Barcelona

The story of Barcelona really begins with me trying to get there. Which also happens to be the next segment on my bus disasters. So I go to the bus station in Granada to get a ticket to go to Barcelona and my credit card was declined. This wouldn't have been such a problem if any of my other cards had worked or if I'd had enough cash on me to pay for it. Neither was the case. A bit upset, I then went to the Granada airport to see if I could get a cheap flight. The flights were twice the amount of a bus ticket. More upset now than before, given that my flight back to Denmark was leaving from Barcelona, I returned to the bus station and tried calling the numbers on the back of my card. None of those numbers worked. That is when I had a breakdown and called mom. Mom called the credit card office from home and we got it all sorted out thankfully. So I left Barcelona at 11:30pm. The bus ride ended up being 11 and a half hours. Which was not so much fun. So finally it's morning and the bus stops. The bus driver announces Barcelona Tarragona. I assume Tarragona is a reference to the station we're stopped at. It's not. Tarragona is a whole other town 5 valleys over from Barcelona. I got off. Then, when I finally found out that I wasn't in Barcelona, I had to take a train. Finally I got to Barcelona and after getting lost a couple of times, I found my hostel. Though I did have one funnt thing happen on the bus ride to Barcelona. This woman sitting across from me asked me, in Spanish, at one of our stops if I was travelling with a man. When I said no, I was travelling by myself, she was shocked. Apparently this is not done.
Not knowing any of the tourist attraction in Barcelona, I ended up just wandering the city. I found this one main strip that, had I had any money on me, would have bankrupted me. It was full of cool little stores, street performers and outdoor pet shops. The pet shops sold, among other pets, duckling and chicks as well as full grown chickens and ducks. Also a lot of turtles. I had a ton of fun. One of the street performers, the on dressed in the Greco-Roman style, was awesome. He asked me where I was from and when I said Canada he remarked that it's cold there. I agreed. Then he reached into his little bowl-thing and pulled out a glass-rock thing that had a snowflake engraved into it and gave it to me. It's my Barcelona souvenir.
The weather in Barcelona was beautiful. The day I had to wander it it was +16 and sunny. So naturally I was wearing a tank top. Apparently this is not natural in Spain. I got strange looks all day and there were people wearing winter coats. Heavy winter coats. I was sweating. On the plus side I got a little bit of a tan.
One of the girls who was staying in the room with me was from Chile but she's been living in Paris for the last couple of years so she speaks French. I spent the afternoon with her, where I spoke French because she spoke very little English, and we went up to the old Olympic Stadium and giant castley museum. I got some great pictures from there and we had a lot of fun.
So on my way back to the hostel, I had to get up at 4am so I wanted to get some sleep beforehand, I get off the Metro at my station. As I'm walking I notice 2 familiar figures. Bella and Monique, 2 Australian girls who'd stayed in the same hostel as me in Granada. The last time I'd seen them they'd been on a bus for Valencia. The three of us were shocked and amused at the coincidence of us meeting up in a city the size of Barcelona. I asked them which hostel they're staying in, saying it can't be Graffitti, which is the hostel I was staying in. Yes it was. So I led the way back to our hostel. As we go, they tell me how they had just spent the last 4 hours in a Spanish Police Station. Apparently while they were eating, some guys stole their bags but Bella managed to stop them. Which was a good thing because their passports were in there. So when an undercover cop arrested the guys who'd tried to steal their backpacks, Monique and Bella had been forced to go down to the station to fill out an incidence report. The only problem was that neither of them speaks Spanish.
So the next day I woke up early to head back to Denmark. I had to catch a bus from Barcelona to Girona to catch my flight. What I didn't know, but soon found out, was that the Metro doesn't run that early. So I tried to walk since it was only a few Metro stops from where I was staying. I managed not to get lost but when it was 25 minutes until my bus, the last one that would get me to the airport before my flight was due to leave, was supposed to depart, I flagged down a taxi since I didn't know how far away the bus station was. It was a good thing I did. I'd never have made it on time on foot. So after panicking and thinking I was going to miss the bus and thus miss my flight, I finally got to the airport and was able to get back to Denmark. Other than a mild misadventure with, yes, a bus, I got back to RUC without much difficulty. And I'm glad to be back. Here at least I know how things work.