eurotrip 04
Enter here, at your own risk, into a world of adventurous peaks and austere palaces, a land far away, and unbeknownst to many. Enter this realm, and you must traverse the great portal of space and time, across the vast oceans, and into the depths of a fading past. Relive the tale of three companions, bound to the peril of the elements and what danger providence hath bent upon their path. For it is in these times of dire unrest and uncertainty, that all truth is revealed...
posted by viGilante @ 2/07/2005 05:38:00 PM
39 Comments:
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Hey all, so this is my attempt at putting down what we can remember of the trip to Europe (circa April 29th 2004 to May 1st 2004), travellers three: Udai, Karthik, and Girish; the latter two siblings of kin.
It is likely that the exact dates of events may be inaccurate or described in an incorrect order, but all events described did in fact take place. The highest effort will be made to maintain chronology.
Furthermore, these stories are a potpourri of recollections of our three companions, and hence represent an intermingling of memories, ideas, and emotions. To relive the journey in all its flourish, honour it as a unified tale, and a tale of festivity and fortitude.
April 28/29 Karthik and I met Udai at the airport. We took Air Transat, on the cheap. The flight to London was uneventful; cheap bastards made us pay for peanuts, drinks, and hedfones, but luckily we had our own fones; unluckily, they played Win a Date with Fag Hamilton.. i mean tad hamilton, and they also played somethins gotta give... they play all these cheesy ass movies so no one gets hektik on the plane, but then they show diane keaton half naked URRRGGHH *shudder*...
anyways we made it to London... Gatwick airport. We had to take a train from the airport to the subway station (the Tube) connection. This connecting train was pretty spiffy, with attendants coming by with proper tea and biscuits and such. And I heard people speakin spanish and english and italian, it was pretty cool.
London's Tube system is amazing. Probably the best we saw on the whole trip. Not only is it extremely extensive, the signage from platform to platform is excellent, and since the winding walk btwn platforms can take up to 5 minutes, signage is key.
The tube itself is round and short like a hobbit's doorway. After maybe 4 stops going north, we alighted at a station close to Ranjini's and Ushir's home. I think it was raining when we got outside, but definitely cloudy, I think. I remember this walk being quite tiring since I had not become used to carrying the backpack load, and it didnt help not knowing how much we had to walk to get to Ranjini's house. I could probably still get to her house from that subway station, I just dont remember the actual names of the streets.
I remember one of the first things I noticed was the traffic while crossing the street. Here in N. America, you look left, right, and then left again, in case another car has approached in the lane immediately in front of you. There you have to look right, left, and right; I almost got swiped by a car because of this mistake, but maybe it was just me and I was too tired to know wtf was goin on hehe...
Finally we arrived at Ranjini's place. The walk wasnt too bad at all, maybe 15 minutes or so. The three of us shared a room on the second floor. There are 4 floors in all. Our room was nice. Karthik and Udai shared the bed, and I was on the floor, I dont mind the floor. Theres a very funny dream story that Karth and Udai should share. Stay tuned for that...and more.
Im hungry and need to get going. TTYL.
That first day in London, we fought jet lag. We decided to take the Tube to a main area, grab some food, and maybe a bus and tour around. We took the tube to an area with many Turkish and mid east restaurants, but I think we ended up with pizza. From here we took a double decker that headed towards Buckingham, however, sleep overtook me. With the rhythmic bouncing of my head against the bus window, bag clutched in arms, I fell deep asleep. I think the other two fell asleep as well. I remember waking up and having no clue where we were, and not really caring. I think by that time we were actually close to Buckingham though; we got off and toured around. Grabbed some coffee in this cafe under some stairs and ran into this girl form calgary who wouldnt stop talking, she was annoying, especially since we were so tired.
I dont remember that much from that day. I think we went home and slept, and then went out for dinner or somethin.
Time to set the record straight.
There was no wierd dream on the first night in London. There actually WAS A giant mechanical arm which reached out from under the bed. I have no idea why the arm chose to grab Karthik, but as Karthik's friend, it was my duty to intervene! Karthik, you unappreciative bastard, I saved your life!
I remember the first day. We asked Ranjini where we should go for cheap food, and she recommended a road called Edgeware Road (not to be confused with Edgeware, which apparently is a region in London). We found the road, but found most of the middle eastern food unappetizing. Most of the stores served meat products, and our group was two-thirds vegetarian. We finally settled on a Pizza store, and were perhaps a little disappointed that we weren't trying something Middle Eastern. However, we consoled ourselves with the fact that the owners looked like they were Middle Eastern, and we were tired, so this was close enough.
