Monday, June 13, 2011

BARCELONA! South of France and Rome - **Soon to come!***

It has taken us ages to find a) a computer with a functioning keyboard and b) time to actually produce a post that is complete. In fact, it is merely me, Michelle, tonight because Brittney and Jess were too tired and went to bed. If I don't post now, it will never happen. Okay so last time we left you we were on our way to the Barcelona beach dance club, Shoko. Well we ended up making friends all around us, including, Marco, Jackie, Scott, Dave, Vincent and more! We were guided through the night by a few of the staff at HelloBCN, the hostel we were staying at for our first night. They took us on a bus and we got there and made our way to a separate line where we got free entry. Pause for one moment: they are playing Bon Iver - Skinny Love, in the bar at our hostel in Rome... I am so pleased :) Okay so we got to Shoko, which was this amazing dance club inside (they seriously played the best mix of music EVER). We purchased one FAR too expensive drink and made our way to the dance floor with our new friends and busted many moves. After a bit we got tired and made our way out the back door to check out the patio only to realize that the club was literally on the beach. So we walked out to the sand, sat down, took some pictures, bought a few rando, sketchy beers (5 for 4 euros) from an Indian man walking down the beach, and made more friends with people hanging out around us. By the time we wanted to go back it was around 4am and the club had closed so we saw that the neighboring club was still open and thought that we would give it a shot and try to get in with the stamps we had from the last club (and we failed... miserably). So we took a few taxis home and decided that we were hungry and went on a search for food with half of our group. We ended up giving in to some more sketchy street food and then headed back to the hostel and promised each other that we would meet in the lobby at 11am to go on an adventure the next day... These are the methods that you must resort to when you lack the convenience of a cell phone at all times.

Barcelona (Day 2) - We meet in the lobby at roughly 11am.. and by we I mean, Brittney, Marco, Jackie, Dave, and I. Dave had the idea that we would take the long journey to Montserrat, this crazy mountain about an hour out of Barcelona by train. This was a bit of a financial sacrifice, not much but still, in the end it was so worth it. It took us quite a bit of time to get to the train station to figure out how to get to this alleged mountain and once we finally figured it out, we missed the upcoming train ride by approximately 2 minutes, and mind you, the train for this comes only once an hour. So to kill time, we emerged out of the metro station and explored the bull fighting ring converted to mall, ate crepes and other goodies and then ironically almost missed the train again. We finally made our way there and piled into the gondola and made our way up the mountain. Of course, to our dismay especially due to the lack of preparation in the area of attire, it began to pour down rain. Most of us are wearing jean shorts and tank tops. Super unfortunate. BUT, we were not going to let this ruin our trip, so we pressed on and explored all the glory that is Monserrat, including, the gorgeous hiking trails, views down the canyon, the lift to the top of the mountain, the monestary and the gift shop where we bought copious amounts of Haribo gummy bears to sustain us on our trip. We took our time but began to get a little tired and sick of being cold and wet in the rain so we headed home. Once we got back, Brittney and I picked up our bags from the hostel and made the trek to check into our new hostel, Sant Jordi Alberg, before we were going to meet up again with the crew for dinner at Cuidad Condal (a recommendation from both Scott Urata and Deborah Gunther). We got there, after a bit of confusion with directions and completely fell in love with the hostel. We actually ended up staying there soley because of a recommendation from the girls we met at St. Christophers in Paris. They told us that it was their favorite hostel of their entire trip. It was so perfect, it is hard to explain. So we quickly got ready and asked the recptionist where Cuidad Condal was and he explained that it was SUPER close to our hostel and that we should tell our friends to meet us here. Well due to the lack of communication ability between our friend groups we decided to attempt to communicate via the hostel  receptionists. We had our hostel call HelloBCN and we explained to give a message to Dave to meet us by the metro exit as soon as possible because it was closer. Mind you, there was a language speaking barrier and just a general lack of communication therefore our hope of actually making this work was pretty low. However, low and behold one or two minutes after we arrived at the metro, our 3 new friends emerged, ascending the escalators. We proceeded to the restaurant where we ate, up to the point, one of the best meals of the whole trip. Absolutely incredible, and cheap! Afterwards we convinced everyone to come with us to go out with the people from our new hostel that we met and on our way, treking through the rain we saw the group on their way and decided to forgo changing and just hop along with the group, who was heading to an absinthe bar. After about an hour of getting totally lost, and stopping in a rando bar along the way to have a beer, we finally made it there, and partied it up with the green fairy. Actually it was no different than any other alcohol except that it was stronger. After fun times here, we ended up at Jamboree, another crazy Barcelona club and we danced, or at least I danced like a fool until 4:30am.

