6 Day Weekend?

This week has been excellent. On Tuesday, Alex, Daven and I went hiking to Montserrat. After our hiking adventure last week, Daven and I were a little disappointed, but we all still had a great time. Montserrat is famous for a huge church that they built on top of a mountain, about an hour outside of Barcelona.

It really is beautiful but was very crowded while we were there. Daven has complained so much about hiking with other people I've started to share his view. There is something to be said about an incredible hike where you see no one for four hours. The church itself was beautiful and the hike was very different that the one we had done previously. I also really liked the cable car ride from the train station to the church. Maybe not worth all the money I spent on that trip but a good day.

Wednesday, there was a national general strike. When I first heard about the strike, I thought the entire city would be shut down. Our university classes got cancelled since the university was going to be closed and there would be no public transportation. I was very surprised at how aware every Spaniard seemed to be. The whole nation seemed to know what was coming. However, when I first left the house on Wednesday, I noticed more than half of the restaurants near my street where open along with a couple  stores. I saw two demonstrations during the day but nothing that seemed out of hand. I did see a lot of new spray paint on banks blaming them for the current economic conditions. While a bunch of us where on a friend's roof, we also saw black smoke in the sky which we later learned came from burning tires. I also found out later about the rioting. Turns out some of these demonstrations got a little violent.

Check it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882404575521034043471518.html#project%3DSLIDESHOW08%26s%3DSB10001424052748704116004575521493516554702%26articleTabs%3Dslideshow

I found the whole strike really interesting. I feel like talking to my home stay brother about the current state of Spanish politics. Things here right now aren't going too well and seeing how Spaniards and the politicians try to deal with it is teaching me a lot about the culture how and how another government works.

Thursday, Daven and I went hiking again. I'm officially hooked. I never thought of myself as a big hiker before but now I'm in love. We went back to Montseny, the mountain from the week before and took a different trail. It's so beautiful up there. The view is hard to beat.

I will definitely be back again. 

Today we went to the beach at Sitges. I loved it. It reminded me a lot of Tossa de Mar, where I went with the fam three years ago. It's a old beach town that has a lot of charm because of the old buildings and small streets that line the beach. It's only 35 minutes from my house so also super easy to get to. The weather was great and I even got a little tan. A win win.