The bus ride was funny. We were not trying to get to Buckingham, we were trying to get to Trafalgar Square! I think. Anyway. Yeah, we went to the second floor of the bus and totally passed out. I'm not sure how long we were on that bus for, but I'm pretty sure that it was at least one hour. I remember it being really surreal, because this ticket collector dude came upstairs, but then it turned out he wasn't a ticket collector, he was just doing a survey on ticket collecting on behalf of the bus company.... or something along those lines. Damn, we were too jet lagged to care.
Watch out mate, those ticket grabbers are in the fix at times!
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One of the days in London we also checked out London Tower, which is right along the Thames, close to Tower Bridge. The fortress itself was cool; home to the crown jewels. You can experience a glimpse of our tour here. Our tour took around 3 hours I'd say. From here we crossed the Tower Bridge by foot and headed to HMS Belfast, the only British battleship still on water. But the damn thing was already closed! All these kids were playin on the gun turrets, which looked pretty cool.
Anyways, by now we decided we were hungry. One of the restaurants in my Europe book sounded cheap n' good, so we tubed it to that area, and had to start walking and looking. All the street names are high up on the sides of buildings, so it was kinda a pain finding our way. And then all of a sudden we saw two guys kissing, and then we saw this store with crazy spandex/latex-wearing mannequins lolol. Yes, my guide book had led us to the queer district. We kept walking though, and we did find the restaurant, but it was very ghetto, and was also closed! So we ended up in an italian place across the street; I remember my food not being very good lol.
I think later that day we were just walking around, and came to the Piccadilly Circus area. Five main roads intersect here, and there are
big lights. There was this HUGE arcade that we entered, atleast 3 floors. It was a major high school hang out. There was one of those Dance dance revolution arcade games, and Britney Spears' Toxic was playing heheh. Finally we found our way out. There seemed to be a lot of clubs in the area as well. While Karth and I were waiting for Udai (cough cough) right in the middle of the Circus pretty much, tonnes of people all dressed up for clubbin were walkin by. And there was a huge Hare Krishna group that walked by too! I dont think they were going drinking, although some beggar-types were tagging along lol. All this made us wanna go somewhere, so us three managed to find an Irish pub of sorts (McNally's?). It actually turned out pretty good, it was nicely crowded, and there was a live band with a dude goin crazy on a violin I believe. It was our first taste of the European bar scene, and we were drinkin our Guinness brew.
Yo guy, this is fun and all, but why don't you set up a blogger account that we can both use? Then we don't have to post everything in the comments section. I sort of explained how to do it in an email I sent you I think... Hey, where's your bro at? I thought calling him an "unappreciative bastard" would irritate him enough to get him to write something.
I believe the reason Udai began dreaming about a giant machine arm was because of Girish's Texas Chainsaw Massacre style teeth grinding...Anyways, its not that I'm unnapreciative, it's just that when its the first night of a trip and you're in bed with a dude, most would be disconcerted at waking up with that dude on top of you. It was all very confusing and i was pretty scared.
I think at least one of us should mention how wicked awesome our hosts Ranjini, Ushir, and Vish were....they made us a giant breakfast with eggs and pancakes on the first morning. We almost forgot to go sightseeing in London cuz we were too busy chilling in their house. It was probably good that we enjoyed the luxury though, because it turned out that Paris was a whole different story...
Yo, that picture link you posted has like, a thousand pictures of the TDK/Sanyo sign in Picadilly Circus, from different angles, and at different times of day. lol.
Yeah, Ranjini Vish and Ushir really did treat us like family. We were enjoying it so much, that we totally started to neglect our plans for the rest of the trip.
I remember, we were all chilling on the couches, watching a really bad show (wasn't it an episode of Jackass?) when Ushir started asking us about our plans for the next day.
We were like "Yeah, we're going to Paris."
Ushir said, "Okay, how are you getting there?"
Then we all started looking at each other with confused expressions, saying things like "We were planning on booking tickets ... or something..."
Eventually, Ushir realized that we hadn't even planned, let alone booked tickets for anything. He then started cracking up, which was funny. Then Girish probably made one of those "Unnnnhhhhhh!" noises that he makes when funny shit happens.
