Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Just to let you know why we are so behind on our blogging, because we know the throngs out there are waiting with bated breath for the latest installment of our journeys. We have been having some difficulties with finding internet access, not for lack of trying though, we would have you know. We have traversed Europe and back attempting to find an internet café, simply to post our blogs for your viewing pleasure. Anyway its all good. Wednesday, we were woken up very early in the morning, with loud banging on the door, as chronicled by Char on the previous blog. We headed out to check out the amazing city of Barcelona, stopping first at a local bakery type place that...wait for it...served TAKE OUT coffee!!! This was a very good start to our day! We meandered down to the Mediterranean Sea and touched it because this is something you have to do if you are not a local. Some people thought about swimming and some of us thought about helping them out with that idea, with a gentle shove. No worries, we all stayed dry. After walking around for awhile, we decided to check out the Gaudi Cathedral that Amanda and Char had been pleading to see all week. It was amazing! More on that later. We also went to the Picasso museum and the Chocolate museum but didn't actually go inside since no one felt like shelling out the cash. So we thought that with the money we saved we could, you know, go shopping! Some store owner gave us all communist symbol pins. He actually pinned them on our jackets for us and we didn't actually check them out until we left. We thought that it might not be a great idea to walk around supporting such things since we weren't 100% sure what they even said. "Everyone! Easy pickpocketing here!" for all we know. Back to our hotel we went to collect our bags so we could catch our 6:00 train to Paris. Once there we had a horrible shock! We found out from some cute boys from Seattle that smoking is not longer permitted inside buildings in Paris as of January 2nd! This was a huge disappointment as I'm sure you can imagine. Ha just kidding. We were ready to eat our meals in peace without second hand smoke everywhere. The REAL shock came when we pulled out our tickets to double check the time of departure. We found out that our train was actually leaving in exactly one minute!! Understandably we all freaked out! We had mistakenly read 16:40 as 6:40. So we made a mad dash down to the train station to try and get our tickets changed to see if we catch the 9:00 train that Catie and Maria were on. We met up with the Brown boys and their cousin Marc at the station to return some socks and other items we left at their house. We rapidly blabbered out our dilemma to Marc and asked if he could translate for us to change our tickets. He and Natalie dashed off to see what we could do. Within about 5 minutes they were back. Apparently there was a train leaving right that minute and they were holding it for us!!! So we ran through the terminal hauling our overstuffed backpacks and dufflebags, with a man in a walky talky thingy following behind us, supplying updates to the train, "They are on the stairs right now!" Anyway we made it on board and the train left about 5 seconds later. We were supposed to change to a night train in Narbonne, France but with the later train we were actually able to catch the night train at an earlier stop somehow. So we made it onto our correct train and sat behind some lady with really smelly perfume. And talked to the French guy from London across the aisle. We think he was a Christian because as he left he was wearing a sweatshirt with something about Jesus being #1.
LeAnne