Barcelona (Day 3) - We decided to sleep in for quite a bit because of our crazy night and it took us forever to get out of bed. One of the boys, Bryan decided to make us the BEST breakfast we had the whole trip and we pretty much cooked for the entire hostel and we all gathered and ate eggs, bacon, and toast in the community dining area. Britt and I were still tired so we crawled back in bed and were woken up about an hour and a half later by the sound of dance music in the room next door. I wasn't even mad. I was so excited about great music and jumped out of bed to dance with our new friends, Dan, Max and others. We hung out with them for a while and they started talking about how they were going to fly to Ibiza that night to stay for 2 nights to see Afrojack that night and David Guetta the next. They told us to come with them and proceeded to thoroughly convince us that we would be missing the biggest opportunity of our lives if we did not log onto kayak.com and buy the tickets to the flight they were on that night. We were pretty much sold and only needed to head to the train station to change our tickets to Cannes. So I went to the room, put on a jacket, grabbed my purse and checked to see that I had everything, but low and behold... "Oh my gosh... Wait guys.... I'm about to freak out.... I'm about to freak out" "What's wrong, Michelle?" "I can't find my Eurail pass..." And here begins the end of my happiness and relaxation of vacation. I transformed from being the most excited and eager person in Europe, ready to party in Ibiza, dance all night to Afrojack and David Guetta and make memories that would last a lifetime with some of the most fun people we had met on our trip so far and then my world and dreams crumble. I began, just utterly sobbing after ravaging through every single  nook and cranny of my things and everyone elses and realizing that my pass was truly gone. This began a series of events... called Mom, cried and explained how stupid I am and how sorry I am and tried to figure out what to due, realized that the process was really going to suck to be able to do anything about the lost pass, realized that "On Trak Protection" means ab-so-lutely nothing, and then regained composure and made my way to the police station to get an official police report (the first step in the painful process). After an hour ordeal Britt and I headed back to Cuidad Condal to drink and eat and forget about how our dreams were crushed and how we had wasted so many hours of the day on my stupidity. We still had yet to see anything in Barcelona so we hopped on the train to see La Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, and then make our way back to the hostel. Everything we saw was absolutely gorgeous and we have the photos to prove it. Once we got back to the hostel, after using our Spanish skills to get directions, we freshened up and made friends with all the new people that replaced our Ibiza-bound friends. We played a few drinking games and then headed up with the staff people at the hostel on a sort of bar crawl and ended up partying at another beach club till the wee hours of the morning. We had to get up super early to catch a train in the morning and we all somehow pulled it together and got there perfectly on time and everything worked out. Okay well it is literally 3:41am and I neeeeeed sleep. We have to check out at 10am and our train is at 12 something to Interlaken. I will tell you all about the glory that is the South of France and Rome so so very soon. It's all too much for now.

Arrivederchi!

1 comment:

  1. Oh Michelle :( Your Eurail pass didn't happen to be in your silver card case did it!? Because that would explain it... ok, sorry, not so funny.
    But on a better note- take lots of VIDEOS! Trust me, you'll be happy you did when its all over.

    Have fun!

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