Barcelona (Part one)

Hey Everybody,

Right now I am sitting in my second hostel in Barcelona. My former roomate had stayed at this hostel when she traveled to Barcelona, and basically threatened me if i had stayed anywhere else.

The first hostel I stayed at was called Mar Barcelona... though it was not that close to the ocean.

The hostel was fun, but they really didnt promote any clubbing or bar crawls... and it was in a pretty bad area... so if you dont know where you are going you could end up being robbed.

The area was so bad, there were hookers down the street. No joke.

The hostel Im at now (Hello BCN) seems to be nicer, and also has a bar... granted, its about a 5 minute walk from my old hostel.

So, what have I done?

Yesterday, when I woke up, I wanted to see the olympic park. I had seen the olympic park in Montreal when I was younger, and assumed that it would be as awesome...

When I spoke to the person at the front desk of my old hostel, he told me that there was some type of gondola that took you to the park.

After getting lost, and then finally realizing that you have to take a metro to the starting point, I got onto the gondola.

This was both good and bad. The bad news was that it didnt take me anywhere near the olympic park. Im also somewhat terrified of heights, hence I dont like dangling on a inch thick wire a thousand feet up in the air, especially because I had no idea where the gondola was taking me.

The last stop ended up being this old castle that had both defended and attacked Barcelona at different times in its history. It had been both a prison as well as a home. The pamphlet for the place read: "Theres a Castle in Barcelona?

The castle is named Montjuic castle... It had breathtaking views of the whole city, as well as one of the main ports in Barcelona. I had never actually watched a port in the middle of the day, and was transfixed on how these huge boats docked and all of the cargo would be taken off. I also ended up seeing a cruise ship dump lots of waste into the water... I know this, because you could see huge swaths of brown and discolored water.

After I rode the gondola down, I decided to go to the Picasso museum. For a long period of his life, Picasso lived in Barcelona. The museum was basically donated by his former private secretary. Most of the artwork was from his earlier years. Some of the artwork dated back to when he was a child.

By no means am I a Picasso expert. Though, I thought I would see his most famous paintings. He did most of his cubism stuff when he was older, so there were only a few paintings I recgonized.

After this, I ended up going back to the hostel and hanging out for a bit... assuming that I would go out to the clubs later. That ended up not happening, but, I still have three nights in order to explore that aspect of Barcelona.

I believe that I will try to see as much Gaudi architecture as I can... It seems that he ran this city when he was alive... so much so, that 90 years after his death, they are still working on his masterpiece Sagrada Familia.. It should be pretty cool.

Some other notes;

During my final dinner in Geneva, I overheard these two women with American accents, I introduced myself to them and we started talking about travel etc.

They were with one older man, who they said knew everything about everything.... In my mind, this is a challenge.

It turned out the guy was in the US military for 30 years, and knows 12 different languages. He told me that he was the top translator for President Clinton when he was in office. He highly recommended that I learn a new language, because it can always open new doors... Another interesting thing was that he was one of the first people to debrief the Iranian hostages after the crisis in the early 80s... pretty cool stuff.

My first night in Barcelona I met these two guys from Louisiana... while we were getting dinner... Jimmy Carter walked by with about 30 security guards... pretty cool stuff. I looked it up, and he was speaking at the American Society of Barcelona... who knew?!?

I met 3 guys from Perth, and one of their birthdays is tonight, so it should be a fun night!

Good luck to everyone,
Zac