"These our actors [...] are melted into air, into thin air..."

(-The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1, 148-150)




The RADA program has officially ended, although we still have a few more academic classes left to take before we leave the country. Since we've finished Measure for Measure and don't have to worry about memorizing lines anymore, we decided to go all out.

Similar to Easter in Barcelona, we all had a picnic of sorts in Regent's Park. Since Spain, I've become something of a cheesemonger, so I have a talent now to bring to parties back in the States. We ate, we played some baseball, then we sort of drank ourselves stupid that night.

Final Play of the Week: Romeo and Juliet @ Shakespeare's Globe
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Yep, the full-out Shakespearean experience: standing, minstrels, sex jokes, etc. Overall, I think everyone had a good time and enjoyed the show. The armed combat was a little weak I feel, but you can't win them all.

That next day, for my Art in London class, we ended up taking a walking tour of the City of London, which was the first Roman settlement of the area and now sort of operates in the same way that Vatican City does in Rome.

Some Roman stuff was still left behind, so that was kind of cool to see.

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Now, sadly, there isn't going to be too much more of London on this blog. However, I leave for Venice on Wednesday, so you'll be seeing a lot of other crazy foreign shit up here.

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(Some photographs above provided by Katelyn Manfre)

To Africa with you...I am King of the Spain!

There are over 80 photos here from my 4-day Easter weekend in Barcelona. Please don't read this blog in one sitting unless you have literally nothing else that keeps you moving though life



This was the room at my hostel. It was nice to get a single room and a full-sized bed for a change.

I was a mere few blocks away from the Plaça Urquinaona Metro stop, so getting around town wasn't too bad. By the way, if you've noticed, the name of that plaza is not in Spanish...it's in Catalan, the Spanish-French hybrid language of the Catalonian province of Spain, which is currently trying to gain independent sovereignty; therefore, everything in Barcelona is written in Catalan. 5 years of Spanish in high school and when I finally get to the homeland of the fucking language, I pick the one town that doesn't want to speak it.

Barcelona is also one of the sketchier cities in Europe, with a high occurrance of pickpocketting and creepy dudes on Las Ramblas (the main street, featured above) trying to sell you individual cans of beer...

...anot to mention the countless living statues, the king of whom I have dubbed Creepy Griffon Guy.

Sandwich of the Trip: veal bocadillo w/ tahini sauce, yoghurt sauce, and salsa picante

La Plaça Catalunya is the exact equivalent of Union Square in Barcelona. It's right at the top of Las Ramblas and may very well have been the safest place we've visited. Don't get me wrong...we were sfae the entire time we were in Spain.

Barcelona has it's own Arc de Triomf but the wodd thing is that the arc doesn't comemorate any sort of triumph. It was just like the people who built it went to Paris and thought, "Fuck it, let's make one, too!"

The architecture here was nothing like I'd ever seen before. This is the Palace of Justice, but it looks like the thing jumped out of Atlantis.

It is a very old city, too. They still have some castles and Roman shit laying around, but they're somewhat few and far between.

La Parc de la Ciutadella was probably my favorite place in Barcelona...

...it's just a nice, big park just south of the Arc de Triomf with a little lake in the middle for boats.

They have a beautiful fountain in the north of the park called La Gaudí Cascada, which was under some renovation when I first...I'm sorry, but that a wooly mammoth in that last picture?

Okay...just as long as we got that all straightened out.

The park also contains the Catalonian Parliament. So, if Catalunya ever gains its independence, this will be more important.

The hostel where Tommy, Maggie and Kate were staying was right on the coast, so I decided to check it out and meet them there.

Which coast, you might ask? The Mediterranean. That blew my fucking mind, because if I swam straight out from where I was, I would hit Africa...and I still can't fathom that.

We made 3 importantant discoveries that night: Firstly, we love tapas (which is sort of like a Spanish dim sum). Secondly, we love sangría. Thirdly...

...Doritos has finally made plain chips for salsa. I was stunned.

Sangría is a powerful motivator, so please drink in moderation.

That night, we bought some wine and chilled out on the coast of the Mediterranean until it started to rain. It was here that Tommy proclaimed himself to be "King of the Spain". I'm sure Juan Carlos II doesn't mind.

Barcelona had some very interesting grafitti. Some was anti-Capitalist, some was anti-España/pro-Catalunya, but all of it was entertaining.

Our second day, we took a walking tour of Barcelona and saw alot of cool shit.

This, above, is the first piece of wood Columbus brought back from the New World. It's huge and it's supposed to have been carved out of one piece...not one soild piece, however, because I could see the carpentry seams.

This was, at one point, the stairs leading up to the palace of Ferdinand and Isabellla. No idea what happened to that palace, though.

This is the Gothic cathedral of Barcelona. They only have one, so they didn't really give it a name.

Some of the back-alleys around the site of old Barcino (Barcelona before it was called Barcelona) made me feel like I was walking through Crusadian Acre.

They had the reminants of an old Roman church in a building ...but like all Roamn things today, all we saw were pillars.

This is Plaça de San Jaume...I think...I don't know, everything was in fucking Catalan. We never had any idea of where the fuck we were or what the fuck we were looking at on this tour unless it was in our tourism book.

Our tour guide told us if we walked under this bridge backward and made a wish, it would come true. Personally, I think Iit was a lie to make us look foolish.

The tour guide, named Masar, led us into this little courtyard that included a daycare that got intentionally bombed by Mussolini and the favorite church of Antoni Gaudí.

