Journey to Carrefour

So I am going to try to make a long story short because it is dinner time (9:00 pm) and I am so tired! We all woke up super late today... I used to think waking up at noon was late, but today we all slept in til 3! It was funny because my roommate and I had no idea what time it was since our room doesn't have an outside window - we thought it was still the morning! We justified sleeping in with saying that we deserved a full 12-hr night of sleep (yes parents, if you do the math that means we went to bed at 3).

After our afternoon breakfast, we decided that we should go get everything we needed for our apartment. We started off going to the closest store - Corte Inglés, a very nice department store that was a walkable distance from our apartment. Unfortunately, it was super expensive! 50 euro for ONE bath towel?! I don't think so!

We had heard of a local place called Carrefour, which is basically like a European Walmart. We didn't know how to get there, so we asked a woman at a tienda. She told us to walk down Las Ramblas for a while. Following her directions, we did just that. After walking a half an hour down Las Ramblas, however, we soon realized that this was not the right way. We started asking various people where to go, and they all gave us different directions. Not helpful! Finally we consulted the all-knowing googlemaps, which told us that we were now 45 minutes away in the wrong direction. Needless to say, we hopped in a cab (but grabbed some much needed gelato first)!

I definitely want to get to know the metro lines, but I have to say that the taxi rides are actually one of my favorite parts of the experience so far. It has been the place where I get to practice the most spanish, and all of our drivers have been very nice! They all seem surprised to meet Americans that are friendly, social, and interested in speaking the language and hearing about the city. I have really enjoyed getting to chat with them!

When we finally got to Carrefour, it was definitely the place to go. Everything was very cheap and it was a HUGE store! They had everything we needed, although it took us forever to find everything on our list. We cabbed it back home, unpacked, and now I feel like I'm finally getting settled in! What a whirlwind three days.

My little corner of the room, officially unpacked:

Betsy and I have to share a closet, so we bought those little cardboard boxes that you can see next to the closet to store more of our clothes. Pretty impressive though that we both fit most of our clothing in here:

Betsy and I start language classes next Friday, and then our real classes September 27th. That gives plenty of time to explore! Now that I'm all unpacked, it is time to get to know my new city!