Barcelona is still great, just not the fuckin thieves.

YUPUUP. As you may have already heard, I was partaking in a wonderful quiz night at the local travel bar in barcelona when my purse got stolen out from under me! LAME. it was wrapped around my chair and everything. So, it happened to have my locker key, my license, my calling card, my water bottle, my sun block, 150 dollars cash, and the brand new digital camera that I had bought the day before. So, here I am, now in Madrid. About ready to buy my second camera in 3 days. And extremely broke. And really hating it. But never the less, Barcelona is an AMAZING city. And we will be going back for sure!!
Yesterday we went on a small walking tour, then went to the local produce market, and then played beach sports with the guys, and swam in the ocean during a huge thunder and lightning storm. and it was awesome.
we just so happened to be in the same room as three guys that are from washington, so along with the germans, we hung out with them a lot. And they rock. lol... last night we did a pub crawl, and I had an awesome time there as well! Didn't get back to the hostel until 5 am, where we then set 2 alarms to wake up at 7:45, since we had a train to catch at 9...but no, we woke up at 8:45, and missed the train. haha...but made it on one just two hours later. So here we are, in madrid.
Rachel got her camera stolen last night as well. We've got some great luck.

Moral of the story. Watch your shit. HA
And, I LOOOOOVE BARCELONA!!! And if anyone ever goes, definitely hook up with the travel bar, they've got a lot of good stuff going. Partnered with Sun and Moon Hostel.

I love Barcelona. And it's beach.

Weeeellll. We are officially in Barcelona!! And while we've only been here for say, 6 hours, it definitely has made a great impression on me! We spent our afternoon walking around a bit, checked into our hostel, had a great lunch at a travel bar, met some cool people, and went to the beach for a couple hours. And yes, you can go nude there. And yes, I saw some boobs. hahah..
It has been nice to travel around with a couple German guys, Jan and Clemens. We met them at the train station yesterday once we got into Marseille and decided to travel further to Montpellier. Hotel room has been cheaper, and we aren't as intimidated by the giantness of things. We were able to book a hostel and get our train tickets for the rest of the week as well.
A couple of guys staying in our hostel room are actually from Washington, which is nice. And tonight we shall be going out to a bar, with a full schedule for tomorrow. A walking tour, beach sports, and a pub crawl. HOORAH.
The town we stopped in last night was pretty cool, and was wonderful weather. Yesterday was our first day of excellent weather, as we had experienced rain in Paris, and an insane thunderstorm and rainstorm in Heidelberg. The air at night is probably 70 degrees still. And the southern coast of Spain is BEAUTIFUL! I could definitely come back here. And tomorrow I will know for sure about how much I love it I feel. <3 More to come, I'm sure.

P.s. I have finally gotten my international phone number, so if you would like to talk to me, let me know and I'll get you my number!

Tough on the Traveling, keeping on truckin.

From Tuesday, July 27, at 10:30 pm

wow. what a crazy couple days!! Last time I wrote in here I believe I had talked about all of Paris, and since then, I've been back to Paris, and am still in France...ha...but it's not that simple. So we were unable to get a ticket straight to heidelberg as planned, and were scheduled to have a 12 hour journey. But luckily, once we got into a station in Germany, we were able to connect with some smaller trains, and made it into Heidelberg by 4pm, a good 4 hours earlier than expected, which helped. It has been a tad stressful regarding finding trains that can take us to the place we want to go and by the time we want. So we were unable to get a train back to Barcelona Monday night as we had hoped. So, instead, we spent an extra night in Heidelberg, and here I am now, in Montpellier, France.
We walked around and did some site-seeing in Heidelberg, seeing a beautiful castle, and an amazing view of the entire town from the top of the mountain. There's an awesome stretch of businesses, full of shopping, food, and bars. The majority of our time was spent down that area. We got to experience weinerschnitzel, and spaghetti ice cream, and Kirsten made us a typical german dinner, with sausages, sauerkraut, and potato salad (german-style, it had bacon and stuff...interesting!). Last night we went to Hard Rock cafe and got Euro beers, and then afterwards went to a college bar, and stayed there until 4 am talking philosophy and other interesting things. I got an entire round of applause from the entire bar when I belched too...hahaha...it was hilarious. And, by the way, German beer, is pretty damn awesome. But due to our late return home, I am pretty tired from having to wake up at 7:30 am. We got to the train station by 9, and hopped on a train to Paris Est station, where we got in at about 1 oclock. We then had to take the metro to the Paris Lyon station, and then get on another train to get to Marseille. This place looked like heaven, and I am kinda bummed we didn't stay there. But we will probably get the chance when we come back through after our program heading for Italy. When we arrived in Merseille we just decided to try and see where we could get by tonight, and that is how we ended up in Montpellier, at 9pm at night...after an entire day of traveling. UGH. pooped. but, if all goes as planned, (considering we can't book our train tickets for barcelona until the morning, we will be in Barcelona by 11 am tomorrow!! so yay...
as of now, we are rooming with two german guys, that we met in the train station!!! lol. So we're off to have some beers.

