Last leg of the trip: Barcelona

We almost missed the morning train to Barcelona on Friday because for some reason we thought it left at 10:30 a.m., but no it was at 9:20 a.m.. So at 9 a.m. when Andy checked his ticket we freaked, threw everything in the suitcase and RAN. We grabbed the metro ... twice and pretty much ran for the train. Even the security guards were like RUN! But we made it, so all was well. After checking into a very nice youth hostel, we grabbed a map and headed into the center of the city. We walked down the main thoroughfare, Las Ramblas. It's a supposedly very famous street and was pretty cool (though to me nothing spectacular). There were lots of odd street performers dressed up lining the streets and they would stand still like statues until someone tossed a coin into a cup in front of them and then they would start moving. But our personal favorite was a man who had a table filled with wine glasses in from of him; the table vibrated and he played the glasses really well.

We checked out yet another church and actually ran into some other Galway abroad students heading out as we were heading in. We spent about ten minutes in the church and left. We were a bit worn out by churches at that point (though we weren't done yet). After that we walked toward to bay and checked out the view from there, discovered the Spanish Arc de Triomf (not quite as impressive as the one in Paris) and found the Picasso Museum. I liked that one a lot because I have only seen Picasso's more famous works and it was neat to see everything he did from the start of his career to the end. His works were really more eclectic than I thought.

That night the hostel took the kids out to a club, but before that we stood around in the kitchen talking. Then this older Asian man staying in the hostel, Charles, grabbed a communal guitar in the sitting room and we had a random sing-a-long to the Stone and Beatles and others. It was pretty weird and hilarious. It was neat to meet more students traveling. Everyone has different stories. I met two boys from Brazil studying in Spain. And when one asked me to tell him about NJ my description was very bland in contrast to his about Brazil. There were a lot of Americans studying in different countries and a boy from New Zealand studying in London. And a girl from Japan just traveling around for a few months.