Dónde está la lavandería?

I awoke Friday morning (at 11:30am) to a phone call from Tracy, one of the co-directors of the program, making sure that I was around so that I could let David, my roommate, in when he got here. Good thing she called ten minutes before he arrived, otherwise, who knows, I may have actually been out of the apartment. Orientation was pushed back until Tuesday, so we're all cellphone-less until then, but alas, I was home, and David arrived.

He had just taken a train in from Southern France, where he had been traveling for about a week, and hadn't slept much on the train. He pushed though however, and we left together for our day of exploration.

The reason that orientation was pushed back (and the reason the program is starting a week later than Stanford) is that Spaniards take their Easter seriously. Walking around on (Good) Friday, nearly everything in our residential neighborhood was closed. This posed a problem, seeing as we had yet to buy food for our apartment and hadn't eaten in about 12 hours. So we walked to the touristy areas, got some food, and then, well, kept walking.

We walked for about four hours total, seeing the city from above on Mont Juic (actually "Mountain of the Jews") and walking through much of Beli Goti (Gothic Neighborhood) and some of the other older sections of town. Old Barcelona is a circle of narrow, European streets and alleys and tons of cool bars, restaurants, and, you guessed it, cathedrals that seem to pop up all around. Outside of the old city, including where we live, feels much more modern with grid-based streets, apartment buildings that are all remarkably the same height (about 7 stories), and four grocery stores per block.

It's an easy city to navigate, and with the exception of my one Metro snafu on Thursday night, I've been able to get around the city on foot very easily. With two more days of this long Easter weekend in which everything is closed, we may need to become more creative in how we spend our time, but with each moment I feel more and more comfortable with the city.