Okay so I have not blogged in a month!!!!!!!!!!!! That is horrible I know. However to my credit I have been journaling in my private journal where I also keep some memorabilia (and some of the juicier details-sorry everyone!). so now I am looking back and trying desperately to highlight the important things to keep everyone informed. I have come to realize that documenting this experience and keeping in touch with everyone is almost as exhausting as all the traveling that I am doing! I have gotten all the messages that you all have posted on my wall and have privately emailed me! Thank you so much and I miss everyone greatly, I think it will hit me even harder around Thanksgiving and when Christmas approaches.

So SPAIN! Pictures are up from that week! This trip was finally all six of us, my 4 other room mates and the girl who lives across the hall. We went to Florence for one night before we left for Spain because our flight was out of the small airport in Pisa. There happened to be a transportation strike scheduled for that Friday (October 17th) so we went the night before and got up and explored Florence all day on Friday and I even met up with Justin (Oswald) who is studying there! It was really nice to see a familiar face and to exchange our experiences thus far. The weather was perfect and we got to see all the things I had forgotten that I had even seen there when I went with the family a few years ago. We climbed to the top of the huge Duomo and went to Sant Lorenzo's market and also the bridge Ponte Vecchio among other things. On Saturday morning we found a restaurant that served American Breakfast and we all ordered 3 things off of the menu, paying 20 euros each to indulge in pancakes, milkshakes, omelets (with cheddar cheese!) and French toast! This may sound ridiculous but I assure you it was worth every penny. After that we took the train to Pisa to see the leaning tower before our flight at 4 pm. We did all the cheese pictures and laid out on the grass and then went to the airport heading towards Barcelona!

After landing in Barcelona we had to take a 45 min bus ride into the heart of the city and thenn take the metro to our hostel. Talk about multiple means of transportation in only a few hours! Basically the hostel was the coolest thing ever. Its called MamboTango and its run by a young hippie couple whose names are Marina and Toti. They aren't married but they are "very much in love" and have traveled extensively and done refugee work in Africa and decided to open a place for people who love to travel as much as they do. We stayed in an 8 person dorm room and met some other really cool people there. We had 3 nights in Barcelona which was awesome cause we had time to relax and actually see a lot of the city instead of being so rushed. The hostel organized a night walking tour with great views so we all signed up! And by walk they meant 3 hour long speed walking mostly up hill. But it was definitely worth it, even though most of my pictures didn't come out the views were breathe taking. And Toti told us all about the history of Spain and Barcelona in the process in his semi-broken English, it was adorable. (Check out the picture of him and his hippie mullet, buzzed in the front and long dreads in the back). We did some major shopping, ironically going mostly to places like H&M and Zara but also seeing a lot of the city in the process. The architecture in Barcelona was such a refreshing change from what we are used to in Italy, the architect Antoni Gaudi influenced many of the main structures through out the city including where he lived and the famous Basilica Sagrada Familia. His buildings were amazing and the mosaics were gorgeous and so colorful! The Basilica actually wasn't even finished before his death so there was construction still going on attempting to finish it in his original style and according to his plans. Check out the pictures because they are indescribable! The weather was beautiful and we walked around in flip flops and tank tops! Don't worry we also found plenty of places to drink sangria, especially mid day. Another glorious fun fact about Spain is they have Starbucks! Not as prevalent as in NYC of course but we encountered multiple throughout our week in Spain and got a cup of something yummy every single day! we tried some traditional Spanish cuisine including, paella which is a rice dish with meats like duck and rabbit and also empanadas, enchiladas, etc. if I thought that Italian food was repetitive then I would have died studying in Spain. We tried to go out at night because Barcelona is known for crazy night life, however we didn't have much direction or energy after sight seeing during the days so we made some feeble attempts without much luck.

On Tuesday we took a train south to Valencia which is a coastal beach city and when we arrived it was beautiful! It was so much more relaxing because it didn't seem like a big dangerous city like Barcelona. There was shopping, and a bullfighting ring, and a huge church, and also a city of Arts and Sciences which was a cluster of modern buildings (see pictures). We found a great restaurant for authentic Spanish food and an adorable little bar with excellent mojitos and caparinas (reminded me of dad). The next day we went an a walking tour and learned a lot about the history of the city and saw it from end to end, unfortunately mid tour it started raining! And it continued to rain for the rest of the time we were there. Anyways we went on a pub crawl and met a group of 10 Irish boys who were visiting a friend and they were absolutely ridiculous and hysterical. I don't think I have laughed so hard in a while! Well that's actually not true because the ridiculous things that my room mate Carson says all the time have the rest of us in tears! It was a really fun night and the next day we explored the "city of Arts and Sciences" in the misty weather, and we even went into the Science Museum like little girls we ran around for hours! The guy who designed them is one of the architects who is currently working on the design for the new terminal at Ground Zero! The architecture of these buildings was incredible, especially the one shaped like an eyeball that could blink!!!!! All in all even though there was a lot of rain it was still a beautiful city and although not the most exciting vacation I thought it was amazing and I am so grateful to have traveled to Spain and had time to really experience the two cities and not just get a couple of hours in each.

So here is where the fun starts…. Our flight is at 2 pm out of the same airport north of Barcelona and we are 3 hours south of Barcelona. So we wake up at the crack of dawn to check out of the hostel and get to the train station, we have plenty of time to get our train, metro to the bus stop and take a bus to the airport and get there an hour a and a half early. Too bad the train doesn't leave because as we find out in very broken English and hand gestures that another train has derailed and they don't know when the train will be able to leave. So we take a taxi to the bus station, realize that we cant get a bus for an hour and a half and even if we do we are going to miss our flight. So we taxi back to the train station to see if we can get a train before a bus, once returning to the train station we learned from someone who spoke English that no trains would be running to Barcelona for the rest of the day. sooooo we took our third taxi back to the bus station and decided to get on a bus to Barcelona and figure out there what to do about getting a new flight. The problem was figuring out new flights, a place for the night, where to use internet. It was very exhausting and overwhelming. After an almost 5 hour bus ride into Barcelona, in of course beautiful weather as we traveled, we desperately went back to MamboTango where they luckily embraced us and let us use the internet and leave our bags there for a few hours. Stupid Ryanair, which is dirt cheap but kills you with fees and taxes and doesn't let you change or cancel flights only flies once a day…. so we luckily got a flight for the next morning but it flew to Rome instead of our city Perugia…. Basically equally tons and tons of extra traveling time! So we decide to not risk missing another flight and go to the tiny Barcelona airport the night before our 8 am flight…. We stocked up an salsa, sangria, champagne, and tortilla chips and got deliriously over tired and attempted to sleep in the freezing cold airport lobby for a totally of 5 hours.

Long long long but hysterically funny story short, we finally make it back to Perugia after 32 hours of traveling straight, I don't think I have ever felt dirtier from traveling in my life. Of course when we arrive back in Perugia it is during the last weekend of the Eurochocolate festival which thousands and thousands of people travel here to see and the metro is shut down and the busses are packed and it takes us 25 minutes to walk the quarter mile through the center back to our apartment. Besides all that, the chocolate festival was pretty amazing, definitely hyped up and super expensive but so much fun at the same time. I have never seen so many varieties of chocolate in my life! And such massive displays, it was a huge competition between every vendor!! I was in heaven!!! And don't worry I bought goodies too…

Okay so now I am only 3 weeks instead of 4 behind in blogging I will try to add more soon but this is sooo exhausting! Enjoy the pictures and my broken incorrect sentenses!