Barcelona

€33.00 for a night train to Barcelona is kind of a bogus situation if you ask me, especially when you already dropped over $600.00 for a Eurail pass. Oh well, we made it! We made it to Barça pretty early in the morning. We were all somewhat out of so it took a while to get our bearings and figure out where the heck we were going to stay. We chose the Barcelona Mar hostel. We were too early to check in but luckily they let us hang out and use their internet while we waited and even eat some of the free breakfast.

We decided to kick off Barcelona right and just jump on a random bus to see where it took us. We ended up getting off at what appeared to be a giant swap meet. It was a huge square with tons of vendors selling and trading books, movies, music, collector’s items and souvenirs. It was fascinating looking at all of the different booths and tables of items. The collector’s items, especially the gaming cards, were the center of attention. We hovered around for about an hour and then decided to jump on the closest metro to our next destination wherever it may be. We ended up getting off right next to the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. This was the monument I was to see the most in Barcelona. The next sight we saw was Arc de Triomf. Very cool.

We returned to the hostel just as it began to rain and called Vanessa, one of our stellar cruise-mates, who was staying in Barcelona at the time. We also made a ton of new friends while we were waiting for her arrival. Little did we know that these new friend would influence the remainder of our trip significantly. We all journeyed down to the beach to hit up all of the cheap deals that the bars had going on. It was nice to be able to drink for next to nothing. All night too!

The next day we went back to the beach Vanessa to catch some sun and do some swimming. We even swam out to the huge wave breakers just off shore which was very cool. It was like our own little island. We then proceeded to journey through a parade that was taking place and then onto the Santa María del Mar. This was the first church I visited along this epic journey. It was well worth it. We then had a bite to eat and said fare-the-well to Vanessa. We went to the travelers bar to get a free diner and met up with our crew from the night before. We went with them to The Black Sheep to get some sangria and then headed off to the bust stop to catch a ride to the mountain behind the city to lie out under the stars and sleep in our sleeping bags. We missed the bus so we decided to bum on the beach since we were already so accustomed to doing so. This was a bad choice. Thieves were everywhere. The guys went to sleep right away while I stayed up and watched. I couldn’t fall asleep knowing someone was going to try and mess with my stuff as soon as I was out. I eventually did fall asleep making sure my stuff was packed in the bottom of my sleeping bag. We were awoken by Ramsey talking to some dude about what just happened. His camera had been jacked! Needless to say, this brought the group morale down a bit and put us in a pissy mood for the rest of the day.

We headed to the train station soon after the rude awakening and boarded our train to Marseilles, France.