BARCELOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i love it here! i'm SO glad we stayed a whole week. definitely worth it. so amie pretty much described how her and i spent our days... haha... joanna went off exploring on her own and has some pretty great adventures to tell you all about!

as for our evenings...

our first night was quite relaxed. we hung out in the hostel, talked to some dude about barcelona-ness, and then headed up to our room for some much needed sleep. BUT this girl walked in and we all got to talking. her name is erin and she's from south africa. we talked allllllll night and then she mentioned that she makes jewelry so we had her bust it out so we could take a look. turns out, her jewelry is AMAZING! amie and jo each bought a lovely necklace and we boosted erin's confidence in her artwork a bit! she was so nice and now we have a place to stay when we go to the world cup next year in south africa! HA!

another time, we cleaned up after a day on the beach and then walked over to the travel bar. we didn't relize it, but at 8pm every night the travel bar offers 1 euro meals! it was PERFECT timing! they made this delicious pasta, we all drank sangria, and then got a bottle of wine to split. afterwards we were up for a night walk to the beach. it was lovely! things got a bit loopy when i kinda got lost looking for the bathrooms, but we eventually regrouped and headed back to the hostel for a bed-cracking night sleep! i don't think we even slept for the next 3 nights because there were these french girls on holiday after their final exams and they were SO loud! it was like a tornado of french! made for some good laughs though...

one night was spent with a group from the travel bar. we signed up for a cooking clas!!! HAHAHA it was sooooooooo delicious! we crammed into this place, learned how to make our own sangria, and learned how to make paella and tapas! MMM! we ate soooo much and it was wonderful. we also made pitcher of sangria together. i think we put a bit too much wine in it... and perhaps using a whole apple and a whole lemon was a little too much fruit... but it was mm mm good! after amie and i could no longer handle this one girl talking about eating shrimp eyes, we got out of that joint and headed back to the hostel. we were going to see la sagrada familia that night but ended up hanging out in the room because our new roommate matias came in. he is from germany and he was hilarrrrrrrious! he told us that he had walked from hamburg, germany to italy! WALKED. and then he met an old hippie man and traveled with him for a bit. he was so cool! on top of that, he had a guitar! we persuaded him to serenade us with some songs and turns out he was pretty darn good! then he left to drink beer with some irish people he met like 20 minutes earlier and he let me play his guitar all night! it was SO nice! just what i needed i think. that was a lovely night!

the next night we met at the travel port for tapas and flamenco dancing! jo had to walk all the way from some super far away plaza and she was pooped when she made it in, but it wasn't long before we snagged her some water and sangria and tapas and she was feeling a bit better. we met some interesting characters that night... bostonians, canadians, french-canadians... and so on... ohhhhh man hilarious. we kept sending this one kid from our table back to the bar to ask for more pitchers of sangria! and we kept telling him we'd be his best friend if he ate the weird tapas. so he did! hahaha sucker... then we were transported to some other plaza where we went into this little bar to watch some traditional flamenco dancing! it was beautiful. the women were amazing quick dancers and the guys singing were SO into it! then at the end, this little girl came on stage, sang, and danced! she was beyond amazing! we had a great time! after the show, jo headed back to get some rest and amie and followed the others to join the travel bar pub crawl. we went to this one club that had headphones on the walls so you could rock out to the music at full blast! then we walked to this other place that seemed like FOREVER away, we had a drink there, then walked home down las ramblas. amie and i were about to go back but realized that we needed some pita. when we realized that the pita place was closed we were devastated... then went to subway. it was a hilarious night!

our last day in barcelona was spent walking around and soaking up whatever we could before our next train ride that would take us to italy. jo went to church, then we had some coffee at starbucks to cool off, ate at a vegetarian place down a side street, and roamed the tiny streets looking for fun shops to pick through. it was really runny because most of the shops were closed. basically barcelona is sleeping until like 4pm. so we saw what we could and then hopped the next overnight train to milan!

more to come on that adventure within an adventure! i'm done blabbling for now! we are having a great time and miss everyone! jo is up next! CIAO!