Hahah thats jokes..all of it... yo they also took us out to a Turkish place I think? With that shwarma stuff? I forget what that was. It was pretty cool zippin around in the Mini..That nite I think all 6 of us went to a nearby pub. The pubs in england close at like 11:30 or something though, cuz many of them are in residential areas... I dont remember what we drank though, something local I think. I think Ushir suggested the bus to Dover/Calais-Paris here and told us to look into it asap heheh... We woulda been kinda screwed otherwise!
I think on the 2nd or 3rd, we caught the bus from London to Dover. The latter part of this ride was better cuz it was out in the country, and I remember as we got closer to Dover there were some awesome rolling hills, with grazing sheep and this small but old looking castle on top of the hill.. with blue skies, it was awesome looking...
When we got to the water, we laid eyes upon the White Cliffs of Dooovvvaahhhhh. They were cool.. and on the ferry across, all the seagulls were following us out for a while... oh yeh i forgot bout the cool sports cars!
ah yes the sports cars.....as we waited at the foot of the white cliffs of doooovvvaaaaaaaahhhh for the ferry to take us into France, we found ourselves amongst some very, very rich people. They were in some crazy race which involved driving their sweet ass cars around the world or something. So there was this huge line of Ferrari's, Porsches, BMWs, Jags, etc. We were walkin around lookin at all of them and i think Girish sat in one of the Ferraris. It was all pretty random now that i think about it.
The boat ride was pretty cool...It was very chill on the deck and it was actually pretty nice on the inside too. I remember us talking to some guy for a long time...(didnt he say he quit his job and he was like just roamin around or something?) We also met a girl from Markham just before getting on, and she informed us that the Czech Republic had just joined the E.U. That little fact came into play pretty big later on.
Yeah meeting that girl from Markham was pretty random too. As for the ferry ride across the Channel, I remember pulling in upon the beaches of France at Calais, but I dont remember much of the bus ride from Calais to Paris. Once we arrived at Paris, it was afternoon/evening, and we had to figure out how the subway system worked, and how to get to our hostel. This took some time because of the whole French thing, but we figured it out, and made it to our hostel neighborhood (Marie-dechy?).
This area at first seemed kinda thugged out, but we got used to it. The hostel however, was interesting gar la. One room, about 10 feet across, if that, and like 15 feet long? There was a sink in the room, three beds (one bunkbed), and a closet. The washrooms were co-ed, but the stalls were labelled boys/girls, and the boys toilets didnt have seats lol, so I just used the girls one if I had to lol. The showers were in there too... it was all quite ghetto, and big change from the luxurious London lifestyle we had been living. Even our room floor was pretty dusty. But we did have a nice view out of our window.
Wasnt it Marie de Cliche? That hostel was ghetto...so was the neighborhood. I think the first night we went across the street to this convenience store to get food for dinner. In the back they had something like snakes just rolled up sitting on the shelf...unpackaged and unrefrigerated. Pretty gross.
Throughout the trip we met lots of Canadians, and on the first night we met these two girls on our floor from Newmarket. We ended up hangin out with them the next day. Another thing i remember about that hostel was the breakfast they served every day. It was just rolls with jam. So we each would eat a crap load of rolls and then take some with us sometimes.
Yeah those snakes were seriously fekkked... like the actual snake head was just sittin there as if it died of old age dried out in the sun.. there were pig ears there too, right next to the delicious cheese and yogourt, and YOP! But this was our first taste of pain au fromage in the land of delicacy...
We did roam the city the next day, we took the subway to the champs elysee (sorry about spelling if i screw up), and one of the first things i noticed was how much wide open space there was and how grand and how large everything was. There was this huge palace like building with a grand bridge with pillars in front of it, and it turned out the building was like an old government building, and something about Invalides. After this, we headed back up towards the arc de triumph... the champs is full of hi rollin stores, and there was a giant briefcase...
From the arc we headed down the champs towards le louvre. In front of le louvre there was a huge square, with a giant intersection, and a tall pillar in the middle... again I was amazed at the expanse of it all... all the structures were massive and grand and widely spaced...
It was very hot this day, but we crossed the forest park thing and approached the pyramidal windows of le louvre with some trepidation... actually no we didnt, we just wanted to git some shade on...
Hey doods, long time... well where were we, The Louvre was cool.. You can spend all day there. We saw the mona lisa and some cool shit.
