Arrived in Barcelona on Monday night after spending all day in the Madrid train station. There’s an interesting system for buying train tickets there; you grab a number and wait until you’re called. For us, it was about an hour and a half….so we did it twice.
The ticket alone was > my daily budget, at 60€.

I called from the train station and reserved a hotel room at a place that was recommended by a place that was full. MY FIRST BARCELONA MISTAKE…

The train boogied along at like 90 mph. It was an easy metro transfer to get to the center avenue, Las Rambles. I had one night solo before George was to come, and figured that the center of it all would be the spot to be for one night. Peter and Ayo couldn’t find anything else either and booked a room at the same place. How could we have known?

So, I show up an hour earlier at the hotel. I’m standing 50 feet from the front door in the busiest pedestrian walkway I’ve ever seen. I call the hotel and the guy sounds like my differential equations professor and is equally incomprehensible. We spoke for about 5 minutes and during that time, with a thick Indian accent, he referred to the street the hotel is on as three or four different streets while I frantically scoured my map…as quickly as he could make up an English word, I would trace my finger in panic motions across the map, foolishly believing I was looking for something that actually existed.

So I hang up the phone and walk 15 paces to the hotel. The nice man has my name as Dank, and even though 75% of my name is correct and I have a credit card of the correct last four digits…all that is just too much of a coincidence for this man. I clearly am an imposter. So began the interrogation.

What’s your room #
-i forgot

Hmmm. How much are you paying?
-i don’t know. When I agreed, it was an amount that I could afford, so I didn’t make more of a note of it than that.

[snickering obnoxiously] so you don’t keep track of how much € you spend?
-are you my mom?

Anyway, using some rather advanced sign language, I cheched into my room. I’m not sure how to describe the smell, so I won’t. I pulled the sheets back to reveal the furry hairball that was my bed. The pillow was in the same condition, and upon further scrutinization, I found a ball of ear wax with a hair in it. So I leave and go out for some dinner. Obviously, the room is for storing my pack while I stay up all night and wait until the next night to sleep. Peter and Ayo agree when they checked in and so began the evening. I grabben my camera and wallet and hit the town…only one of those possessions would be with me at the end of the night.

After a few Irish car bombs! we made our way to a local club right on Las Ramblas with a few girls who joined us for the ICB’s. Good club. Little bit of dancing, and we left around 5 when they closed down. So the 6 of us go back 400 meters to our hotel and I run up and get my guitar and we sit on the avenue and play and sing and lots of people stop to listen and enjoy it. It gets worse.

Here is a picture at that moment>>>

So, I get up to pee behind a bush. I leave my guitar. This woman walks up to me and pulls a tit out of her shirt and asks me if I want some of that. So I’m trying to find a nice way to tell her that I’m not interested when she takes 3 quick steps and grabs onto the thing in my right hand…you know. I’m shocked and tell at her to get the hell away from me and so she leaves. I finish my business and, with a different expression, walk back to my friends. I reach for my camera. The one with the FULL memory card. Yeah, it’s gone. We ran all around and she was no where to be found. Great.

So, we went back up to our rooms and changed and Peter and I went for a great run, per his suggestion. We went out to the beach and back. Come to find out that he was a high school all-American lacrosse player. By now it’s near 10 am and time to get on to finding a hotel room we can sleep in.

Peter, Ayo and I went to the beach for the day. Later that day, George got into town.

Enter George-great friend from LA, and Jill, recent acquanitence from work.

We all met at the Opera bar for some sangria and to formulate a plan for the evening. A couple Sweedish girls came with peter and Ayo and Jill was with her friend Amber.

Went out that night and danced until all hours…On the way out of the beach-front disco, met a few girls from Germany…Astrid (the fire-diving stunt woman), Judi (the pop-and-locker) and Tina(? Shit, is that her name?).
We dance at the next bar until the sun came up. We all had to force George off the D-floor.

Next day was consumed mostly with sleep. We made our way into a huge Dept store in the center of town. We bought a few things. My Spanish is really coming along well. People are so happy to let me struggle through it. This is much different than anywhere I’ve ever been. Usu, people are just as happy to practice their English, but in Spain, and especially Barcelona, most people will work with you. I learned a ton and really got a lot better! Doing the day-to-day there was really a blast.

That night, we met the Germans for a buffet dinner. My next mistake in Barcelona! The dinner was great…on the way DOWN!!!

Here is a picture at the buffet>>>

So, after dinner we go to a couple clubs and dance until the sun comes up…again. Had to beg the doorman to let me in with rips in my pants. It’s just like home…standing there in front of a 300 lb gorilla trying to convince him that 3 girls should outweigh 2 rips in my pants. Spanish must be getting better, ’cause we eventually made it in. We danced until the lights came on and the blister on my left foot from new shoes was the size of a small walnut.

At home, I got about 30 minutes of sleep and at 9:30 had a nice return visit from that all-you-can-eat meal. Probably some meat in there somewhere……

Get a call that morning from Ayo…scooter crash! Just a fender-bender. He regrouped and scootered up above town and explored the hillside above town. George and I relaxed that day and eventually found our way to the beach for an evening sangria.

The next day, we made our way out of town to Montserrat. We climbed way up to an abandoned house built into the high hillside. The place was amazing. There was graffiti everywhere. Old refrigerators, metal parts, debri. The scene was incredible. George shot some priceless video of the scene. Hopefully I can post some pictures I took with the video camera. To get to where we were exploring, we had to take two trains and a cable-driven train than went seemingly straight up the side of a cliff! It reminded me of the cog railway that takes people up mount Washington in Vermont.

That night, we took a nap and agreed not to go out too late…ha.

We met a group of people at a supermarket and made our way to The Black Sheep, aka, The HOT bar. It must have been 95 degrees in that place. So George and I agreed that we couldn’t stay and left everyone and went searching for a new place…never found one, so se went back in to say goodbye and go home…so 3 hours later we’re playing foosball and yelling and having a great time. German girls can’t play foosball worth a damn! ;). I had a great conversation with a woman from Peru yelling Spanish across a table in a that loud bar for about 45 min. At 4 am -cause we weren’t going out late that night-we grabbed a taxi home…

It was really the end of the Spanish leg of the trip but marked a special point for me; I’ve wanted for at least 10 years to be able to spend time in Spain and learn to communicate in Spanish and gain a better understanding of how the day-to-day works there. I value that experience immensely. My Spanish is still terrible, but it improved and I could definitely see myself getting better.

We woke up and made our way to the produce/meat market in town for some food supplies for Italy. Jill met us near noon and it was on to the airport…

Next stop…Positano, Italy…bring on paradise!