to the crosses! Good view of Barca!

More of his buildings. Kinda looks like Willy Wonka!

 Then we returned to Sitges for the Carnaval parades that went from 8pm to supposedly 6am. We spent our last day on the beach! Not warm enough to lay out but very pretty!

  

I guess someone partied too hard? Hahaha.

 Panoramic of the Mediterranean!