One of the nights in Paris, I think it was the Tuesday, we decided we had to check the club scene. However, our tour book advised that parisian clubs are hi hi rollin and the bouncers are known to select people who meet their qualifications for good looks and well dressed. So, as three brown guys in hoodies, I dont think we had a chance lol.. but we went out anyways, took the subway to an area we thought would be good,..and the book said "Look for the googly eyes moon" and thats where the bus to get back will be..lol...so we tracked that down first and then started walkin...
I remember it gettin kinda creepy real quick.. and before we knew it we were in porn district central..all the doors were just curtains and we could kinda see thru a bit lol...
Anyways we saw this afro-cuban joint and I thought it was a gay bar of sorts, but Udai and Karth convinced me it wasnt lol..so we went in, and it was pretty small, and not that crowded, but they had some great desperado (beer + tequila_, and the guy who worked there was like half sri lankan or somethin with dyed blonde hair... it was a decent time, sippin on desperados...
At the bus stop back, we ran into an indian guy form boston or somethin. We named him Vivek Chaudhary. He was funny, in a funny sorta way..
oh i think we did some predrinkin that nite too? cheap wine? good shit, good nite!
I think we hung out with those girls on the last day in Paris. And the day before that we took a train to Versaille, outside of Paris, and home of the Treaty of Versaille. We had to stand in a pretty long lineup. Inside, we saw the famous Hall of Mirrors, where the Treaty was signed I believe. Im not very good at rememberin history. But the mirrors were lookin pretty dusty, they needed a cleanin... And I think after spendin so much time at le louvre the day before, we felt like we had seen all the "palace" type things already..
oh yeh we also noticed that while everyone was pretty well off, and there were a lot of interacial couples n stuff, almost all of the street vendors in front of versaille and the louvre were black, seemed kind of odd..
By now we had also realized that the Paris subways, while very extensive and comparable to London's system, was still very odd... the ticket stubs you put in to go thru the turnstiles would work so randomly.. We were sometimes using 2 day old stubs that would let us through, but the one we just used to get into the system would not work.. it was wack, but we were able to save some money this way... Plus the signage was not as good as Londons system,...
I remember the first train ride we took out to marie de clichy, I lost my stub, cuz you need to use the stub to get out of the system as well... so I had to jump over the turnstiles with my huge backpack on lol...I managed to do it, but my md player fell out of my pocket smack!... that md player took quite a beating all trip long, and fell several time from my stupid pockets.. but its still workin! sony is wicked...
One of those evenings we also walked to the Eiffel Tower. We went to the very top (right?) It was an excellent view in any case, and me' trigger happy took several pics..at nite time the whole tower lights up with flashing lights, looks pretty cool...mmmm Eiffelll...
Its Friday afternoon, the day is almost done, the boss is in the Bahamas, so Im gonna post some more!
The final day in Paris we managed to hook up with those girls who were stayin on our same floor... One was from like Laurier or somethin I think..We checked out the Notre Dame, it was pretty cool, though we didnt go up it. Then we all walked quite a bit somewhere, not sure where, I remember a big building with pillars..Then I think we decided to split up cuz we wanted to check out the catacombs, which were supposed to be really cool!
But by the time we got there, it was closed, I think we missed it by like 20mins..gah! Udai remembers me yellin somethin in Kannada to the intercom box lol... I think from here we made our way back home, and I remember somehow we got really rushed cuz we realized we had to buy groceries to eat stuff on the train ride to Barcelona...which would be about 10 hours overnight I think? I know we had to switch trains at the French-Spain border..and maybe even once within France as well...
Once we got on the train there was a lot of confusion regarding reserved seats and we didnt know if we'd get kicked off, but then I realized I had the reservation ticket in my pocket lol, so it was all good, we each were able to get two seats...
By this time we were well into our books, I think Karthik was readin God's Equation, Udai was readin ..OMG i forget the name of that book! with the kid and spaceships and the stuff! Some one help me out! I was readin Prey, and we rotated between the 3 of us as the trip went on...
So we were departing Paris. I was pretty happy with it, unfortunately everything is expensive so its hard to enjoy everything, but I was just amazed at the grandeur of everything, thats what I remember most... and those snake heads! lol
Does anyone remember either of the names of those two girls? Melissa rings a bell but that may be wrong. Anyways, one thing G didnt mention was the lunch we hand on the champs d'elysees. We wanted a true French experience so we sat down at an Italian restaurant haha. Actually it was more cuz it was the only nice place with reasonably cheap food. But you get to sit outside and watch all the goings on. It was pretty sweet.
