Barcelona, Spain

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Sunday April 8, 2007 - We left Nice at 5am to head for Barcelona. We finally got there at about 6pm. We immediately went to find our hostel.

Well…we found out that you get what you pay for. We made a reservation for 2 nights in a hostel that costs 12 euro a night. We quickly realized that no one spoke English at this hostel. We were put in a 20 person room with only 2 bathrooms (only one of which was working). Bathroom is somewhat of a loose term when describing what this was. It was a shower stall about 2.5ft by 2.5ft and a toilet. This was all covered up by one big, mostly transparent curtain. It gets a little better… They over booked the hostel so they did not have any sheets for me the first night. I slept on my clothes instead. Also, there was some strange ugly looking dog that would roam in and out of the room. Normally I wouldn’t have much of a problem with this, but this dog liked to chew apart anything new that it saw. Also, there was a girl in the room who was deathly afraid of dogs. Anytime she saw this dog she leaped up on to her top bunk and make noises as if she was going to vomit. It was quite the experience.

The city of Barcelona was really cool. We took a 3.5 hour bike tour of the city. We saw where Chistopher Columbus was greeted by Isabella, the coastline, and the famous Gaudi Church. Our guide once again was very knowledgeable about the city. We learned that the people of Barcelona do not consider themselves as Spanish. They are Catalonian. Their language is a bit different and they also have a different way of life than that of the rest of Spain.

The Gaudi gothic church is still under construction today. It is estimated that it will take another 200 years to complete it the way that Gaudi truly would want it to look like.

Barcelona was fun…especially the hostel now that we look back at it. I’m really glad we took the bike tour or else I still would not know a thing about the city.

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