Catch up time! 10 day break, part one: Barcelona

Here is the deal with the trips! We left around 9 in the morning on the 16^th. D, Leah, Jesse and I all went to Barcelona. It started out with a bang, literally, because we saw the bus was past our stop, so we ran to the next one and Jesse literally fell. It was hilarious. This trend of Jesse tripping kept up throughout Barcelona.

The trip there was pretty uneventful, but I got my first taste of flying with Ryanair. It was fine. The plane is all seat yourself, so there is kind of a free for all to get the best seats on the plane, and you end up lining up early before boarding to make sure you get to the front. I took a couple Benedryl (thanks for that tip, Erin!) so I was knocked out, but the others told me that the plane was really loud.

Once we arrived, we had to navigate the metro to get to our hostel. Luckily we have had a lot of practice with this, so it wasn’t too bad. Our hostel, Barcelona Dream (cheesy, isn’t it? Their motto online was, “Barcelona is a never ending dream, and we are a never ending hostel.”) was really nice, even though it was outside of town. The metro was literally a two minute walk away from the front door, and the beach was like ten minutes away. It was a new hostel, so the bedding and facility was great. That was really nice, because there are some crap hostels.

We really took it easy here. We walked around town and went to Las Ramblas, which is a pedestrian area that is filled with merchants, spent a lot of time at the beach, and took siestas almost everyday. Afternoon naps are a great idea. They really refreshed us. And before you say anything about it, we were immersing ourselves in the culture, and even if we were awake, we would not have anything to do, because literally everything shuts down from 2 to 5. We had a really great time. We made most of our own food, save for the paella (which was excellent) and a stop at the Hard Rock (D really likes them). We had pasta twice, grilled cheese and Leah and I made an epic salad one day that fed us for days. We were so economical! For the rest of it, I will just post pictures and comment on them.

Here is us girls in the Mediterranean. This is basically how most of our vacation was spent.
Another one of us.
This is me with a lion at the Christopher Columbus statue.
A shot of the beach. It not super warm in Barcelona. We were hot and wearing skirts and tanks and stuff, but no one else was. Most of the time we spent at the beach, we were the only ones actually in the water. We had a blast, though.
Leah and I with The Hand. This is a severed hand from one of the bars on the pub crawl we did. It was Halloween themed, and this was floating in a tank of water. Leah "borrowed" it, and now it is our favorite souvenir. D and I took it with us on the rest of our trip, and we took pictures with it where Leah should have been. We still have it, and the Hand has seen just about every adventure we have had since Barcelona.
Leah wrote "Spain '08" in the sand.
This is the Elvis portion of the Hard Rock. They only had his hat, Pops.
This is Leah, Jesse, me and one of the guys from our hostel we went on the pub crawl with. He is an Aussie, but I can't remember his name.
Another one of the guys, this one a Canadian.
Here is me peeking out from behind a tropical tree.
My glorious paella. It was so delicious, I cannot even describe.
Port Vell.
Our group outside the house before leaving.
The three of us on the pub crawl.
This building looks like water. It was neat.