July 17 - Barcelona

We made a very slow start to the day not getting moving until about 11. This was not so much the result of the excesses of the night before as it was a result of the excesses of the past 6 weeks. It seems that our bodies are slowly approaching total system failure. Regardless, we headed out into the rain determined to find the famed Sagrada Familia. Real Talk: when completed, the Sagrada Familia will be the world's largest cathedral, and once you go and have a look at this thing it is not hard to see why. It is enormous. It is no surprise at all that it has taken so long to build, with construction having started in 1926 and the completion date still upwards of 20 years away.

Following this, we headed off to the train station to book our train from Barca to Geneva which was in a couple of days time. We thought this was very responsible of us (booking a whole two days in advance and all) but it turned out to be a debacle. After waiting in various lines for what must have been over an hour we finally made it to the front desk only to be given some pretty average news. Despite having Eurrail passes, catching the night train was going to cost 70 euros each and the day train that runs between the two cities was completely full. We could get there, but it would mean taking a whole bunch of different trains and switching at various places. This news was really not that bad, but given we had been so proud of ourselves to be getting ourselves together and doing the booking a couple of days in advance, we were feeling a little let down, and that out traveling philosophy of flying by the seat of our pants, truly was the philosophy endorsed by St. Christopher (the patron saint of travelers). Real talk.

By this stage we were both pretty tired and we headed back to the hostel for a bit of down time before wandering down La Ramblas to the Aussie pub so we could watch the cricket. Whilst it was good to just sit there and do nothing for a while, pretty soon our cricketing fortunes were heading south at a rate of knots and we had to beat a hasty retreat before we sunk fully into depression. Our time watching the cricket was also notable for Monty's demolition of about 35 litres of orange juice - all consumed in the name of boosting his immune system.

For dinner, we headed back to the tapas restaurant from the previous night before wandering back to the hostel, perching ourselves in the bar with a pack of cards and seeing where the night would take us. Whilst the games of gin we started out with were very civilised, our posse quickly multiplied and soon we were playing a significantly less civilised game of "hang the dealer". It was at about this time that Monty absolutely hit the wall and headed for bed whilst the rest of us (4 Americans, 2 girls from Sydney and myself) jumped in cabs and headed for a club called Razzamatazz. It was a phenomenal night with a live band singing all sorts of weird songs up on stage (something about building a treehouse?), heaps of good music, and plenty of cutting sick on the dancefloor. However, my night was to come to an abrupt end. Bizarrely, I became convinced that one of the American girls that we had been drinking with all night was trying to pickpocket me. Accordingly, I vanished into the night, found some of the others and caught a cab back to the hostel. It was only when I woke up the next morning and was told that she was furious that I had just left her standing there that I realised just how ridiculous this was. Anyways, it was a really good night out and I certainly felt as though I had got a good taste of Barca's famed nightlife.

Jez