Au Revoir Paris!

Tonight is our last night in Paris, and then we will be embarking on a 12 hour journey to get to heidelberg, germany in the morning. We're pretty bummed, because the trip we had planned on booking, and was shown online, is "booked" (i.e. they don't want to give out any more 2nd class tickets to passholders), and so we have to take 4 different trains, and what originally would have been a 3 or 4 hour trip, has multiplied by four. UGH...But of course, on to Paris.
Yesterday was the day of siteseeing! We took a walking tour all over paris, and also did some adventuring outside of it and got to see: notre dam, the louvre (including the pyramids), arc de triomphe, the concorde, royal palace, champs-Elysees (which is the finish line of the tour de france. AND everything was all set up, and everyone was so excited....it's really sad it finishes sunday afternoon, and we'll be leaving sunday morning. Grrr, anywho...on with the locations I went to), Pont Neuf, Moulin Rouge, the Red Light district of Paris (HAHAH..sooo many porn shops!!), Basilique de sacre-coeor, annndd, hmm..am I forgetting something? OH YES...the EIFFEL TOWER!!! hahah...it sure is big. ho-leee shit. lol.
I have come to the conclusion that the arquitecture here is absolutely exquisite, and shown by the massive amount of photos I have loaded containing building...nearly all of them. lol. I am most impressed with the construction of the cathedrals, such as notre dam, and more specifically the basilique de sacre-coeur. This place, although I was not aware of it before we went, took my breath away. Unfortunately, although spritually awakening, no photography was allowed on the inside of the building, or talking even. There are a couple pictures of the outside at least. AMAZING. so many intricate details. Also, from this place, you could see the entire skyline of paris....which, by the way. I did not take any pictures of. WHY NOT?!?! because, as we were walking up the hill to this place, my camera decided to STOP WORKING! so I'm IN F-ING PARIS AND MY CAMERA BROKE. WTF. Hopefully I can get a camera in Heidelberg, otherwise I'll be pissed. because hello, that's so many visual memories gone.... But anyhow, the day was still good.
We ended the night by doing a pub crawl through the red light district. And boy, was I trashed by the end. Which some of you might have seen with my previous blog post (tastefully deleted I might add). I would have been fine, but we switch bars every 30 minutes, so I ended up having to chug a little too fast a couple times. I met some guys there, who were quite fun to talk to. Firstly an Aussie, short convo though..then a Brit, and then a couple guys from the States, which I ended up staying with the rest of the night. Dave, from Colorado, and Jake from New York, orginally Florida. So yeah...haha..I had a good time.
Today has also been a long day. I felt like shit the first half of the day due to a hangover from the pub crawl...so that's, 2 hangovers this week already hahah. I wouldn't say either of them were too dampening on our parade though. But today was a lot of wandering, walking, went to a flea market, searched for a phone (and didn't find one, so sorry, still can't call home), ate some good food, including my first real panini, which are much simpler than back home by the way.

Ooook. time to try and upload all these pictures!!!!

A Much Simpler Day...

Today, was a day for traveling, and to just take it easy and try to get over our jet lag. But perhaps the extreme fatigue is just from traveling so much and being so busy. Today we were woken at 5:30am to go hop on a train in the St. Pancras station, which was to take us from London to Paris. It would be our first experience with running to try to catch the train and being of the last people on, because apparently Eurail has the security of an airport, whilst all the tube (subway) in London did not. Sooo, this wasn't expected, and we we cut it very close.
So we went through the Chunnel and ended up in Caile, France, or however you spell it, where we then activated our eurail passes which will hopefully last us the rest of the trip. England wasn't covered on the passes, so we just took the first stop and then switched over, to save money for our passes. So from there, we arrived in Paris at about 11am, local time, which really was 10 am london time, so 3 and a half hours, given the layover between trains.
We have had our first true experiences with the language barrier. Our hotel is located in Malakoff, which is on the outside of Paris, and therefore, only locals are around i.e. not very many people speak english. Yet a couple saw us looking confused trying to find out hotel, and while they knew no english, and we knew no french, to helped us find it, and even took us halfway. The same occurred when we went for pizza, which was amazing by the way. The people are so friendly and helpful and still try their best to try and communicate with us.
We had to blow a few hours before checking into our hotel, so we had gone for pizza, and lied in the park just a few blocks down from our hotel. Nice and relaxing, and took a nap.
We went a local bakery to buy a baguette, which happened to be amazing by the way, with the brie, that is much cheaper here, and the guy even gave us a free pastry. And then again, I took another nap. While I have been up since 5:30, I have probably had about 6 hours in napping today already. hahaha...and it is, midnight nearly I guess.
The photos from today are nothing too special, just the beautiful architecture of the houses here, and will be posted tomorrow, after we do our walking tour, and possibly a pub crawl. Au Revoir!

