me on a bike? through a huge city?

For our first day of studio our professor took us on a bike ride field trip to look at the site where we will be designing protective housing. Its cool because we only have one project the whole semester instead of three or four, and its just going to be very intensive and thorough. There are students here from Canada, Monterrey, and Clemson. So for our field trip we went with the Clemson students and our professor (36 people) and there is a law in Barcelona that you can't ride bikes in more than groups of twenty, kinda funny, so we had to split up. Ok, so i havent ridden a bike since i was like 15, and even then i was not very skilled at it, so i was SO nervous. I mean i can't even ride a bike well in the country much less than in a city comparable to NYC. It was crazy....but so incredibly fun. We started on this side street so it wasnt too bad, just a few people to dodge, but then we went onto one of the busiest streets in Barcelona (la rambla). I almost got hit by a bus :) luckily i didnt. but there are no bike lanes and there are all these cars parallel parked too, it was interesting. then one of the girls with us freaked out and swerved her bike across the street right in front of me and almost knocked me off my bike in the middle of the street...keep in mind there are all these spanish guys laughing at us, and all these tourists just staring! so funny. Then we rode up this insanely steep bridge that went out over the mediterranean. talk about a good work out and a beautiful view. Later in the day we went to Park Guell which is a famous park in barcelona done by Antoni Guadi. It was our first time to ride the subway...which was fun and not as bad as people work it up to be. we got off pretty much in the ghetto, and then had to go up this hill that was the steepest road ive ever seen with buildings on it. it reminded me a lot of the roads in san fransico but much steeper. it was cool because the part of the city we are in is flat so its totally different. Anyway, so when you walk up this road there are built in escalators out in the open to take people up. crazy. The park is at the top and its beautiful. i bought some aviator sunglasses for 5 euro from a dude sitting at the entrance :) they're really cute! the park is really big and lots of people were there but we just walked through it and took pictures of the pavillion. Then we got lost in the park on the way back, seriously its huge, and we ended up in the forest! it was funny! For the night life we went out to a club that was really cool and fun! one of my friends, anthony, danced way crazy and had all of us about to pee in our pants. good day!