takin' it easy in Spain

Well, I am now almost to the last stop of my 5 month excursion in Europe! It is pretty crazy to think that I have been over here for that long. So now I´m in Barcelona, Spain. We have free internet at this hostel, but it runs pretty slow. We stay 4 nights here... 2 down, 2 to go. It´s pretty nice being able to relax and take our time in a city. Most of the time when we visit a city we spend 2 nights there, so that leaves one full day to fit everything into. This way, we get to take it reeeal easy, which was our plan. Our hostel is in a fitting area for the ´takin it easy´ outlook, although it was a pain in the arse to get to! It is way out.. like in a mountain outside of Barcelona-okay not a mountain, a large hill. On the metro, it doesn´t take too long to get here, but their whole transportation system is weird here, so we had difficulties coming from the airport. Once we got to our stop, we also had to hike up a large hill - we took about four turns on the hill and each turn brought on a steeper hill. When we walk it now without our bags we still get incredibly tired and don´t know how we did it with all our luggage earlier-especially my heavy backpack pulling me backwards as we climb up this hill.

We thought the metro stopped at midnight to get back here, so our first night we met up with our two friends, Chris and Laura, who had been here a couple nights already. We had dinner and hung out at their hostel, then Luke and I headed back to the metro-or the FGC - its not actually the metro.. anyways we see the gate is closed when we get there! This was our first night, so we had NO idea what to do, so after some cussing and everything we decided we had to get a taxi.. which was not cool at all because our place is OUT there. On the ´metro´, it cuts through the hills, but in a car you have to go up a hill, down the other side, and up another one... so that hit the money pretty hard. oh well, what can ya do. We got pack to our room and unsuccessfully tried to be quiet. We found out that night that there are 4 kinda old ladies staying in our 10 person dorm, so I´m sure they aren´t big fans of us. It was just a little strange, since usually hostels house people our age. The Youth Hostelling International ones have kid groups and older people, so it´s just not quite the same.

Anyhow, we did meet some guys about our age - 2 from England, 1 from Minnesota, 1 from Indiana and 1 from Sweden. We watched the game last night with them and continued talking and watching The Day After Tomorrow dubbed in Spanish with them. We all had a good time and before we knew it, it was about 2:30 am.

Well, that is a little update. Luke and I have been getting plenty of sleep, seeing a lot of Gaudi architecture, and working on our Spanish tans.

And I will be back in Wichita on July 6...

later