Immediately after pointing out the church, she tells us that Gaudí was killed by a tram car and because of his dishevelled appearance, people thought he was a homeless man and they just tossed him to the side of the road. I call this "La Plaça de Depression".

The Barcelona School of Art...situated in the former Red Light District, the location where Picasso lost his virginity to one of the five hookers he used as models in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and the stomping ground of a legendary nudist call "The Elephant Man".

It is located on this street. I do not approve.

She led us through La Plaça Reial and into the La Plaça George Orwell, a.k.a. La Plaça Tripi, the drug Mecca of the world. If we needed to buy/sell/do drugs in a public venue, this was the place to do it. She later told us to never go there. Well done, Masar.

When the tour ended, she bought us all beer, which was nice, and we began our plans for an Easter picnic. We needed food, so we went down Las Ramblas to...

La Boqúeria...a gigantic food market with hundreds of specialized mongery stations. I've not see collection of mongers like this in my lifetime; mongers of all shapes and sizes:

Fishmongers...

Vegetablemongers...

Spicemongers...

Breadmongers...

Meatmongers...

Cheesemongers...

Eggmongers...

Nutmongers...

...and the inexplicable pigeonmonger outside of the main market on Las Ramblas. All and all, a great day for mongery.

We took the metro right after that over to La Sagrada Família, a gigantic church designed by Gaduí that has been under construction for over 100 years. They plan on completing it in 2027. Jesus Christ, how much work do they need on one church?

No really, I'm seriously asking you, Jesus...why?

Oh...that's right, it's Holy Saturday. Umm...okay...I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow, then, Jesus.

Okay...how do you pronounce the name of this street without having it sound like "tax-dirt"?

After La Sagrada Família, we walked all the way up to Parc Güell: Antoni Gaudí's wet dream come true...pardon the pun. I only realized what I typed after I typed it.

It was a lovely park, though. It's very hard to describe it in words. That's why I took pictures.

We caught a beautiful view of Barcelona from the park...it just sucks that all of my "city from the mountaintop" photos never come out as good as the real thing.

Parc Güell is famous for its extraordinarily long mosaic bench along the rooftop of this one structure. It was a good idea to build, because it was such a fucking hike to get up there, if I didn't get to sit down, someone was going to lose an eye.

What Parc Güell is not famous for is this little rock tunnel thing with tiny outcroppings that looked like stone nests.

Regardless of recognition, we all decided to play "Dinosaur Baby" in the nests.

Tommy did not like this game very much...we're actors, so we were rather convincing.

Underneath the mosaic bench roof was this chamber of columns. We ran around like idiots for a while and filmed it, then we moved on.

This is what the structure looked like from the outside, complete with mosaic iguana fountain. Maggie liked the iguana. I liked the iguana.

The iguana did not like me.

For future reference, this is what my dreamhouse will look like...minus a lot of the crazy shit.

As we walked home, we caught a glimpse of Mount Tibidabo, with its spectacular church and amusement park. We didn't get to go there, but I would like to in the future.

Easter Sunday. We went to a Catalan mass at San Miquel del Port. Interestingly enough, a big ole' Jesus on the corss wasn't the central statue thingy above the altar, but a big statue of Saint Michael. Personally, I like that better beause he has a sword. Still not happy that I've been to church twice already since going abroad. It's becoming a nasty habit. However, we did encounter an Easter miracle...

MOUNTAIN DEW IN EUROPE! So...happy...

One of the best parts of our trip is when we all rented bikes and just cruised around the city for hours, looking for the best place to picnic.

Katelyn wanted us to go to Muntanaa de Montjuïc...which was a park on a mountain...uphill...on bikes.

Tommy and I suggested, "Hey...let's do anything else but that." So we did.

I led them all to La Parc de la Ciutadella and we had our picnic there. We had white wine, sangría, bread, cheeses, and prosciutto. Best Easter ever. Started to rain...we said, "Fuck it."

We rode around in the rain for hours looking at shit. We found two more things designed by Antoni Gaudí.

I still can't determine whether or not I'm a fan of his work...

This got us rather excited: Shakespeare in Catalan. We were a little aprehensive about it, though, mostly because we didn't understand the language and we had no idea what play they were going to put on. We decided to pursue our curiosity no further.

I call this statue, "Lounging High-Five Giraffe".

We stumbled upon the only remaining bullfighting ring in Barcelona. The sport was outlawed a few years ago, so they no longer do it in this part of Spain. Instead, the national sport of Catalonia is people-tower-making. Not making this up, folks.

Eventually, we hit La Plaça de Espanya, which had this huge palace at the end of the road.

La Palau Nacional. They have a magical fountain show there at night, but we didn't get to see it.

When the day came to say goodbye to Barcelona, I discovered that the train/bus station I needed to get to was literally five minutes from my hostel...which was convenient.

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Let me just say now that I have been working on this individual blog entry every day for the past week now. The intolerable lag created by the uploading of all these pictures made it damn near impossible to write this with any sort of efficiency. But since I've started writing this, not only have I gotten off-book for Measure for Measure, but it is now the night before we perform it and my parents are currently in London. I know they're going to read this, so...hi. I have less than a month left in Europe and before I head back to the States, I've already made plans to hit Venice, Florence, Pisa, Roma, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Paris. I'll probably be in the US, still working on my blog for months.

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It's going to be a bitch sifting through all those photos for Facebook.