Welcome to Italy

Hi. I know I've been sucking at updating my blog lately. I'm sorry. I've been in Italy for a while now and there is so much to see and do that I barely have time to sit down and write. Even when I was in Modena – a city which was supposed to be a three night resting period – I was constantly busy. Wake up at eight, spend the day out and about til eight or nine and come back. It ended up being 3 days of just not going out at night, which didn't really help. But it was still really, really cool.

So I'm going to start with Barcelona and hit up the main points of what I've been doing for the last couple weeks. It might take a couple entries, I try to keep them no longer than a page.

Barcelona is well known for being a party city and I didn't waste a night I was there. I arrived in the city at nearly eleven, took a half hour nap, then walked across the street with a couple of guys from DC to La Ramblas – main street and the center of the nightlife. We started off playing pool with some Germans at an Irish pub and took off at two when the bar closed. The only things that were still open were the “discos” (that's a dance club) that charged absurd amounts of money to enter. It worked out alright though, one of the German guys covered everybody's entry fee. It was a good time and I was even offered a trip to the bathroom by a very, very creepy, raccoon-eyed cross dresser.

I spent my first day wandering around the city and ran into a guy from Honduras that I had spent two hours in line with at the train station. The second night we went out to watch the magic fountain show, a huge water and light show held every weekend in the summer, but had no luck as it was canceled for the day. Later that night we went to a jam session in a bar a ways off La Ramblas. It was amazing to see the musical talent of the crowd in action.

The last day I was in Barcelona was pretty damn good as well. I got up early to go explore the beach and Park Guell, a park designed entirely by a famous Spanish architect called Gaudi. I hiked an hour and a half (at a very slow pace) up to the top of a hill beyond the park for a beautiful overlook of the city and the surrounding country. Well worth it. When I got back to the hostel, I met a seventeen year old kid from Lawrence. How awesome is that? Another Kansan! We discovered that the fountain show had been canceled due to the opening of the European Athletic Championships that night. There was a special, extra huge fountain show to be held at ten and the other Kansan, two Aussie guys and I went (along with 30,000 others) to watch the opening ceremony and show.

I had planned to sleep at the train station that night because my train was going to leave at eight the following morning. Unfortunately, the station closed at midnight and I received at tap on the head at ten til from the man telling me to leave. I wandered around for an hour before finally accepting help from a pink-shirted man on a street corner (this is a BIG rule to break as a backpacker, I probably should've been stabbed or mugged) who happened to be French street artist who worked on La Ramblas. He walked me around the city to find a place to stay and the night was good.

The next morning, I met the Aussie guys on at the train station and we ended up humping a train to Geneva,, some advice given to us by two Americans we met for ten minutes or so on the train. I made it to Milano that night.