The Last Leg

I woke up a few hours later and crawled to McDonald’s for a quick dinner. I’m not proud of this but I was groggy, hungry and it’s the first time I’ve eaten since before I left so don’t hold it against me. I headed back to the hostel and spent at least an hour if not two catching up in my journal. I’d been sitting in the common area the whole time and eventually a guy came up and asked me if I wanted to come over and sit with him and his friends. Turns out they were all studying in Lyon, France and were on their fall break as well. There were 4 Australians (one guy and 3 girls) and a girl from Seattle. We sat talking for a while and invited me to come out with them for the night.

We met up with some of their friends who are studying in Madrid for the semester at a bar and moved around a bit until about 3 in the morning when we headed back to the hostel. They invited me to hang out with them for the rest of the weekend and they were all really cool so I agreed.

Saturday we spent shopping. I was on a mission to buy boots and I succeeded! Finally! Spanish boots of spanish leather. ☺ We made lunch at the hostel and continued shopping. That night we ate on the terrace at a restaurant north of Las Rambla. I actually thought it was pretty bad but they all seemed to like it. My ravioli dish was cold, the sauce was bad and there was very little of it. However I did eat some spicy potatos that were really good but I think it’s pretty hard to mess those up. Then again they messed up ravioli so who knows? Anyway after dinner we met up with their Madrid friends again and hung out in the hotel room before moving the party to a bar. The bar we went to had a forrest theme and was pretty cool. It was a little weird because there was no music…at all. But we had some good conversations going on so it was good. When the bar closed around 3 we walked around for a while before we decided to head home and crash out. I nearly cut off my own legs on the way home because my wonderful new boots were killing me but eventually…slowly…I made it home.

Sunday morning we woke up and headed out to see some more of Barcelona. The first museum we tried to go to was closed and after that our group ended up splitting in two because we wanted to see different things. They wanted to go to the Picasso museum and I was really not about to put myself through that again. (I really didn’t enjoy it if you can’t tell.)

So Steve, Gillian and I went to a parc, whose name I forget, and took a gondola up to Castle Montjuic. The view of the city was incredible from the gondola and from the castle. We could see in all directions and the ocean looked beautiful. After the castle we spent about 2 hours looking for the Cultural Center to see a photo exhibit Andrew had recommended to me. It was a rough two hours but it was well worth it. It was a collection of the best pictures in photojournalism in the last year. It was incredible. I got a packet that described the background story for each picture because all the plaques were in Catalyn sp? And Spanish. These pictures were so amazing, I can’t even describe it. Good recommendation Andrew.

We headed back to the hostel to meet up with Priyaka, Lizzie and Sammie and I got my stuff together because I had to go to the bus station at 9:30. We grabbed dinner at the same place Andrew, Emma and I went to, funny enough, and it was just as good the second time around. I was in a serious rush so I just got 2 plates of tapas for myself, some water and ran out the door before half the table’s food had arrived. I had a blast with the Aussies and Gillian. They were a good laugh and really friendly.

I made it to the bus station in plenty of time and hopped on the bus at 11 pm. Elsie and Elle, from my program, were on the same bus so we caught up on the rest of our week and then I took some tylenol pm and passed out until we arrived in Aix at 6 am Monday morning.

I crashed on Emma’s floor with Elle until my 9 am Art History class because Emma lives very close to the bus station and I live about 15-20 minutes away, Elle lives about 50 minutes away. Yikes. I am proud to say I made it to my class on time and then headed home where Marie T. fixed us a wonderful lunch on the balcony overlooking the East and South of Aix in all it’s fall glory.

What an amazing 10 days it has been!