Life in Spain: Day 2

---

April 8, 2009
Today we got up around 8:30 for our free breakfast, which consisted of toast, a rip off of nutella, jam, orange juice, milk and cereal. Pretty descent for a free breakfast! We decided to do a free walking tour that started at 11:30, so we had a lot of down time. I took a shower and then tried to organize my locker, which was quite hard because most of the people in our room were still sleeping. We met up early and headed out to find coffee which was not a hard task. Couple of things that I have learned so far from being on this trip: Every other car in Paris and Italy are Smart Cars or motorcycles. The motorcyclists weave lethally in and out of traffic. Every other shop is either a bakery, coffee shop or gelato store. I’m not complaining! EVERYONE in Europe smokes…all the time. And all the cigarette packages say on them “Smoking Kills.” Ummm...can you take a hint?
We went to find coffee and then went to find the Travel Bar where the walking tour would start. We wandered around first, because we were ahead of schedule, which was quite nice. I guess we really didn’t have a set in stone schedule, which made me happy. The walking tour was nice…it was free so can’t complain. The lady that ran it was from Sweden and was kinda strange and asked for a “donation” at the end of the tour….huh. She walked us around the Gothic part of Barcelona and we saw some places we probably shouldn’t go, as well as some places we need to go that would be hard to find on a map. It was worth it AND we got a free beer out of it! When we finished our beer, we headed back to our hostel and had our lunch of bread, nutella and banana and then relaxed for a bit.
I am trying to upload pictures, but it is taking a lot longer than it normally does. Probably because my first album alone is almost 1000 pictures. I didn’t get it all uploaded so that is what I am doing now. Around 5ish, we headed for Starbucks to get some coffee which was well needed. I was falling asleep! Then we headed out to do some shopping and see what the cities had to offer. They are willing to knock down the price, even in stores, not just street vendors. Good to know!
Then we headed to the Travel Bar and ordered a drink. WONDERFUL! I love these deals that people do with our hostel! We got some vegetarian pasta, which was good and free! We had to wait till after 8 to get our free dinner, so we were there around 7:15ish and had our drink and waited till 8 for dinner. We left that and went to this place called Son Brosa, which was supposed to have the best strawberry daiquiris in Barcelona. I ordered a Strawberry Margarita and that was pretty good as well. I paid 4 Euro for that drink, which was SO worth it because the bartender had some left over in the blender and topped me off. This guy came into the bar with this BEAUTIFUL dog. The man happened to be from England, so it was easy to communicate. His dog was a German Shepherd, Husky, Wolf mix. Just beautiful! I took pictures…go figure.
We left there, came back to the hostel and are doing some more chilling. We met some of our roommates, who are very nice. I probably get along best with Sarah. As long as we have each other, this trip will be great! I see me and her being friends for a long time. We get along very well and understand that to have a great vacation, you need coffee whenever possible, chocolate, and 2 scoops of gelato after dinner. SOUL MATES😊 Life is good😊 We’ll see what the weather brings tomorrow; that will decide if we go to the beach or do some more wandering and shopping.
On a different note, our hostel room last night had some interesting characters. I woke up and saw this man, sleeping in his underwear on the bottom bunk of one of the beds, with his HAIRY butt hanging out. Apparently he was making out with someone last night in the room. Thank goodness I was so tired, because I didn’t hear or see anything! Spain is interesting because they have a lot of people that work as street performers. I don’t know how they do it, because they spend A LOT of money on their costumes and then just stand there, looking pretty, hoping someone will give them money. I took pictures, so don’t worry! The weather has been not so good here so far…we need some sun and the beach!

---