Barcelona

¡Hola¡
¿Como estas?

Yeah, Yeah.... thanks to four years of Spanish as it turns out none of it was too useful in Barcelona where apparently they speak some other dialect. It sounds more French then it does Spanish.

So we arrived in Barcelona a few days ago, July 31st to be exact. We took a ferry from Roma to Barcelona, a 20 hour ferry ride. Oh and by ferry I mean a cruise. The ship was equipped with a casino, spa, restaurants and entertainment. I got a pedi then sat on the deck to finish reading my book. Talk about a vacation, it´s the best sleep I´ve gotten yet. The sun warmed me when the wind cooled me, the weather was perfect without a cloud in the sky. I was even able to see the sunrise over the sea. Although, Barcelona is HOT!!!!! This time I´m prepared, fan and sunblock in hand! Let´s see the sun get me now! My sunburn is doing much better these days, in fact my relationship with Josh has reached a new level, he´s been peeling off my skin for me. Sooooo super gross, I feel like a snake now! It´s kinda funny though, cause the only part of my body that´s burned is the front.

Since the 31st, I can´t say we´ve done much. For anyone ever visiting Barcelona, it is super expensive. The city tried to have free walking tours like in Berlin and London but the tour guides were getting things thrown at them in the street. The cheapest hostile we could find was 20€, so of course the cheap travelers we are; figured we could try to sneak a person in since we´ve done it in other hostiles or hotels and there were extra beds in Josh´s room. It would have worked had the guard not asked for our key cards. After we had no explanation the manager came down and was convinced that Josh was sneaking me in for umm... other reasons. The manager was extrememly upset with Josh and sent him to his room telling him if he didn´t go he´d call the police. Once Josh left the manager offered me a room and a lecture. Keep in mind his English wasn´t very good, but I think he may have thought I was a prostitute. He gave me a room next to his office and walked me to bed. I´m pretty sure he slept outside my door, which wasn´t too good because my suitcase with everything was in Josh´s room. No worries though, I was greeted with hellos the next morning, Josh and I made it a point not to check out together. Haha... wow!

So now, we´ve made it to a campsite right outside of Barcelona which is much cheaper, however there is no internet making communication with the outside world pretty difficult. The last few days we´ve made little trips to Barcelona, but no need to travel much since the beach is right next to the campsite and a grocery store about 2 minutes away. In fact Josh and I maybe the slowest shoppers in the entire world. We spent like 3 hours buying dinner at the Carrefour (Europe´s Walmart) and really not buying much. In fact we were so hungry and tired after shopping that we stopped at the McDonald´s next door to have a hamburger off the euro menu. Camping has been a little bit of an adventure with our 20€ tent that I bought in Rome. Since we don´t really have a sleeping bag or pillows, we had to take out all of our clothes and lay them on the ground then put our fleece blankets on top of them. It has to be the worst sleep I´ve ever gotten (Josh is a selfish sleeper taking up our entire tent)! I´ve never been so sore, it´s like sleeping on concrete. Dinner has been extremely difficult since we don´t have any supplies. Yeah we bought food and everything, but we didn´t have coals, lighter fluid, forks, plates, aliminum foil, and a sapatula. So we gathered sticks and twigs for a fire that wouldn´t light, used a branch as a spatula, and tried to recover whatever hamburger meat that didn´t fall between the grill or on the ground. No worries, we´ve been living off of bread, cereal, muffins and Nutella (which Josh swears if see´s me eat anymore of it with my fingers he´s going to vomit!) But it´s sooo good!

Sleeping on the ground is getting easier, we´re getting better at cooking, and we´ve made some friends with some French guys and by we I mean Josh. (I think one of them has a crush on him) Actually, there are more French people at our campsite then Spanish, go figure.

Our day´s consist of sleeping on the beach, reading by the pool (which we snuck into last night and had the whole pool to ourselves!), guitar (I´m trying to learn Free Fallin still) and drinks at night. Now this is the vacation we needed from vacation! Josh is now sitting next to me at another computer planning our next stop with the help of Christina! France, here we come!

(Pictures to come once I get to WiFi area!!!)

¡Adios!

~cheryl