Adiós Barcelona! Bienvenue à Paris! At 6:30am our alarms went off, we ate a quick breakfast of peanut butter on bread, finished packing a few things, and bags in hand, took off to the Metro. Once we got out at our stop, we walked a few blocks to the train station in Barcelona. The place was pretty huge with lots of bustle and activity. Luckily, we already had our tickets printed out so all we had to do was find the right platform. It turned out to be easier than we thought and then we were on the train to Figueres, Spain.

Our first leg was about two hours and at Figueres we switched trains for one bound to Perpignan, France. We had a 2 hour wait in Perpignan for our next train to the center of Paris. In Perpignan, we walked around for a bit down the main drag. We bought some shampoo and detergent for laundry then went hunting for an ATM to stock up on our euro supply. After a fruitless search, we headed back to the station where of course there would be an ATM available. Duh.

We bought fresh sandwiches, practiced our rudimentary French, and watched an episode of Suits as we waited for the train. We boarded this train at around 12:30pm and arrived in Paris at a quarter to 6pm. It was quite a long train ride. We both napped a little on the way and spent time admiring the French country side. I noticed every single cow I saw was grazing out in an open field. Thank you France for being so progressive and providing free-range grazing of natural grasses for your cattle. Healthy cows means better lives for them and better food for us!

When we arrived in Paris we were blown away by the sheer size of the train station. We had to go up about 5 different levels of escalators to reach the city streets! Of course we hit in rush hour traffic and had to jostle our way through the streaming crowds of people. It took a bit to figure out the ticket system for the metro and then we boarded and headed off to our hotel. We arrived only to find the hotel not at all what we expected or what the pictures led us to believe. A little upset, we decided to eat first before we made up our minds of what to do. The closets place with no wait was a Thai restaurant were we paid way too much for way too little.

We left the restaurant and entered out onto the Champs Élysées. The street was pretty crowded for 9pm at night and we were reminded briefly of Barcelona minus the very narrow streets and humidity. All of the stores were still open, even this late, for some last minute high-end shopping. The Arch de Triumph was lit in the distance so we thought we’d walk to it for a look. It was definitely further away than we thought, but we kept going and it was well worth it! Because it was night, there were hardly any people and we had an hour to walk the 280 steps to the top for a breathtaking view of Paris by night!

We stayed on the Arc de Triumph until 11:30pm and decided to walk back to our crummy hotel, cancel our reservations, and move to a nicer one we found a few blocks away. The a**hole at the crummy hotel insisted we pay for TWO nights instead of one for canceling. It was bogus and left us super frustrated. After showers and fresh clothes we feel a thousand times better and are ready for a good night sleep!

Today marks our last day in Barcelona and it was a great day! I woke up MUCH earlier than I have for any other part of our trip so far to skype with family and friends back home. It’s so hard to find a good time to talk with them as we are 9 hours ahead of everyone! I made the mistake of telling my mom I would skype with her at 9:30pm on Wednesday, when I had planned to get up at 6:30am on Wednesday to skype. The problem is 6:30am Wednesday in Spain is actually 9:30pm Tuesday in California! Silly me! Luckily it worked out and I was able to talk to everyone I had planned.

After skyping until 8am, I went back to sleep until 11am and then we got up to begin our day. We had a quick breakfast of bread and peanut butter in the hostel, and then went off to the market for fresh fruit juice and sandwiches to pack with us for lunch. Our plan today was to visit the Picasso Museum. We navigated our way through the Gothic quarter to the museum. When we arrived, the line was a half hour wait and it was boiling hot! We were able to stand in the shade, and I bought a 1€ fan from a vendor to help us keep the air circulating. The wait didn’t seem too long because before we knew it, we had purchased our tickets, stuffed our backpacks in a locker, and were off touring the museum.

This museum houses about 3,000 works by Picasso, mostly sketches done with pen and ink on paper and oil on canvas. Most of the collection highlights his earlier work, leading up to his studies in cubism. With my art history background, I found the museums chronological progression to be quite fascinating. Ryder enjoyed Picasso’s early realist work, but wasn’t too impressed with the small collection of early impressionist and cubist work that quite didn’t reflect what can be seen in his most famous pieces. I feel that what the museum lacks in famous pieces, it makes up for in the quantity of work and quality of his earlier work, including two pieces, Science and Charity and The First Communion, which won him numerous awards in public exhibitions. All in all, it was worth the wait. After we left the museum, we headed to Güell Park.

We had heard that there would be a 3 hour long line to get tickets for the Sagrada Familia and man was I glad we bought our tickets online. The line stretched around a corner and then at least down a full city block more. It was a short four minutes metro ride to the basilica (wikipedia link for those, who like me, didn’t know what a basilica was) and we walked right past the line. We had to pass a school building with a very curvy roof to get our audio guide headsets and started on our tour.

