There are a lot of languages out there... can you speak any of them? Travel Week One, Part One, Spain

Finally our first free-travel week approached on the horizon and everyone excitedly planned, re-planned and talked about their ideas. A couple of groups went to the United Kingdom and a couple went to France (including ours) and a few others split off on their own to visit friends. Our group morphed during the week from including Earl, his lovely girlfriend Natasha, Joy, Bethany, Margaret, Jeanette and I during Spain, to losing Earl and Natasha but gaining Stephen for the Paris portion of the trip. It was fun traveling with different people, most of whom we didn’t go on any other travel weeks with.

The week started out with a bang with a confusing start to our train ride. As we were getting ready to hop on the train, quite a crowd had developed and suddenly the doors directly in front of us had been closed with train attendants blocking them, not allowing people to enter. We were initially just confused, but confusion quickly changed to worry when we realized part of our group was already on the train and we obviously weren’t! Somehow, we managed to squeeze on somewhere and share a seat with someone kind enough to allow us into her personal space. The train brought us to our first of several encounters with the Memmingen RyanAir airport!

RyanAir is a discount airline used by many a starving student, backpacker, and cheap traveler. Surprisingly, though, we saw a fair amount of families and business people on the flights as well. After all, who can beat a 7 euro flight from Barcelona to Paris? With RyanAir though, you get what you pay for. No more. No less. At some point, “If I Die Young” was declared to be the official RyanAir theme song :) Guessing the number of skips we’d experience during landing became the prevalent game. Positively speaking, we laughed in the face of death and won!

From our first discount flight we jumped right into the next adventure: our first night sleeping in the airport like homeless people. Our first of three in that very same airport to be precise. Who would pass up bumpy seats, bright lights and a random assortment of jazz, pop and weird arrangements of Over the Rainbow all night? I mean, where’d be the sense of adventure in missing that? Jeanette and maybe half the rest of the group slept like a log (that was mostly Jeanette)... and others of us (yours truly... aka Chelsea) only wished we could, and rejoiced over an hour or two of shut-eye.

When we decided we couldn't stand sleeping on hard objects anymore, we freshened up a bit and headed outside to the bus station to catch the first bus into Girona. We stumbled off the bus, and valiantly searched for Equity Point, our hostel for the next couple of nights. Our first efforts proved unsuccessful as we walked right past our goal along the river and turned down the wrong street. But thankfully we got on track soon enough and found the place where we met the nice lady at the desk. She was very nice to us and made our first stay away from Regensburg “home” a very nice and easy one. We left our bags with her behind the counter (it was too early to check in), had a bite to eat and went off on our first adventure, to find the old city wall. Thankfully Earl came prepared and he was able to find it fairly easily. What a beautiful walk it was! Misty, a little rainy and very overcast, it left the city below in shrouds of gloomy clouds perfect for pictures and exploring old ruins that looked like they were straight out of Ever After.  : )  (I, Jeanette, was so very happy about that. And I, Chelsea, was happy as well, after I’d seen the movie). After the wall ruins, we walked by the old town cathedral and through the many narrow, windy, streets full of steps and vendors.

By this time, most of us were tired, we were looking at our watches counting down the time until we could check into the hostel and crash for a few hours. The time finally came and we headed to the hostel forgetting about lunch for the thought of sleep. What seemed like moments (but was actually hours) later, Chelsea and I woke up about the same time to a racket of what sounded like explosions and gunshots.  Our first Spanish Revolution!! YES!! What we'd been looking for all along...  Well, after shaking the sleep from our eyes and heads we found that the revolution was just a drum band doing a street performance pretty much right outside our window along the river. After a few pictures and videos, we went exploring with a bit more energy than we had earlier that morning. The highlights of that walk included one of the best gelato shops of the entire trip (I, Jeanette, will say it was my absolute favourite gelato shop of the whole trip, Chelsea will say it was definitely one of the top three.), and the very strange, very sad, very pathetic... John Lennon Gardens. Yes, you read that right. What “thing” they have for John Lennon, we will never know. We didn't really understand the John Lennon part of it.  We almost didn't understand the garden part of it.  ; ) So basically we didn’t understand any of it. And we’ll leave it at that. It did afford a good view of the cathedral from the top of the "gardens" though.

I didn't know it was in fashion anywhere to look like a bloated cow. You learn something new every day!

An old mural map on the ceiling :)

Smoking can kill? No kidding? I don't think most Europeans have heard that news. 

Once our stomachs realized we had skipped out on lunch, we headed back to the hostel to see if everyone else wanted dinner as well and met them on the way out. We went toward a big outdoor courtyard of restaurants we had spotted earlier and picked out the most reasonably priced one we could find. Jeanette and I split a delicious (but very small) sandwich and the others ordered the first of several Patates Braves for the trip (Chelsea’s favorite Spanish dish). We took our time eating and chatting, enjoying the cultural atmosphere. Around the time Jeanette’s and my order got messed up is when Chelsea’s Spanish came in handy so we didn’t get over charged for things we didn’t get. Always a plus on a student budget. Although everyone could have gotten along fine without the use of Spanish, it was fun to use when I could :) Jeanette's language skills were about a country behind on this whole trip.  ; ) But she’ll be up to speed the next time we’re in town.

When we had finished our dinners we walked through the shopping district and were on the look-out for gelato, though Chelsea and I were pretty set on going back to our amazing previous find.  We ended up splitting off from the rest of the group to get our gelato and then met them back at the hostel.  

