Day 6 -- July 4th

  Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Canary Islands
Friday, July 4, 2008

Happy July 4th! No 4th of July celebrations over here, so I'm hoping you all had fun for me. Hope you ate some good ol' barbeque and had some fun...because that sure didn't happen here...we had a different type of fun!

Well, in all of the bus bookings the night before, Toby, the person who was kinda overseeing the whole bus-booking business, ended up being the one and only person whose bus tickets didn't get booked - so we had to wake up at 6 AM (or at least we tried) to make it to the train station to get her a Eurail pass and get a train ticket. I thought I would accompany her, just to make sure she didn't have to ride the train on her own. We actually didn't wake up until 7:30 AM, I guess I'm not too good at hearing alarms...and we headed to the train station.

Breaky on the way to the train station

Luckily, the lines weren't that bad - maybe because it was so early in the morning. After overcoming all of the language barriers (I must say, I'm getting much better), we were finally able to get train tickets for the first available train - 7 PM, sheesh!

We went back to school (after skipping our first class to get tickets) and tried to tolerate class for the rest of the day. After class, I came home and took a short siesta (yayy...I got one!) and then got up around 4 to pick up some things from El Corte Ingles for Toby before we headed on the train. Well, we may have stopped for a quick bite - and it just so happened to be another American spot, let's just call in Burger King, not like you all would know what that was or anything.

I think it's obvious we were tourists

On my way!

El tren

Nothing like American almuerzo!

We arrived at Estación Atocha just in time! We boarded the train - and I must say, this ish is pretty nice! The train is clean, well-kept, and pretty relaxing! Maybe we just looked like tourists, but everyone was sooo nice to us! We got a chance to meet "el conductor" and take pictures with him in the cockpit (is that what it's called?) and attempted, in our best Spanish, to communicate! Besides that, I slept the whole way! I was pretty tired.

While he was driving...

The view from the conckpit!

The view from the cockpit

The view out of the window -- beautiful Sunset!

Conductor posed with us for a pic!

What I did the entire time...

When we finally arrived in Barcelona, it was already night time. We got out of the Metro station and realized that the directions stopped there - so we had to figure it out. So, in our best Catalan - which, mind you, is extremely different than Spanish, we attempted to find out where we were headed. "Ah, donde está el Husa, emmm..." We were quickly interrupted by a "Uh, you e-speake English?" Ahhhhh, yay, we got some help! Their names were Ricardo and Jorge, both from Mexico, who lived in the US for a little while before they came to Barcelona to study. They were really nice, and even walked us to our hotel. We got some digits and told them we'd give them a call back later to find out what was poppin'. We actually arrived just about 20 minutes before the bus folks so we checked in to the hotel before they arrived. Once we were all in and settled in the Hotel Husa Barcelona del Mar (a very nice hotel, by the way), we got dressed up and ready for a night on the town.

We went out to eat and then decided to walk on La Rambla (the biggest street in Barcelona) to find somewhere to go out. Ricardo and Jorge came along until they realized the time (past about 1) and left to go home for work the next morning. After walking up and down the street, asking for directions to "una fiesta" we finally ended up at some plaza that had all sorts of joints in it. We walked around a little bit and were approached by many a hustler trying to sell us some beer in the streets (did you know they do this? - like it's Water?)

So, we do what any other person trying to go out does...scope the lines and try to find the best one. We saw this line for this place called Jamboree - we couldn't really hear any music inside but we figured we'd give it a try. Now let me say, that ish was da bomb! Ya, I said it, it was da bomb! Spaniards know how to throw a good party. It's funny to know how everyone in the world hates Americans so much, yet, American music tends to be the staple! Let me tell you, they played every Hip Hop jam from the 80's right up until 2008. For the 5 hours we were there, we heard it all! Besides being mistaken for a prostitute (I really was wearing jeans and a top - we later learned that's what the prossies wear here), I really had the time of my life! I can't tell you the last time I went to somewhere that good! Muy divertido! (VERY FUN!)

Night on the town.

At Jamboree....so much fun!