The Sagrada Familia culminates into a masterpiece by the artist Antoni Gaudi who left the basilica incomplete upon his sudden death. Gaudi created this building using his love of nature to drive the development and symbolism of the structure. He wanted the clergy to feel as if they were standing in a forest, so he created an entirely new way of creating columns and vaulted ceilings to mimik the trees and leaves of a canopy. His main focus for the basilica was his love of nature and Christ. His modernist style re-creates a classic form into something entirely unique and inspiring.

The first time you see the Sagrada Familia you have to stand in awe. There are no other options. The ornate detail and the size of the church are too much to ignore. We listen to the background info on the church and walk on in. Even more stunning than the outside and the size is the inside. I’ve never seen a building quite like it and I dare say it may be the most beautiful building I’ve ever been in, and it’s not even finished! Work was started on the church in 1882 and is scheduled to be completed in 2030. There are huge stained glass windows on almost every wall that let in a rainbow of colorful light during the day.

While at the Sagrada Familia, we finally met other friendly travelers! I didn’t think it would take this long, but we’ve been staying at hostels without much common space. We met Chris, Joy, and Mary when we took the elevator up one of the towers. We exchanged photo taking for each other, and continued on our way only to meet up with Chris again after we descended the 400 something stairs in a spiral staircase. He invited us to grab some food with them and we headed on down to a place just across the street. We exchanged traveling stories while Amanda and I split a Paella de Verduras and potatoes in a garlic mayonaise sauce. They are all teachers for an international school in Tokyo traveling during their summer break.

We both enjoyed each other’s company enough to tag along with them to a Flamenco and Opera show on La Rambla. The singing was pretty horrible, and the dancing was OK. The live music saved the experience for sure. Amanda and I both fell asleep but not because the show was boring. We’ve just been having some late nights recently.

After the show, we were starving again, ready to eat the first thing in site, when we found PaTapas. We had another meal with the entertaining and lively group and then split up to hopefully get to bed early.

Today marks our third day in Barcelona, Spain. We woke up earlier today on account of the immense construction project going on directly behind our building. Unlike the U.S., construction here starts at 8am and ends at 7pm. Let´s just say we would not be happy if construction started at 5am. After a walk through the Mercat de la Boquería for breakfast, we headed out to a Lavandería, about 10 minutes away to get our laundry done. We had hoped it was a “do-it-yourself” kind of place, but it turned out to be more of a dry-cleaners. The lady was very nice and took our dirty clothes, telling us in spanish to return at 6 today for them. At least, that’s what we think she said…

Once we were relieved of our dirty clothes, we started to walk to the new Apple store in Barcelona to purchase an ipad for me to do blogging so that Ryder can work from his computer when we have down time. On the way to the store, we ran across the Cathedral of Barcelona or Cathedral of Saint Eulalia who is actually entombed below the alter. The cathedral was absolutely breathtaking, intricate, and opulent.

The Cathedral was built on the original site of a 4th Century small church of the old Roman colony Mons Taber. It was destoryed by Almanzor in 985AD. The cathedral was rebuilt in the Romanesque style under King James II of Aragoon in 1298. The cathedral has 26 chapels, a sacrasty, crypte, and a cloister. Throughout the naive can be found groin vaults which were invented by the Romans and became highly influential during the Middle Ages.

The Saint entombed in the cathedral, St. Eulalia, was born around 290 AD during the time of persecutions of christians. Though just 14, Eulalia proclaimed her devout belief in Christ, in public. She was put to torture with Saint Julia and burnt at the stake in Merida. She is now celebrated as Saint Eulalia of Barcelona on February 12th.

Lucky for us, we arrived in the church just as they were opening it up to the public so we were able to make our way to the roof without having to wait in any lines. The view of the city was spectacular. I loved being up among the gargoyles and stained glass windows!

After our time at the cathedral, we headed off to the Apple store only to have ALL of our cards declined when attempting to purchase an iPad for me!!! Ryder attempted to call one company and they put him through the run-around claiming his account is “under investigation,” but not explaining what exactly that means. After trying four or five times, we had to leave to go back to the hostel to charge Ryder’s phone so that it wasn’t dead when the credit card company tried to call him back. After waiting for the phone to charge, we headed back to the laundry to get our clothes. They were ready for us all nice and folded and smelling so fresh! I hugged the bag of laundry with a big “Gracias” to the woman who worked there. She smiled and laughed at how silly I was.

