Barcelona!

Ciao!

I know this is way overdue, but here are the long lost tales from Barcelona...

Once Upon a Time,
I decided to travel to Barcelona by myself to meet up with a friend from back home. This was my first experience traveling alone and let me tell it plenty lessons were learned and mistakes made, but its that what the first time is for anyways?

Lesson One: Travel Arrangements

I started looking into purchasing a flight to Barcelona about a month before the scheduled trip, this was a good idea. I found many deals on flights that ranged from 15-30 euro, good deal! However, I hesitated and for whatever reason did not book my flight when I first laid eyes on this deal: BAD IDEA. Instead I waited and when no new deals appeared I settled for a decent flight, but no fantastic deal with the dreaded ryanair (WOSRT IDEA).

Time to Leave:
The day before my trip I looked online at the train schedule from Florence to Rome, since my flight was leaving from one of the two airports in Rome, and found a 'slow train' that left at 6am and would allow me to get to Rome and travel to the airport with a reasonable amount of time: GOOD idea. So I went to sleep with my phone alarm set, ready for a long day of travel, and my alarm did not go off! So when I woke up, two hours after I was supposed to depart, I rushed from my apartment to the station hoping to find a, more expensive, 'fast train' ticket to catch my flight, Decent idea. Thankfully I found a scheduled train that would arrive a the same time the original 'slow train' was supposed to and so without hesitation jumped on board and headed to Rome.

NOTE: CHECK AVAILABLE TRAIN STATIONS BEFORE LEAVING!
Once in Rome, I attempted to find another train or bus to get me to the airport. Thankfully it was not to difficult to find one, and the airport train would only take 20 mins, somehow making me now ahead of schedule: Good idea! However, I now had to purchase another train ticket, if I had checked beforehand I would have seen that you are allowed to purchase a ticket straight to the airport for the same price as getting from Florence to Rome...

TRAVEL LESSON ONE: ALWAYS CHECK TO SEE IF THERE IS A CLOSER, FASTER AND MORE CONVENIENT OPTION TO GETTING TO/FROM THE AIRPORT!

In Barcelona!
WOOO after all the stress I finally made it to Spain, and I actually had a pleasant flight where I may or may not have flirted my way into checking my bag for free ;) Barcelona conveniently has a bus that takes you from the city center to the airport and back, so I hopped on knowing that from the city center I had directions on how to get to my hostel. In the city center of Barcelona a lovely metro system awaited me ready to carry me to my hostel, which had advertised itself as being only 100meters away from the metro stop. Finally almost done. I get off the metro (thankfully I really like metro's and think they are the least confusing method of transportation) and find that I am now in, what appears to be, the middle of nowhere. There are no street signs and no evidence of a hostel nearby at all. OOOH FUN FACT! This is when it started to rain: hard. I walked across the street to a small cafe to attempt to do two things; 1. Remember any Spanish 2. Ask for directions to the hostel. As I tried to speak a mix of Spanish, English and of course Italian snuck in there, I got the guys at the cafe to point me in the right direction of the hostel; which was straight up a hill. Scratch that straight up a mountain. I kid you not I had to climb up a crazy steep winding, some-what paved road to get to the hostel. As I climbed I reached a clearing that I assumed, don't assume anything in travel, was the hostel. Of course it was not and I then had to turn and continue my trek up this now river flowing mountain. Finally I arrived and that night I witnessed one of the most beautiful night skies I have ever seen making my entire rainy stressful day worth it. Unfortunately my camera had died and there are no pictures of that night.

Day 2:
Once settled, Marc (my friend from back home whom I was meeting up with in Barcelona) and I set out to explore the city center, and what better way to do that then to rent some scooters!
--> Pre-departure I had discovered a website that had scooter rentals and tours of Barcelona and needless to say both of us were extremely excited to ride scooters around town.
As we toured around this beautiful city we spotted a "castle" in the far distance up a mountain, so we made the rest of our trip about attempting to get to the castle. We took off on our mo-peds and zipped through some hills in hopes of reaching the top to see this Disneyesque castle. At the top of one mountain we found a great tapas place were we stopped for lunch and enjoyed an awesome view of the city, which was awesome in itself and proved to be the highlight of the day since the castle remained out of reach that evening.

Day 3:
The day before when attempting to take a scooter tour we were informed that you needed to make a reservation for a tour, so we made a reservation for the next day and just roamed on our own the first day. So today we set out for our tour hoping our guide would be able to take us to the castle. When we arrived at the scooter place we found the guys and no scooters. Apparently they had forgotten about us and lent out all the scooters! So they borrowed a scooter from a friend (which apparently was a really sketch guy, I never saw him but Marc filled me in) for Marc to drive, and I got to ride around on the back of a quad with the tour guide driving. After about 15minutes of small talk, our guide figures out that we are from California and his first question/statement was, "You guys smoke a lot of weed huh!?" Little did I know California was a state internationally known for smoking pot. I found this guy very entertaining in a slightly nervous as to what might happen kind of way. On out tour he took us to see Parc Guell, Catedral, and through the Gaudi district as well as up the mountain to see the castle. Parc Guell was my favorite place because it was like real life candyland. On the way to the castle we discovered that it was some sort of theme park with a roller coaster and everything, but has been closed for some time now due to a few deaths. On the way back from our 4 hour tour we asked our guide for a good local place for some dinner and he gave us his card telling us a restaurant to go to that would give us great food and a discount for knowing him. I was determined to try real Spanish paella and I wanted it to be from some place awesome so around 7pm we set out for this local dinner spot. The place was pretty awesome and apparently the paella was delicious, Marc ordered it and I took one bite and almost spit it out, I just cant seem to get into seafood, but my steak and patatas was just as delicious. Towards the end of the night we wandered up and down the Ramblas and strolled through the giant open market and eventually made the trek back up the epic hill to go home.

Back to Florence:
The night of departure I went online to check what time my flight was the next morning, only to discover the shocking news that my flight had been cancelled! It was currently 12:30am and I needed to get back to Florence that day! Scrambling I had to book a new flight, thankfully it was into Pisa making things a little more convenient, but the stress of crappy European airlines being able to cancel on you last minute without warning or re-booking is just enough to make you want to punch someone/something. Eventually I made it home and now I have finally transposed my tales here for you all to read, and upload my pictures to Flckr for you all to admire. I am attempting to get more of these out quicker, but as a student being in Europe easily distracts me and bog posts sometimes come at odd hours and times.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59996287@N04/sets/72157626514603436/