It's been three fabulous weeks here in Barcelona! Time has gone by so fast! We had our final group dinner tonight at Little Italy Restaurante. The service was excellent and the wait staff super friendly and accommodating to our various culinary needs. They served us our drinks and extra waters followed by several delicious appetizers; we were then served a full three course meal with a healthy dessert to complete our final group dining experience in this vibrant city! We all left fully satisfied! Upon taking our walk back to the residence through the Arc de Triumph, we realized that this was our final stroll through these arches until our future visit to Barcelona. We stopped to take lots of group photos for our memories! During these past three weeks, we met some awesome friends that will be part of our lives forever!
Today is our official last day of Spanish Classes. The teachers collaborated together and created a fun scanvenger hunt for us around the city. In Spanish, the word gincana means scanvenger hunt! We competed in groups! They kept posting minutes left on the Abbey Road Students WhatsApp Group. It got really competitive because we all wanted to win the prize!!! It was a fun way to re-explore the city and find some hidden unexplored gems!
Max and Susye surprised us with a Sunday Funday Farewell Party! They booked a private event for the group at a local night club. We were able to show off our singing talents, share the stage with our friends, and just let loose and have fun! We took turns singing our favorite songs until our voices were hoarse! It was a super fun night! Wanna hear about our students experience? Read our student blogs. On Saturday, we woke up early and took a bus ride to visit the mountains of Montserrat. It is a beautiful spiritual mountain and an awe-inspiring geological site! On this incredible mountain range lies a very famous monastery, The Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. We toured the monastery, where Susye bought a candle and made a petition and prayed for our behalf. Our Santa Maria de Montserrat Candle will burn for several days and it will offer us protection and a safe journey home. After touring the monastery, we had a picnic among friends on the beautiful mountain side. After our picnic, we took the Cremallera de Montserrat, a vertical fenicular ride up the mountain and began our hike. The view on top of this mountain was breathtakingly spectacular! Abbey Road Programs Today was officially our last day of classes. Our language teachers from all levels collaborated together and planned a fun, game centered, final lesson for us. We were able to review and apply all our learned Spanish from these past three weeks in a fun competitive environment. We gathered in the Common Room and played a few rounds of Kahoot, as well as, go to the Parque de la Ciudadela and played some competitive language games centered around nouns and action verbs. We also received our Three-Week Program Certificates today! It was a fun final class!
Abbey Road Programs. Tonight we had front row seat reservations to watch a Flamenco Show at Palacio Dalmases! This is a cool historic place for all shows related to the arts in Barcelona. A scene of Cheetah Girls 2 was shot at this awesome venue! Here's a photo of the Cheetah Girls and our very own Abbey Road Girls!
It's been 21 days since we've been in Barcelona. Here are some memories for #ThrowBackThursday. #wanderluster #adventurer #explorer #travelgram #travelblogger #tbt
Tonight for dinner we went to Tucco, a local made-to-order hand tossed homemade pasta restaurant. To help our large group order move along in their kitchen, we selected our choices in advance so the chefs could prepare our personal dishes properly. We each ordered a choice of one non-alcoholic drink, a main pasta dish and a sweet dessert. The pasta was so fresh, made on the spot, using only local organic ingredients. The sauces were also incredibly fresh, made-to-order, and for those of us who have dietary needs they even had gluten free and egg free pasta! Everything was delicious! After our group dinner, we were given free time to wander and explore the neighborhood of Barrio Gótico until our curfew hour back in the residence. It was a fun Wednesday!
Find out more about this program in our website. We had a lot of free time this afternoon which was good because we were able to get our things packed and ready for tomorrow's early departure. About ten students will be leaving tomorrow after completing the Two Week Program. We had a fun group dinner at Divinus in Paseo de Gracia. It is a nice restaurant in Barcelona. It was fun sharing a final meal together and we took a bit of time saying goodbye to each other. The Three Week Program will continue as normal but we will miss our friends who are leaving early!!!
This morning, the students in the Two Week Program said goodbye to their classmates and teachers. They received Abbey Road Certificates of Completion and had a last day of classes with their new found friends. They spent the afternoon packing and cleaning their residence. At 7:30pm, the entire group will have a Farewell Dinner in Paseo de la Gracia. We have bounded and have become a FAMILY! We will miss everyone leaving early!!!
It’s Sunday Funday! We woke up at 11:30am and we headed over to Tibidabo via public transportation. Tibidabo is a mountain overlooking Barcelona. It is the tallest mountain on the Collserola Ridge and it has the most spectacular views of the city and the surrounding coastline. On Tibidabo is an amusement park! It is Spain's longest running and functioning amusement park and Europe's third oldest park. Many of the rides in this amusement park have been in use since the turn of the century! After an hour at the park, it started to rain but we didn’t let the unexpected weather ruin our fun! Some of us dodged the rain by spending time in the Tibidabo Restaurant, while others braved the rain and wore rain ponchos and stayed at the park until 6pm!
After a full day in Cadaqués, we had a group dinner to celebrate Nicole's 16th Birthday and our first goodbyes as Stephen and Scottie leave Sunday and Gabe on Monday. For once, the people in Residencia Onix took the seven minute walk and met us close to the apartment units! As soon as we arrived to the restaurant, the restaurant staff was ready to serve our large party of 32. We could order anything off the menu and we could eat as much as we wanted. Many of the guys had second and third orders of their favorite sushi. For dessert we had a special gourmet vegan and nut free chocolate cake ordered from one of Barcelona's finest bakeries. Most of us didn't even know that it was vegan and nut free because it tasted so good! It was a good birthday and farewell dinner!!!
Cadaqués is a Spanish town in the Cap de Creu peninsula on the Costa Brava in the Mediterranean. It is two hours away from Barcelona and serves as a vacation spot for many people on the weekends. We had a picnic on the beach and we spent a couple of hours playing volleybol, football and soccer, as well as, work on our tans.
It's Saturday and the weekend has begun! We took a day trip via luxury bus from Barcelona to Figueres and stopped at the Salvador Dalí Museum. Our resident art teacher, Sara, gave us an introduction about Salvador Dalí during our bus ride there. We learned about his early life and what inspired his artistic expressions. Once we arrived in Figueres, we were able to tour the museum in small groups. This museum houses one of the largest collections of Dali's work. Walking through this museum and looking at his works of art felt like going through a surrealist dream. Dali's work isn't for everyone but his creativity, use of colors, and imagination is truly impressive. After the museum, we toured the square and bought some souvenirs, including friendship bracelets, as we are get ready to say goodbye to a few friends as they finish the two-week program. Following our visit to Figueres, we hopped on the bus again and took a thirty minute ride to the city of Cadaqués so we could play in the water.
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