I was able to take a tour of this my first week in Barcelona. During this tour, we went through one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. From interacting with the tour guide about this area, I was able to learn that this community got together and created a community garden to help get there neighborhood out of a dump. Along with this, I was able to talk to a business owner at a restaurant about how some of the businesses on this street help give there profits to the neighborhood to better it. This was my favorite part about it because this restaurant made their own beer that was some of the best beer I have ever had. Around 266,874 people live in this district, which is huge compared to the other districts I checked out. The other two districts were around twenty five thousand people. A lot of the people around this district are poor but they all help support each other to better their neighborhood. Apartments here range from 200,000 thousand to over 1,000,000 in this district which is huge compared to the other districts that I visited. Here are some pictures from my adventure into this district.

Las Ramblas is the number one tourist destination in Barcelona. It did not disappoint, and was everything that I imagined it to be. This street was a cool area to check out and had a lot of cool shops and restaurants along it, including the best Ice cream shop I have ever had. Like my last area, I was not really able to interact with anybody due to language barrier, which resulted in locals being rude to me. According to sources online, around 20,000-25,000 people live in this area. This is similar to the population of Barceloneta. The characteristics of this neighborhood is that it is more touristy than actual locals.The reason for this is that this is the most visited area of all of Barcelona.Therefore, this makes it a hot spot for great restaurants and places to sell cool trinkets at. From what I could tell for cost of living here is that it was around 400,000-500,000 for a 2 room apartment here, making it a little bit more expensive then the beach area of Barcelona.

District #1 Barceloneta

This district in Barcelona is the beach portion of the city. It is a very touristy part of Barcelona and has a lot of great restaurants and bars to enjoy. When heading over to the beach , I was expecting a small area around a harbor that would have a few restaurants. I ended up being happy with my experience due to the fact that it had more of a beach town feel, with lots of people everywhere. Besides just the restaurants, there are vendors everywhere that were selling knockoff items such as Gucci and Ray Band. My favorite part about this area was the fact that there was a casino right on the beach. The total population of this district is 24,508 people. The people around here were rude to me when I tried to talk to me. I do not know any Catalan, so when trying to communicate with locals, they could not fully understand me and ended up treating me in a rude way. From what I could tell about the cultural customs in this district, was that everyone here was a big beach body, and that the people that worked around here were mainly vendors that tried to sell things to tourist. The cost of getting an apartment near the beach here from what I could see was around 300,000 Euro’s for a 1-2 bedroom apartment. Here are some pictures from my excursion into this neighborhood.

              Barcelona is a city that I have wanted to see for many years now. Research has shown that a lot of people think that the residents of Spain speak the same form of Spanish as Spanish people from Mexico. This is in fact false, because people that live in Spain speak Catalan. This will be my first month of three months in Europe studying abroad. I have never been to Europe before so this first week has been a huge lifestyle change. So far, it has been a struggle to communicate with people since this is the first time that I have been in a place where English is not the main language. Throughout my first few days here, I was able to see many interesting sites. The first thing that I was able to see was the number one tourist attraction in Barcelona, Las Ramblas. Las Ramblas is a huge road that spans over a mile with hundreds of shops and places to eat. Next to Las Ramblas is a huge covered market that has fresh food that you can buy. I was able to eat lunch here on my first day in Barcelona and it was phenomenal. Another thing that I got to see so far was the Gothic church. This church has blown my mind with the stunning architecture that was used for its design. So far Barcelona has had some of the best food that I have ever had, and I cannot wait to see what else there is to try. These next three weeks in Barcelona will be life changing, and I am looking forward to every moment of it.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton