Barcelona

I´ve been in Barcelona since Monday and we leave for Valencia on Friday.  It´s a very cool city.  It´s clean, has tons of stores and beautiful buildings, and the night life is awesome even during the week.  They have a lot of seafood here and it´s been interesting trying new things.  The weirdest thing about the seafood (and I´m sure it´s like this all over Europe) is that it´s cooked and served without removing anything.  It´s a bit uncomfortable when I order some pescado and I have to look it in the eyes before eating it.  I also have to remove the spine and any other bones and tear the legs off of the shrimp.  I´m totally disgusted about seafood by the time I´ve done this so I don´t want to eat it, but I had to work so hard to de-bone/de-skin/torture the fish that I end up eating it anyways.  And it´s always delicious.  But I only eat the parts I´m used to...I´m definitely not ready to eat the heads.
So far we´ve seen the older more gothic areas of the city and a couple amazing buildings from the early 1900s.  We´ve also been to a number of museums including a museum of history, the Salvadore Dali art museum in Figueres, and tomorrow we´re going to the Picasso museum.  Every morning we have a lecture and then we go to 3 or 4 places each day.  Tons of walking, and stairs, and waking up early, and stairs, and eating much later than I´m used to, and stairs, and limited internet usage on the hotel comuputers, and stairs, and staying out really late, and did I mention all the stairs?  I feel like I´m still in Syracuse, except the weather´s perfect here and
there´s no snow. But there´s stairs.

The seminar is a bit of an overload for my body and mind so I´m really just looking forward to moving in with my host family in Madrid.  Only 5 more days!!