We had an early wake up call to catch a bus to catch another bus to catch our plane at Stansted. Ryanair is probably the ugliest airline ever, the whole plane was bright yellow and blue... the overhead compartments were a yellow gradient and they had advertising for themselves plastered all over them. With such a cheap flight we all started to wonder where they make the cuts in the cost. Anyways, we arrived safely in Girona and had to take another bus to Barcelona and then a metro to our hostel. We stayed at Gothic Point hostel which was a great experience, the staff was super friendly (and spoke english) and basically had everything to make your trip more enjoyable with things to do, places to see, and where to eat. The hostel atmosphere was very fun and playful, with graffiti all over the walls and bright colors. We got to our room where the 7 of us were staying in a 14 person room which had very funny accommodations. There were beds together on the ground with a curtain and wall separating you from someone next to you and then there were beds on platforms in the air with huge ladders to climb. Rosie and Alex slept upstairs with matresses that touched, hahaha. There was a girl Erin in our room that wanted to grab some lunch and invited us all along with her, Jeff who was also in our room joined us. Jeff was from Canada and Erin was from Texas. Erin basically turned into our tour guide/translator for the entire trip, she teaches bilingual kindergraten to spanish speaking kids and had already been in Barcelona for a couple days. We booked a table at a GREAT restaurant called Le Creme Canala, I found out later it was one of the top restaurants in our travel book. We learned that night that you have to pay for the bread they put on your table AND on top of paying for it, if you don't eat it they pass it onto the next table, gross. We got back to the hostel and everyone staying there hung out at the tables, playing games and drinking until it was time to go out... which was about 2am apparently. There was euro beer in our vending machine, pretty rad. A couple of us went out with these boys from Colorado to a club called Shoko. We were surprised it didn't cost anything to get in, but I guess they make up for it in the price of the drinks. It had really cool outdoor seating along the beach and inside in the middle of the dance floor there was free cotton candy, so bizarre. So, that was the end of the first night... a pretty detailed account.
To sum up the rest of the trip we relaxed and laid on the beach alllll day long, getting interrupted approx. every 15 seconds by people trying to sell anything, from massages (our personal favorite), to fresh coconut, cerveza, chips, sodas, jewelry, sarongs, tattoos... the list goes on. We decided that you could decide how good the asian woman was at massaging by the type of bag she held her oils in, the ones with the plastic bags were obviously just amatuers. For whatever reason we picked our spot on the beach next to the "bum tower" as I liked to call it. There was this statue thing on the beach where sketchy, dirty bums hung out, it definitely made me pretty nervous, I would use my purse as my pillow so it worked out perfectly. The highlight of the trip for me was our infamous catamaryan jazz cruise, that Rosie had raved about. Basically, the weather was gorgeous, it was early evening, there was a bar and a jazz player serenading us while we sat in the mesh of the catamaryan being entertained by a hysterical stag party. Jill and I went to Park Gruell (Gaudi Park) which was totally unreal. The hike uphill to get there was also unreal, but so worth it. We also did lots of shopping along Las Ramblas, where on the weekend they set up these booths for vendors where they sold all sorts of fun jewelry. They had the craziest street performers on Las Ramblas, the Michael Jackson impersonator and the break dancers were my favorite.
Getting home wasn't as smooth sailings. To make an incredibly long, horrible story short... Laurel got pick pocketed on the way to the airport and then on top of that Laurel and Alex weren't booked on our flight and got stranded in Girona for the night. Our plane was delayed and when we boarded they couldn't take off because "there was an extra passenger" on the plane that wasn't supposed to be there. Only mildly alarming after the terrorist attacks that began happening that week in London. And then when those of us that made the flight arrived in London the bus we had bought tickets for didn't run between 2am-6am and it was about 3am so we were screwed. We ended up waiting in line and buying other tickets for another bus. So basically we were travelling 12 hours, when the actual flight was only 2 hours.... But I still love Barcelona.
No comments:
Post a Comment