Barcelona part uno

This is out of order!
After arriving at the airport we refueled with espressos and then made our way to the metro. The metro system is fantastic and you really can get everywhere on it. I only managed to get stuck going through the wrong side of a turnstile once!
The hostel was pretty much a hole in the wall and took a few walk bys before we were convinced we were in the right place. Once inside we found Emily and her tagalong Aussie Leah. They were in the midst of making a fantastic dinner and we were starving so it was perfect timing. The four of us spent the evening on the rooftop patio drinking a lot of sangria and debating wether to stay in, or go out with the hostel people who were planning on staying out until the first metro at 5am. After getting as nice looking as we could wearing dirty clothes and having curly bangs (getting bangs before this trip was a bad idea) we decided to stay in and not be tired for our big day of sightseeing.

On our first full day we walked down La Rambla, a big touristy shopping and eating street. We stopped for the best gelato I've ever tasted.Gill, Emily and I walked incredibly slowly enjoying the best thing that has probably ever happened to us.

Gelato Heaven

After getting over our sadness upon finishing the gelato we grabbed a much needed cafe con leche and made our way to the boardwalk.
Since we looked at so many postcards throughout the day we decided we had to go see the Sagrada Familia at night. After a dissapointing paella (note to self: don't eat paella at a Chinese restaurant)we stocked up on Don Simon (0.99euro boxed wine), some cups and a nectarine and made our way there.

Segrada Familia

The night was awesome, and included many trips to the KFC across the street to use the bathroom, trying to avoid detection by the security guard. On the last trip in we decided to buy something, where Gillian returned a piece of chicken for not being big enough, and when the clerk was confused,as she should have been, language barrier or not, Gillian demanded to speak to their English speaking manager and successfully returned the piece of chicken. The metro ride home was equally as entertaining as we ran down up escalators for the first time and took hilarious photos in the train station photobooths.

15 hours and 6 train transfers later...

Gillian and I have arrived in the city of Dijon, France, after a very long and eventful day of travel.
Our original plan was to train from Barcelona to Brussels, Belgium via Montpellier and Paris, but upon arriving at the train station early this morning we were informed trains out of Barcelona were all booked. We met a fellow Canadian in the same boat and an older Aussie, and after some discussion we decided to get on the train without reservations. We managed to make it one stop before getting kicked off, and that hour was the most high-strung and nervous I have felt in so long.

The train we were kicked off

We ended up in the city of Girona where we began our trek through small cities along the south of France. We met a nice English speaking Frenchman who advised us to just take the next train at each stop we ended up at. After stops in cerbere and Perpignan we made it to Montpellier where Gillian and I said bye to Emily and our new friend Jordan.

Jordan and Gill

At this point Gillian and I has regained hope that we might make it to Belgium, but we were then informed all trains to Paris were booked. We sulked a bit then decided to continue the theme of today: take the next train as far as you can. So we took the next train to Lyon, with hopes of ending up in Dijon where we could transfer to Paris, then to Brussels.

On our train to Lyon

Spirits were high. We then realized we were on the only train a day between Lyon and Dijon that requires a reservation. We were forced off yet another train, and waiting for the next was enough to make us miss the last train to Paris.

So here we are, hanging out in the mustard city after what was surprisingly a fantastic day. The adrenaline from sneaking onto full trains mixed with very little sleep, some good coffee, juice boxes of wine, travel scrabble and a great group of people made for a really excellent morning.

Our juice boxes of wine

We are now forced to skip Brussels, and are heading to Den Haag tomorrow :)

To Barcelona!

The only thing that sucks about clubbing until past 6am numerous nights in a row is trying to go to bed early the night before a travel day.

Gillian and I both layed awake for 8 hours trying to sleep before our trek to Barcelona today. We 'awoke' at 9 to pack and walked to the bus station. We took a bus to Ibiza Town, which Gillian almost puked on, and spent the afternoon wandering around the nice town. Ibiza town is just so much nicer than San Antonio, and I could finally realize why people might actually live on Ibiza Island.

After a beer at McDonalds (why not?) we took the bus to the airport and waited around for a few hours.

Beer at McDonalds

Only after sheer boredom we read our boarding passes that said we must get our tickets stamped previous to security if we are not from the EU. We freaked, ran back to check in where they directed us to the Ryanair lineup where people were rebooking their missed flights. We caught up with a group of people in the same boat, who were actually also from Calgary, and finally got our tickets passed and got in line to board our flight. We wore 1000 coats since we thought they were going to weigh our bags, but in the end we wore our coats and sweated through our clothes for no reason.


After our flight we took the subway to our hostel and met up with Emily Woods and her new friend Leah and sat around drinking sangria. they made us a delicious dinner and we decided to stay in the night instead of going out with the hostel gang. We are excited to see most of Barcelona tomorrow!

