Oh My Gaudi!

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Our hostel in Barcelona left something to be desired. The girl at the front desk told us there was absolutely NO alcohol allowed and later we saw her drinking wine out of the bottle on the job. We ended up in a room with four boys who, from what we could tell, slept 24 hours a day so our windowless room smelled like dirty boys feet. Also the hostel advertised that it was located 100 meters from the beach, we walked for an hour before we found it. But eventually we did find it and thats when Barcelona started to get better for us. Our roommate from London, Ksenya (the K is silent) met us and will be traveling with us for the next week. On Thursday we walked along the main pedestrian mall La Rambla, got lost in the tiny streets of Barri Gotic the old Jewish quarter, and walked up Montjuic where many of the Olympic venues are. On Friday we had an Antonio Gaudi day. First we went to Parc Gruell, Gaudi's private park that he designed and lived in. It was really interesting but unfortunately it was pouring rain so we didn't get to stay as long as we wanted. After that we went to the Segrada Familia, the cathedral that Gaudi started in 1882 but only 1/4 of it was finished by the time he died in 1926. Still today less than half of it is finished because the arcitects are trying to stick exactly to Gaudi's original methods. The cathedral is enormous and very ornate and we ended up spending hours just walking around it. We climbed up the nauseating spiral staircase and Liz chickened out just 2 flights of stairs from the top! All in all the Segrada Familia was the most interesting cathedral we've ever been to and our favorite spot in Barcelona. Our next stop is Toulouse, France! Also for those of you being crabby about the lack of pictures you'll be happy to know that we're working on figuring out how to work our photo gallery!

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