barcelona part deux

Well, since I handed in my 10 page beast of a paper and I have like a half an hour before my next class, I felt there was no reason why I could not finish my post on our weekend Barcelona. Additionally, in light of the fact that I will probably not have any sort of internet/computer access during the long break (I will be in Italy for a week beginning this Friday), I felt that leaving you all (all 5 of my readers, lol) hanging would be cruel, and I doubt I will have any time tomorrow since I have more work to hand in and then I have to pack (gotta cath the 6:30am bus to marseille on fri.).

Anyway, we left Aix Thursday night at like 11:30PM and got to Marseille at midnight. Since the bus drops you off right next to the station we thankfully didn't have to wander around Marseille in the wee hours of the morning. The Marseille train station was not at all sketchy (I am sure it is a diff story at like 3AM when no trains are running), and so our wait for the 1:16am train to Port Bou Espagne was pretty uneventful.

So our train pulls up, and it looked kind of old, but we weren't too worried since we were going to be sleeping anyway. Well, we get on the train, and there is the guy who starts walking to the same cabin that we are. He peeks in and quickly closes the door. He tells us that there are already people in the beds (there were 6 couchettes/beds per cabin), and so we were like, "uhhh, ok." So we get off the train to make sure we were in the right car, and then we hear the whistle which means you have approxamitely .5 seconds to get on the train, so we hop back on and set off to find the conductor. He explains to us that there were some mechanical failures in some of the cabins, so they had to re-arrange the locations of passengers. So we were put in the last available cabin (not liked it mattered since all the 2nd class ones were the same size/etc), and climbed into our little sleeping spaces. I included the pic of Amanda and I in our little beds in my first Barcelona post, so I won't bother putting it up again. Needless to say it was tiny. I had to "sleep" with my legs bent. I guess I shouldn't complain too bad since I was able to sleep most of the 5 hours to our station, but some of my travel mates were not so lucky.

So we roll into Port Bou Espagne (just inside the border) and stumble out of our beds. With my air pretty atrocious looking we all sat down in a little cafeteria place to begin our half hour layover. Unfortunately, the next train we got on for the 2.5 hour trip into Barcelona was a commuter train type train, and the seats must have been made out of titanium. We tried to stretch out as best we could, but along with the uncomfortable seats there was this crazy lady who spoke Spanish, French, a little bit of English, and who knows what else that was basically explaining anything to everyone. So, a pretty stiff 2.5 hours later we make it to Barcelona, where after a little difficulty we find the metro system and get to our stop like 15 minutes late (yea, metros rock).

So we start heading down towards where we think our hostel is, but along the way we spot this 1 star hotel that looked clean enough and had a great location. We ask about prices/availability and it turned out to be perfect. So we drop our stuff and head out to explore. We walked a good bit, saw a cool (and very tall) monument for Columbus. Below is a pic of Shannon, me, and Amanda in front of it.
This is at the end of La Ramblas (the kind of main pedestrian street) and maybe 300 yards past the statue is the Med. Sea. We then walked around the harbor and grabbed a quick lunch (we hadn't eaten since Thursday night's dinner, and this was like 2:oopm friday). We then took a Gondola ride that gave us an amazing view of the city, but unfortunately I haven't yet seen any good pics that really turned out well (it was kind of drizzling), but it was really neat. We then walked back to our hotel (we were at the hill where a scene from L'auberge Espagnole took place..pretty cool). Oh lol, let's just say that we walked down an, erm , "interesting" street at one point, heh. Then we went out shopping since there were some really good priced clothes stores such as Zara, H&M, etc. I did some shopping and some wandering as the girls were pretty serious about it and it lasted for at least a few hours.

After that we went back to the hotel and showered/washed up and waited for the second group to arrive (Bavo was driving down with Victoria and Louise). They arrived in the early evening and so after we all dressed up (it was Bavo's birthday) we all went out to this really nice restaurant called 4 Gatos. The food was superb, and while we didn't have dessert, we all had a little bit of absinthe, and that was quite an experience (no, there was no hallucinating).

We found a little pub called the Travel Bar that was operated by some British/Australian guys and it was nice cause everyone there spoke English. We got back to the hotel about 2-2:30 as we were all pretty worn out from travelling.

The next day didn't start until like 1:00PM since we all slept in. After walking around for a bit, we split up into two groups as some people wanted to shop and those that had already done that wanted to go some some stuff by Gaudi. It was really neat, and while I have never been a huge fan of modernist art/architecture, the Gaudi stuff was jaw dropping. We visited the outside of the Sengrada Familia (it was closed, we went back Sunday morning before we left), La Predrara, and one other whose name escapes me. He are some pics:

Anyway, after walking around a ton we headed back towards the hotel, but not after walking down what was Barcelona's version of 5th Ave, complete with the uber-expensive designer stores (can you say Louis Vuitton small handbag for 4800...euros!). So on the way back we grabbed a quick sandwhich for dinner since we had to change and head back out. Needless to say, Saturday night was way too much fun and we did not get back in until 5:00am. Can't relate everything that happened cause some people wanted "ce qui se passe a Barcelone, reste a Barcelone." (What happens in Barcelona stays in Barcelona). Suffice to say there was much craziness, and we were pretty beat the next morning, but we still somehow managed to wake up, check out, pack, visit La Sengrada Familia, pick up our bags, and go to the station.

Even better, thanks to Alexis' astute observation that a connecting train from Montpellier to Marseille was running late and our ability to sprint while caring a lot of luggage, we not only made all of our trains, but we made 2 that we were not supposed to have been able to. That meant that we were back in Aix at midnight instead of 1:30AM, and since we still have some homework, that was a really good thing.

Well, that was more or less what happened last weekend...it was definitely one of the most fun messages I have had.

One last tidbit of exciting news: I decided to cut short my Italy trip by one day in order to get back here Saturday morning so I will be able to go to the OM game against Lille. And to think I once mocked soccer, i mean football.