Tiesto!

Tiesto last night at Priviledge, the worlds largest club with a capacity of ten thousand, was absolutely unreal. We went to a preparty to get our free bus to the club at around midnight, and finally got to the club at 2ish. Tiesto went on at around 230 and we ended up dancing for hours on end. We decided not to drink that much since we didn´t want to deal with the huge club and getting back and whatever else being completely gone and we are so happy we did that. The vibes in the place were enough to keep us dancing all night. 

Massive crowd at Tiesto!

Everyone there was ridiculously short which made it awesome to see Tiesto... not that he really did much to look at, but yah! Gillian was pretty much a giant.

Tiesto and his dancers!

We´re off to Barcelona tomorrow to meet up with Gillians friend Emily and my friend Amanda! Excited!

Ibiza!

We made it to the island! After the worst plane ride in the world and some confusing directions and an extremely expensive cab ride we finally got to the hotel. It's pretty nice considering we booked pretty much the cheapest hotel that didnt have 'DONT STAY HERE!!'reviews. Although we did see that written on a dirty car this morning.. haha. The plane ride was absolutely ridiculous.. filled with the most annoying girls and douchbag guys singing vengaboys. Gillian awoke from her nap to a guy wearing pink tights with his cock out. I pretended to sleep almost the whole way as to avoid any interactions.

After finding our hotel we decided it would be a good idea to take the elevator since we were really tired and our room is on the 4th floor... that was a huge mistake. As we crammed into this 2 person elevator with our bags and pressed 4, the elevator lurched up then probably got to the 4th floor where it kindof lurched again and then did nothing. We pressed the number 4 again where it lurched upwards until we pressed the door open button, and it let us out on the 5th floor. Never again using elevator.

We have just been lounging on the beach mostly.. we bought tickets for Tiesto and are going tonight... so freaking excited!! We are so confused about times though... we are supposed to catch a bus to go to ´the worlds largest club´at 1am... I have a feeling it is going to be a complete all nighter.

Our second night here we just wandered around the smaller clubs in San Antonio, using the same technique we did in Cusco to get as many free drinks as we could by staying in each club only long enough to finish our first free drink. It was a fun evening, but we spent most of the next day feeling like poo laying on the beach.

The water here is amazingly clear, and spending a day on the beach is as relaxing as it gets. We took a boat to another beach which was a bit more secluded and spent the afternoon there.

Portobello and Arthur's Seat

There are a lot of touristy things to do in Edinburgh. On Tuesday Gillian and I headed down to Portobello, the seaside part of Edinburgh for a 'beach day'. Although watching the waves is pretty relaxing, the beach seams like more of a nuisance, making it harder to walk and getting sand in my shoes, rather than a place to lay down and go tanning and swimming.

Portobello Beach

We didn't really do much while we were there.. just sat and chatted for a few hours then took the bus back to the city center.

On Wednesday Gillian and I decided it was time to separate before we got really irritated with each other, and I took that opportunity to walk up Arthur's Seat.

Arthur's Seat

Arthur´s seat is really lovely, and is the thing you are supposed to do as a tourist in Edinburgh. It was nice to get some exercise too!

For dinner Gillian and Duncan made a huge haggis meal and it was surprisingly delicious.

We had one last pub night on Friday after packing for our trip!

Audrey, James, Myself, Gillian, Rory and Nicola

Glasgow

Gillian and I attempted to get up early to go shopping and sightseeing in Glasgow for the day, but it ended up with us catching the 2:30 bus, getting stuck in traffic and arriving in Glasgow at 4:30pm (or 'half four'), with only an hour and a half to find Primark and sort through the masses of cheap European fashion.

But we did spend awhile walking around Edinburgh first visiting Victoria Street, which is this crazy street which is on two different levels of the city, and then walked by the coffee shop where Harry Potter was written.

Victoria Street

I ended up buying a bunch of funny accessories, and of course skirts and tights because apparently that is the only acceptable thing to wear out here. After shopping we grabbed a coffee and wandered to the University of Glasgow.

Sauchihall Street

The 1.3km walk Google had predicted was somehow more like 3.5km and the round trip to the University took over 3 hours but it was so worth it, even though I didn't have on my proper walking shoes. The University is so beautiful, even more so than Edinburgh's which I didn't think was possible.

University of Glasgow

The university had all these gates and passageways to walk through we kept feeling lost then ending up in some other sort of weird fancy courtyard.  My mom called Gillian's 'mobile' and we chatted for awhile which was really good.

Important names on the main gate of the university

After walking back to the city center we decided to take the train instead of the bus since it was much quicker and we had tickets to see a comedy show at 10:30. We saw Jim Jeffries last show which was really really good... absolutely hilarious. And we finally got to see a main festival act so we didn't feel like we completely missed the festivities.