Where's all the Ranch?!?!

Well hello!!! this is my first official entry while in Europe! Rachel and I had a smooth journey over, flying out of PDX at 1:30 in the afternoon, and was in london by 11 (2 am US time) the next morning. As a result, we did lose our chance to have a nighttime, but we were super stoked to be in the UK. Pete, being the fabulous person that he is, picked us up from the airport, and was our official tour guide for yesterday and today. it's unfortunate that we had to drop him off here in our journey. I'll miss ya pete, thanks for everything!! So first stop, was arriving at Pete's place, which FYI, is a wonderful little place. And it is a fact that American people are much greedier with their homes and the size of them. So Pete and his friend Chip took us to Windsor castle, where we had our first taste of english ice cream, and a brew at a local pub/restaurant. Carlsberg beer=super light, but super ok with me!!! We spent the afternoon sharing stories and comparing US and UK life, such as word exchange (trainer=shoes, trousers=pants, biscuit=cookie), etc, and things we had in common and did not. Seeing the boys and their first view of American money was fun! lol. After the afternoon at windsor, we went back to take a nap, due to our extreme amount of jet lag, and then went out for a night on the town, and enjoying our time at the local bar in uxbridge. :) It happened to be trivia night! hahah..so we did some trivia, drank lots of booze, and played never have I ever! After one bar, we went to another, and then strolled the streets...hahah...it was a drunken, fun night!!!
Today was our second day in london, and one full of sightseeing!! we saw the london eye, big ben, houses of parliament, buckingham palace, went to dirty martinis, and had an overall terrific day!!
Things I've learned while in London and about Brits: there is no ranch, there's no drinking fountains, they're crazy drivers, they don't know what a corn dog is. Their liquor is like 90 bucks a fifth, and their shots are only like, 1/2 and ounce!!! TONS of skinny chicks have boob jobs. They eat, bacon (i.e. ham), bread, and ketchup sandwiches. They choose to watch American tv over their own. We met an Iraqi, who wanted to bring the boys home. They have black taxi cabs, and red phone booths and double decker buses. They have KEBABs, made of lamb. And they spell hummus like houmous. They have too many frickin coins. a 1 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound, 2 pound....and only bills come in 5's and 10's. Their frickin keyboards are RETARDED! the AT symbol is where the quotation mark goes. All their meals come with PEAS. And they don't know what lima beans are. Salads come with balsamic vinegar and oil only. WTF? no catalina! or the RANCH! Everything is HEINZ!They think lemonade is sparkling water that is lemon flavored. not real lemonade. and their tap water is disgusting. they also have salad cream. and they don't know what a sidewalk is.
Lots and lots of trains here. Great service, with trains coming every 2 minutes. Pretty smooth to operate if u have a pass.
But we've check into our hostel now, and I'm sitting here talking to this cool guy from Czech Republic named Anthony. SOOOO...photos are just about uploaded. I know this was such a mess of a blog, maybe I'll get better at it lol

Not enough sleep!

I work at 5am, but I'm in full swing of packing. EVERYTHING must be out of my house tomorrow. I've gotten all my laundry done and am trying to shove it all in my bag for europe. I think it will fit, along with some toiletries...but I forgot about wanting to put my laptop in there too....so shit. Not enough room! I'm really sad I'm leaving this duplex, it was good to me. heh. ok, I'm waaaay too pooped to keep my eyes peeled. two days of work left. one day of moving left. 3 days til I get my deposit back. and 5 days til I leave. hooray. Don't know if I'll be able to write in this until europe, so if not hasta luego.

Just a Couple Giant Hills to Climb, and then I'll Be on My Way

Things are getting stressful! Still trying to juggle 40 hours of work and packing my things, while not packing the things I need for the trip, and moving everything into storage, and scrubbing down my duplex. It's hard work. Rachel and I booked our hotel for Paris yesterday, and have also finalized our train ticket booking for traveling between France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Now just to book the hostel that I found in London, and we'll be on our way! Only 11 days til we leave, it's so crazy! It's discouraging trying to pack up for the trip while everything else is in boxes, because if I forget something, I have to rip open my boxes to find it, or drive over to storage to get it. But it will be worth it hopefully. And I'll worry about where to live once I get back. Until next time!