Barcelona Part I

Getting on a train headed to Barcelona was a relief. My day in Paris was great, and I found the French people rather nice and friendly. I thought the stereotype of the French being jerks and anti-american was not all that true, until about twenty minutes into the train ride. Brian and I were talking about what he had done with his family when they came to London, all of a sudden a French guy in his late twenties who was sitting across the isle gets in my face, I stopped talking and he says to me in English, "Oh so now you stop talking about me?" He continued to say that he spoke really good english and knew that we had been talking about him. I told him that we were not talking about him and that he misunderstood what we had said. This just made him more mad, and started showing off his "good english" which mainly consisted of swear words. Not wanting to get into a fight in a foreign country i tried to keep a level head and resolve things peacefully (avoiding the very strong temptation to say thing like - What are you going to do, try and fight me, lose terribly, and then hope some other american comes and beats me up?). I asked him what we had said about him, in response he just continued to shake his head at us, act put out, and swear in english. Brian and I just sat there with this crazy guy who was on drugs staring at us, not able to talk in neither spanish or english because he would think we were talking about him. So we tried to be really nice to him, that really made him mad and he moved to a different compartment. However, during the night when I was asleep he came back and took my water bottle that had fallen behind my seat and drank most of all of it. When I woke up he had already gotten off the train, his plan to get back at me was actually quite effective. It was really hot in Barcelona, and there was nowhere to buy water because it was Sunday morning. Needless to say I got pretty thirsty.

Barcelona was amazing. I loved the city and being in a spanish speaking country again. The first place we went was the Parque Guell. It is a park designed by Gaudi. Lots of cool collage art everywhere. We then went to the Sagrada Familia, a church that was designed by Gaudi that was not finished before he died. We then headed off to the beach. The weather was beautiful and it felt so good to go swimming because the weather was incredibly hot. That night Brian did not feel well at all so his parents got us a hotel room. It felt good to take a shower, which would be my last for the next four days.

The food was great in Barcelona. I had dulce de leche ice cream and churros filled with dulce de leche. The whole time Brian and I talked about how much it made us feel like we were back on our missions. We talked to lots of people from South America, and it was refreshing to interact with such friendly people compared to the majority of Europeans. When looking for an internet cafe we asked a man from Ecuador and he walked 10 blocks with us to show us where the closest one was. While at the internet cafe a couple was watching the world track championship online. So I got to watch Usain Bolt break the 100m world record while sitting next to the beach in Barcelona.

Here are some picutres from our first day in Barcelona.

The beach after all the topless Grandma's left

La Sagrada Familia

Parque Guell

More of Parque Guell