"Take a Holiday in Spain, Leave my Wings Behind Me..."

Hey Everyone! Well Lucy and I made it to Spain & Italy and back safe and sound. We had an amazing time, took an incredible amount of pictures, attempted to sleep enough, and saw a bit of Europe neither of us had seen before. Overall, the entire trip was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Anyway, I kept a journal while we were out there, so I’m just going to type it up and put it up here over the next week, one or two days at a time. I apologize as it’s fairly long, if you don’t want to read the whole thing, then don’t! Haha, but seriously, the trip was a ton of fun, and hopefully I can put pictures up in the next few days.

Day 1 (26 March 2008) - Barcelona, SPAIN

Well, I must admit that I am, in fact, writing this on my birthday (March 27), but its still in the morning and we haven’t actually left the room yet, so I can tell you all about yesterday without having to spill into today. Anyway, getting to Spain was relatively easy. After fighting with Ryanair’s ridiculous charging policies, where you pay a fee for EVERYTHING, we finally had our tickets booked, and as the day for departure drew near, we realized that we still didn’t have anywhere to stay! So we got on HostelWorld.com and began our search for cheap and clean accommodation. After a bit of searching we found two places (one in Barcelona and another in Rome) each where we had a room to ourselves. Thank God.

So the night before leaving found Lucy and I packing at midnight, despite the fact that I had to be up by 4am to take a shower to leave by 5am to be at the airport no later than 6:15am to catch a plane that left at 8:05am. Honestly. Anyway, I finally made it to bed at about 1 am, and didn’t do more than doze in and out of sleep for the next 3 hours when my alarm went off and I found myself up once again and in the shower. So 5am we leave and Lucy’s dad drops us off at the London Stansted Airport at 6am, we check in for our flight, go through security, and board the plane (after getting coffee and breakfast!) without hassle. I was thankful for an uneventful trip.

Well, we finally made it to Spain, and I have to go through a different passport control than Lucy because I am not a citizen of the EU (European Union), but she is. So the man at passport control was a bit grumpy, but I’m sure dealing with incompetent foreigners who don’t speak your language all day can’t really be the most fun job in the world. But nonetheless we made it through, got our bags, and attempted to find a way from the airport actually *into* Barcelona. Ryanair, being a budget airline, flies into tiny airports outside of big cities, but they usually have a shuttle service that can get you there. SO we hop on the Barcelona Bus and begin driving across the Spanish countryside. Even in the end of winter with all the trees still dead Spain is lovely. And Barcelona has mountains! They reminded me of home. In fact, it looked like Spain was a mixture of New Mexico and England… however that works. Anyway, besides the mountains, the best part was that the sun was shining which was especially appreciated seeing as we had left a particularly dreary England that morning!

Well, an hour and a half later we pull into the bus station in Barcelona, but as we’d never been there before, and see as how everything was in Spanish/Catalan, we didn’t have a blessed clue where we were or where we were supposed to go from there! So shouldering our bags, we began walking figuring that if we could find a street, then we could figure out where we were on the map. Meanwhile, we’re trying to call the guy at the hostel to let him know we made it so that we can get the key to our room. With the hostel not actually having a front desk, and basically being no more than a rented out apartment, instead of checking in, we were supposed to call the hostel when we got there and then they would meet us in front of the building and then they give you the key. After fighting about who was going to call, I made the phone call (telling Lu she then had to do the calling Italy, which didn’t make her too happy!) and fortunately, the guy spoke English. Also, the hostel wasn’t far from the bus station and we had no difficulty finding it. We had to wait outside for a few minutes because we were early, but then this hot emo Spanish boy came and let us in, showed us around, we paid for the room, and we were set.

The room was perfect. For the price we paid, I didn’t think we could have found anything better. There were two incredibly comfortable beds in a very clean room in a flat in an apartment building on the 5^th floor. Also in the flat is a kitchen, a sort of common room, and two bathrooms, all of which were in great shape and very clean. The only drawback was that we were on one of the busier streets in the city so we could hear loud traffic all night. But hey, you take what you can get, right? Despite the traffic, we still managed to sleep just fine.

Anyway, we got all situated and dumped our stuff in the room and decided to explore the city (after taking pictures of our Spanish room, that is). It was only about 2pm, so we had plenty of daylight left. We didn’t go anywhere in particular, save the beach, but we walked around the side of town we were staying in, in and out of little streets, finally arriving at the beach. Seeing the Mediterranean Sea, even if it was only for 10 minutes in cold weather with cloud cover was AWESOME. Lucy was laughing at me, but I took my shoes off immediately and ran to put my feet in the freezing water. It was surreal; the Mediterranean (and Spain for that matter) is one of those places I’d learned about in school, always wanted to see, but never really thought I’d find a chance to. And yet here I was, running away from the tiny wave, which still somehow managed to get my jeans wet! But Lucy, who despises sand, didn’t appear to be having near as much fun as I was, and it was cold, and my jeans were wet so we sat down on a rock so I could de-sand my feet and head back. As we were walking back it started to sprinkle, but it never properly poured down, which was nice as neither of us had umbrellas.

Making it back to the flat, we were both quite exhausted from the day and lack of sleep, but we needed some food so we set off to find a grocery store and had a bit of a hard time finding one. Finally, we found one, got some pizza, and came back to the room to eat, talk, and sleep. Having no TV and being far too tired to go out, we fell asleep reading by about 10:30 pm feeling like rubbish tourists for going to bed so early!