Next morning, after breakfast in Girona, we set off via train to Barcelona.  We had a hard time figuring out how to get to our hostel and what train/train pass to take/get.  We finally got to our hostel about 1:30 and began the check in process which required a lot of documents and strange money collections.  ; )  Then we had to pay exorbitant fees for sheets, blankets, and locks (if desired) for our "closets" (which were really cabinets hardly big enough for a backpack... but oh well).  After getting all that sorted out and figuring out what we wanted to do,  we decided the beach would be the thing fun, but... we were starving.  So we had lunch.  Good plan. But where to go? The main street just outside had oodles and oodles of restaurants to choose from, expensive, cheap and in between. Finally we settled on a nice place without pictures on the menu, which made ordering fun, because even the main Spanish-speaker of the group was really no help (Chelsea) :)   We got some kind of food... it was good, don't know what it was.  To this day. ; )  

Then we headed to the beach to enjoy the sun and the sand and the water! We were all very surprised at the warmth and peacefulness of the sea. The waves were almost nonexistent, perfect for swimming, and the water was the perfect balance between warm and refreshingly cool. We stayed and enjoyed the beautiful sunset, then headed back to the hostel.

After getting cleaned up (the first step of which was finding the showers, which was quite a task in our maze-like hostel!), we headed out to find some dinner. Earl, Joy and Bethany headed down to the main shopping district, Las Ramblas, while Margaret, Jeanette and I found a new favorite restaurant called Tapa Tapa. It was here that I (Chelsea) quickly discovered my favorite dish (which Earl had ordered in Girona previously), the Patates Braves (Spicy Potatoes) :) Bite size fried potatoes (think chunky french fries) drizzled with an amazing white creamy sauce, enough to make my mouth water every time I look at the photo!  And I (Jeanette) had some yummy Cheese Croquettes (deep fat fried cheesey things :)).  

We got back to the hostel at a decent hour, ready for a full day of sight-seeing tomorrow!

Our second day in Barcelona was full of walking around town and enjoying the sights! We didn’t know much about what to see, but thankfully or travel partner, Margaret, had a suggestion: La Familia Sagrada.  Once we found it there were differing opinions on what we thought of it... It is a relatively new Cathedral and therefore very modern architecture. It was an incredibly unique and detailed building, that incorporated a lot of smaller features within the larger facade of the outside, as well as some colored elements amid the entirely cement-colored exterior. The line wrapped all the way around two sides of the outside, which scared us away from paying to go inside. Earl, Natasha, Bethany and Joy braved the line and price, however, and said it was really amazing inside. Something for our list for next time!  Maybe ; )  The opinions are still slightly divided. However, it is agreed that it was a very unusual building, whether it was liked or not.

After a train station lunch, our next stop was Las Ramblas, main shopping avenue of the city, that led straight to the harbor, where we also spent some time. We took our time finding the actual avenue, wandering side streets and finding camels and strange large... fake people.  ; )

Love the reflection in the window- so perfect :)

After the random findings on side streets, we found a huge indoor market that reminded Chelsea of La Marceta (the market) in Mazatlan. Lots and lots of shops/booths crammed into one big warehouse type building, selling everything from organic food, to fresh meat, to candy, to smoothies (which was our pick). We decided the leg of a cow wouldn't be very useful in a foreign city. Especially with those crazy-strict RyanAir baggage requirements. So we went for the fresh fruit drinks instead. When we finally found the actual Las Ramblas street, we were met with lots and lots people, tons of touristy t-shirt shops, lots of animal shops (as in buy a pet and take it home with you... again... those pesky RyanAir requirements kept us from finding our perfect pets) and weird street performers who occasionally attacked people who got close enough. They ranged from creative to “what in the world is THAT?!”

At the end of Las Ramblas, was the dock in front of which was a very very tall statue of... American hero Christopher Columbus! But wait... he was Spanish, wasn’t he? I guess it makes sense they would memorialize the man who discovered America.  We took some pictures there (with lions, just didn’t climb in front of them this time) and then moved on to the floating bridge. The dock was pretty awesome- very streamlined, modern looking and very fun to sit on the edge of, tempted to jump off of.

A relief of part of the story of Columbus

The creative buoy

Being a very pleasant day we decided gelato must be in order (I mean when is it NOT in order... really?) and found a place that was good but expensive. We were becoming quite the gelato connoisseurs by this point. After finishing that and wandering around the harbour a little bit we wanted to wash our hands from the sticky mess of lovely gelato.  We saw signs for a McDonald's (which, when hearing this word applied in a European setting, please don’t think of your average American McDonalds. Think of your corner McDonalds getting a pay raise (from an hourly wage to a salary)... and marrying a Starbucks and you’ll almost get the picture).  How far away could it really be?  I mean really.  Turns out... it could be quite a ways.  Around the corner and down a few feet doesn’t exactly cover it. More like around the corner 5 times, under a freeway (where I, Jeanette, conquered the skill of climbing up a straight wall), and maybe 500 more feet. Thus we learned that in Europe, the finding of a McDonalds ranks right up there with the finding of an international monument.

The rest of our sight-seeing included walking past the oldest portion of a medieval wall, and seeing the Spanish Arc de Triomphe (or so we assumed). 

After having a final dinner at Tapa Tapa with the whole gang (which turned out to include the only really rude interaction we had with anyone in Spain, thankfully) we, Chelsea and Jeanette, headed back to Girona to get a day earlier flight to Paris. On our way back to the airport, we happened to meet two very sweet English ladies who were looking for the very hostel we had stayed in earlier that week! We were able to lead them right to it, then get on our way to the airport for another very... long... night :) During which... Jeanette slept and Chelsea... kept watch.  : )