Spain!!!

The airport in London was really cool... it was like a mall inside!! The flight on RyanAir to Barcelona went smoothly, but be had a very long ride from the airport to the city itself. We took a bus for a loooong time and then had to take the metro. When we finally got to the hostel, we were all pretty worn out. We wanted to go out, but it just didnt wind up happening.

At first, the language barrier made me uneasy. All those years of high school spanish did NOT prepare me! I knew enough to get by though, and where words failed, mini games of survival-charades worked well!

The next day in Barcelona was rainy. Who woulda thunk that our first day of rain wouldn't be in the British Isles... but Spain!! I thought the rain in Spain stayed mainly in the plain.... LIES!

Anyway, Jen and Dave took that day to just relax at the hostel. Pat and I went out on the town! First stop was Gaudi Park. His architecture is AMAZING and the park itself was beautiful! From the outside, some of the buildings reminded me a little of Dr. Seuss... it was kinda funny!

We went to Sigrada Familia. It's this giant cathedral that Gaudi designed and it's super impressive. Unfortunately, the inside was being renovated so we couldnt see the whole thing and due to the weather we couldnt go up in the tower. boo. It really was beautiful, though!

Next up was the Arc de Triomf. Then we went to the old city, saw some more of Gaudi's works, and had a wonderful spanish meal of Dominoes (yay for Sunday's when nothing is open!).

We went back to the room to nap, then went out to this bar called Chiputos that Drew had reccomended to me. We looked it up online and everything to make sure it'd be open. When we walked up to it, though, it was closed. Fail. I was pretty upset.

OH!!! I ALMOST FORGOT!!!! This is the night that smelly man entered our lives. Smelly is not the right word. Even, "Most horrrific smell we have smelled in our entire lives" is an extreme understatement. Smelly man was our room mate. Jen and Dave had met him earlier in the day and told us they couldn't even stay in the room with him. pat and I were like "oh nooo"... but little did we know.... As Pat put it, his insides were burnind from the stench. And it wasn't even like this guy was smelly then he left... the stench lingered. It was there for 20 minutes after he left (the window was open) when we couldn't stand it anymore. He had taken the elevator, and people getting off the elevator a half hour later were walking out holding their noses. It was BAD.

Needless to say, we got a room change. We also had a LOT of laughs. (Smelly Man, Smelly Man, what are they feeding youuuuuu)

Enough of grossing you out though. We conquered the worst smell we will ever smell. No stench will ever seem so bad ever again!

The next morning was the train to madrid. The train took longer than expected, then we had too book our overnight tickets to Paris. That took FOREVER. It was horrible. The line was forever and a half long! By the time that was done, we had like, 4 hours to go around the city. It stunk, because we were on the opposite side of the city of everything we wanted to do (which wasn't much, anyway). We wound up walking around, getting some middle eastern food for lunch (siesta... everything else was closed, practically), and hanging out on a playground. Luckily the train station had lockers for our back packs. In the park, it was so hot. An old man saw Dave on the bench and made him a newspaper hat... and did the same for all of us! It was really cute, especially since he didn't speak or understand a word of English!

Overall, Spain was not my favorite. If I had more time there it might have been better, but oh well... at least I was there!!!!