Barcelona!

Hey,

So after seeing a little more of Valencia the three of us got on another bus and smashed up the city of Barcelona. This was my second trip to the tourist trap of Spain. Unlike Valencia and Madrid, tourists are everywhere, not only from Australia, but Canada, America, Asia and even a lot of Spanish tourists.

When we got there, we had to find our hostel somewhere 30 minutes from the city by train in the mountains. For every person who stayed there, a massive donation to an organisation that supports the disabled was made. It was a pain in the ass getting there, but at the same time, the idea was brilliant and the hostel itself was really good. They even had a pool, a feature I haven’t seen since my trip in Oz. On our first night, we decided to have a quiet one and chill there rather than visit the city. After the treacherous walk up the hill the hostel was on top of, Callum and myself had a long swim in the pool, ate some vegetarian lasagne cooked by the hostel, had a couple night caps and smashed up some sleep for the night.

On the morning after, we discovered that not only did the hostel donate all this money to this organisation, but half of the employees were disabled. The girl who served us breakfast had down syndrome, and some of the cleaners also had down syndrome. The lady behind the bar maybe had autism of what I could gather and the list went on. I thought it was really cool.

Heading into town, we again saw La Rambla, the main street of the city with all the street performers. They’re always fun to watch.



When hunger set in, we stumbled across a huge market selling all sorts of meat, cheese, fruit, nuts and deli items. It was one of the biggest food markets I’ve ever seen. To eat some watermelon in the scorching weather was refreshing and was a feeling I was becoming unfamiliar with. It triggered memories from home and for a second I started missing home, but quickly dismissed the thought and made the most of the moment.


In the same market were a couple big bars where you would drink a beer and watch all the chef’s cook you food. These were not chef’s, but performing artists. I’m sure if they were behind a wall, they wouldn’t be as flamboyant and crazy with their skills as they were showing off to the people.


We decided to not eat too much seeing as there was a Hard Rock café in the city. For my entire time in Europe, I’ve crossed maybe 5 Hard Rock’s and for some reason I never decided to go in. When Ben was with me, we decided that before we leave we had to go to at least one. Callum had never been to one and so we decided now was a better than time than ever to step in and have a gander. It far exceeded my expectations. I knew that they had merchandise from all the big names, but I had no idea what sort of merchandise. I saw the guitars from everyone, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Jethro Tull, The Rolling Stones…It was awesome. A visit would not be complete with actually sitting down and dining. Everything on the menu was far out of our price range, but for this kind of experience, I was more than willing to pay it.

There was only one seat available and so we were sat down next to Janis Joplin’s guitar. A pretty good spot I like think. Without even looking at the menu Callum and myself knew what we needed. In such an American restaurant, the only thing that speaks out would be a hamburger. When it came out, I wasn’t surprised to see that it would feed a family, but still, foolishly, I told myself I could finish it, did so, and had a stomach ache for the next hour.

After sitting at the harbour with a beer for a while feeding the fish, we headed back to the hostel and met a couple Germans, a couple Americans, a couple Australians and a couple Poms. They were all pretty cool and the usual conversations and arguments took place.

The following day consisted of more sightseeing and more touristy stuff, visiting churches, town halls and other big buildings.

Seeing as a friend I met from Edinburgh on a pub crawl was in town, we saw it to be fitting to meet up once again, on a pub crawl. Janine was her name and she brought with her a friend she’d been travelling with for the past six months.


Most of the bars were pretty ordinary, as were the people we were crawling with, but everything changed in the final destination. Every pub crawl in the world finished with a night club, usually a pretty crappy one, but this one was playing Elvis, Little Richard, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys and basically anything before 1980 and more importantly, anything awesome. Everyone in the night club was on absolute fire, including our boy Callum. For the quiet type, he absolutely ripped the dance floor apart, and everyone was watching him. A couple girls even started copying his style and if it wasn’t for Lucy, I’m sure they would have all tried to have a piece of him. My moves weren’t so powerful and even my moustache proved to be a failure, but I still had a brilliant night out, arriving back at the hostel at 8:30am.

When I awoke from my pretty awful slumber at 11am, I decided to cook up some toast with avocado and eat two Ice Creams. I think my combination of copious amounts of alcohol, the two Ice Creams and the fact that the bread I used was very very mouldy with a not quite ripe avocado was the reason I spent half an hour throwing my guts up. This was the second time I’d thrown up in Europe, not a bad effort I like to think, but this time it was different. For starters, it hurt, it really hurt. My stomach muscles must have been sore from tearing up the dance floor, and every other muscle that a person uses when throwing up. To make matters worse, the other end was more of a liquid than what was coming out of my throat, but just as much was coming out. I wasn’t in a good mood.

Needless to say, I decided to have an easy day and had a quiet one in the hostel playing Starcraft on my computer.

Our next day consisted of getting on a plane flying to Amsterdam for a week. Lucy had been there, I had been there, but a return trip was definitely not out of the question. Callum was still a fresh traveller and hadn’t been exposed to too much of what is vulgar in the world. To destroy his innocence, we jumped on that plane.

On that note I will leave you again and explain more of our trip to Amsterdam in the next addition.

Bye-bye!!

Oh yes, I've attached a little video for a friend called Spanner. Janine, my pub crawl friend from Edinburgh, decided to educate us in the coolest dance move ever, especially for those who like dinosaurs ;) It's called the Tyrannosaurus Rex.