We spoke with all of our credit card companies to clear up any misunderstandings and were told it was the system at the new Apple store that was causing the problems. Apparently, it was reading all of our cards as fakes which flagged an issue with our companies. We decided to try another electronics store across the street from Apple called FNAC. There we were able to purchase the iPad and a keyboard to go with it!

iPad and keyboard in hand, we strolled back down the La Rambla and stopped for dinner at a small restaurant for some real Spanish Tapas. We ate, drank, and watched some of the olympics on the spanish network. Now we are back and winding down for the night. Tomorrow we plan to visit the Sagrada Familia 🙂

Phew, it’s past midnight on Sunday and I’m STILL writing about Iceland?? Sorry about our lack of prompt blogging, I’m sure it will happen again :)…

Ok so lets start with yesterday…

Our day began with another breakfast of champions and the routine of packing our bags (which we are getting better at). We checked out of our hostel (thank god that’s over) and shoved our stuff into our tiny car for the drive to the Blue Lagoon. This place is definitely a tourist trap, but something you wont find anywhere else so we thought the day we left Iceland would be a good time to visit. The drive down from Reykjavik took about 20 minutes and we arrived!

The main activity at the Lagoon is pretty straight forward – soak in 2/3 salt, 1/3 fresh geothermal heated pools with silica minerals. I have to say, it was VERY relaxing though quite a bit crowded. For 35 euro each, we received a wrist band that would open a locker for us to use and charge purchases on, which we would pay at the exit. It was a very efficient system. We went through the locker routine and headed out into the pools. The area was really rather large with alcoves for sitting, large sections for swimming, a steam room inside a lava rock cave, and a waterfall that delivered a nice upper back massage. There were plenty of people all over the place talking in so many different languages. We floated around, put silica mud masks on our faces, floated around some more, drank a smoothie each, floated around some more… you get the idea. By the time we got out, I was a prune.

We had a light lunch at the cafe and got back into our car, heading back to our first hostel in Keflavik where we had rented our car. In short order the car was returned and we were on a shuttle to the airport, arriving about 2 hours before our flight to Barcelona. Our flight to Spain was only 4 hours and we were lucky enough to be on a flight with empty seats in the emergency exit row. At first, we intended to ask the stewardess if we could switch seats, but when a gentleman from behind us jumped into one of the seats, we quickly followed suit and had a nice, spacious ride.

At midnight, we arrived in Spain! The wait for our baggage was about 20 minutes during which time Ryder was trying frantically to get some sort of internet access so we could plot our course to our hostel. Thankfully, he found that had saved a map that routed our path using public transportation. We grabbed our bags and walked out of the baggage claim and into the main lobby which was entirely empty. At the far end of the airport we found an ATM and pulled out some euros for the bus fare. Then came the hunt for the bus stop. Ryder thought it was to the left, I thought it was to the right. We walked down one end of the terminal, only to have the bus we wanted pass us by! So, we walked back to the other end only to have the next bus pass us by! As we frantically tried to wave this bus down, to no avail, a woman seated in a bench behind us started speaking to us loudly (and rapidly) in spanish and pointed further down the terminal. Ryder tried to ask her which bus would take us to our stop, but she didn’t seem interested in trying to understand his broken spanish.

Eventually, the right bus came and we were in the right spot. Ryder asked the driver as we got on if he was heading to the stop we wanted. He very kindly pulled out his glasses to look closely at Ryder’s phone map, while driving I might add, and confirmed for us that we were on the right bus. He then proceeded to pull out personal bills inorder to give us change for the large ones we had, while still driving. We stood in the back as the bus took off, bumping and clattering down narrow streets going insanely fast! At one intersection a group of people were standing close to the road and jumped out of the way when the bus flashed it’s high beams which it proceeded to do at most intersections. The streets were crowded with people, taxis, motor bikes, and cars at 1:30am! We watched the monitor flash the stops as we passed them, looking for the one we wanted. We got off at a stop next to a highway and a hospital (ie devoid of life) and waited for another bus to take us the next leg of our journey.

There we sat, with our luggage, on the bus bench for 30 minutes. I started freaking out after 20 minutes, threatening to flag down the next taxi I saw thinking the bus must not operate this late! Ryder, calm and collect as ever, told me to relax and give it another 10 minutes. Lucky him, the bus showed up. Another harrowing ride later, and we exited at La Rambla, the main drag in our part of Barcelona. With rolling suitcase and backpack in hand, we walked two blocks down three blocks over and one block to the left. We missed our turn at one point and had to double back. All this time, the streets were crowded with people, all dressed for a night on the town.

When we arrived at the outside entrance to our hostel, we both felt a little shady. The street was a dead-end into a construction zone and it was completely empty with graffiti tagging everywhere. We buzzed the hostel and were let in to a dank and dark marble stairwell that smelled of wet dog, yuck. We marched up the three flights and entered the hostel area that was wonderfully clean, airconditioned and friendly! We have a wonderful room with a balcony and our own private shower and sink (but no toilet, we need to go across the hall for that). We even have clean sheets at this place! By the time we settled in it was 3am, Ryder worked until 4am and then we slept in until 12pm today!!