Saturday, March 15 2008

Aftersending Brendon off at the train station, I went back to the hostel to hang out with the Australians that I had met the night before because I had a couple of hours to kill before meeting up with Hannah.I walked all the way down to the underground station and realized I forgot my ipod back at the hostel so I grabbed the bus back to the hostel to pick it up.I was already late to meet Hannah so I was a little frantic but there was no way I was going to leave my Ipod!Our flight didn't leave London until 6:45 so we didn't get in to Barcelona until about midnight.It was supposed to be our only night in Barcelona so instead of going to bed, which is what we really wanted to do, we went out to experience the night life.We were told that the Spanish stay up all night and then take a siesta in the morning so that's what we were giong to do!Hannah and I took showers after checking in to the hostel and we met some girls that were going out as well.We didn't end up going anywhere until about 2:30 and we never actually found a place to hang out in.Most of our night consisted of riding the metro and waiting in line for churros!Regardless, we had a good time and didn't make it back to our hostel until about 6:00AM.

Sunday, March 16 2008

The next morning Hannah, Eric, and I got up around 8:30 to start exploring the city.We were planning on leaving that night on a sleeper train, so we needed to see as much as possible that day.We decided to rent bikes, so we could make it around town quicker and it was such a beautiful day so it was perfect!We first biked our way to Park Guelle, which I am sorry to say I have no idea what its purpose is.It was really pretty however, and had a great view of the city!After that we headed in the other direction to check out the cathedral, Sagrada Familia.It was Palm Sunday so there were lots of people in the street in front of the cathedral dancing!After the cathedral we looked for a good, authentic restaurant to eat at.We sat outside in the sun and I think I actually got sun burned!We made our way to the train station to reserve our spots on the overnight train to Antwerp, Belgium.It was our first time using our Eurail so we had no idea how far in advance we had to book.We got there and the train that we wanted to take was all full.The man wasn't very friendly , but he offered us an alternative route to take that night.We only had about 2 hours before our train left but we still wanted to see the beach and marina, so instead of going back to our hostel, like we should have, we went to the marina.Our train left at 7:31, and we were sitting on the dock at 6:05, when I finally mentioned that we should probably start heading back.We were a lot further from our hostel than we thought and we chose to take the busiest street in the entire city!We couldn't even ride our bikes because there were so many people.We were convinced we weren't going to make it back but we made it back with still time to spare.We were still all in a frantic mess and it took us probably 10 minutes to hail a cab.We ran to our platform in the train station and we watched our train leave!For the next 2 hours we sat in the train station deciding what to do since there weren't anymore trains going out that night.We ended up booking a train for the next morning, which meant that we just lost a day in Antwerp.We went back to our hostel, used the internet, hung out with our roommates, and went to bed