Versailles is not really worth the trip, unless maybe you're a huge history buff.
The bus with the googly eyed moon sign is the Nachtung Bus. That's prolly spelled wrong. But it means night bus. If i remember correctly, it was on this bus that some kind of SWAT team infiltrated the bus and started laying the smack down. This was scary shit because it was like 4 uniformed officer types who were asking everyone on the bus for some sort of government issued identification (not just tickets or anything). They actually kicked people off right there. So we were pretty nervous cuz we obviously didnt have what they wanted. But they didnt seem to care cuz i think they realized we were tourists or something.
Why G didnt just take the bag off and then jump, I do not know.
After we got rejected at the catacombs we went to a coffee shop. Girish just ordered water which seemed harmless enough. But it must have been like Holy water cuz it was like 4 euro. He was pissed lol.
When we were walking around with those two chicks we stopped at a travel agent cuz we wanted to figure out our flight situation for the rest of the trip. This ended up takin waaay too long, but those girls were nice enough to wait around. Plus one of em had to translate cuz she knew French reasonably good. The travel agent was a real beauty. And the cute mannerisms too, inspite of the language barrier. Damn.
The book in question that Udai brought was Ender's Game. Pretty decent, but i wasnt a fan of the ending. Our books were a good way to pass the time on the train. The next city was Rome.
hmm wasnt the googly eyes thing in paris? and wasnt the SWAT team on the bus in barcelona? I guess you are talkin bout barcelona, but I when I was talkin bout the googly eyes, I thought it was Paris... maybe both paris and barcelona had googly eyed bus stops??
I was talking about Paris the whole time. But so were you, so I thought it was implied. The bus thing though...I thought it was Paris, but now I'm not so sure. We may hafta get Udai in on this one.
O yah...i said the next city was Rome but it was Barcelona...I suppose that adds to the confusion. haha
The train ride in Spain towards Barcelona was really nice.. though er were getting very tired. I remember the train zipping along this narrow strip of land with water on both sides... I remember part of the Barcelona train station, and trying to make sure that our hostel was within the main zone or something..
We took the metro up towards our hostel, and when we came out of the station, it was an amazing sight, especially since we were dead tired, had been on trains for the past 10hours, and were kinda used to the bland neighborhood of marie d'clichy... There were bright blue skies, rolling hills around us, palm trees everywhere, and smell of jasmin (i think) flowers all over... we had no idea barcelona was THIS nice, and we had stumbled upon this paradise!
Still, we had to find our hostel, and so we made our way across a brideg and uphill, still trying to take in the view...
The entire way up to the hostel was up hill, and so it was quite the workout with our bags.. I remember as we approached a fork, we asked an old man if he knew the way to the hostel... and he slapped his left hand and pointed, as he didnt speak much english. Then, we still were about to take a wrong turn when he called to us from a block downhill and yelled something and pointed to the other turn... Thank that old man for his kindness!
The driveway to our hostel was the steepest part of the trek, very steep! But when we made it to the top, we realized this hostel was pretty awesome so far.. the view was awesome, palm trees everywhere again, the hostel was surrounded by gardens... It turned out the hostel was actually an old manor. It had marble flooring, intricate tiling patterns on the ceiling and pillars, decent fare internet access in the lobby, and the rooms were nice too.
Actually the F1 race was in town that weekend, so it was very crowded.. good thing we had made reservations. There were about 10 beds in the non co-ed room, and showers and lockers as well. There was even laundry in the backyard.
So far, Barcelona was pretty amazing!
Hey where is everyone!
By the time we got to our hostel it was like a bit after noon I beieve. For lunch we ate at a small bakery kind of place close to our hostel, melted cheese on bread and stuff. We then decided to head back to central Barcelona and La Ramblas, which is the main street running from the waterfront and up through the main shopping/eating areas.
I remember that first day we walked down to the waterfront area, and there was a huge mall, but it didnt have any doors, it was open to the outside. And by the boardwalk there was some cool architecture, all constructed for the '92 Olympics (92 right?). We sat on the bench for a while.
Our first day in Paris was a Tuesday I believe, so our first day in Barcelona was a Saturday I think. So we probably went out that night :). I am probably getting the nights mixed up now, but I think the first night we bought 2 bottle of wine for like 2 euros each! Cheap stuff! And then the cork would not come out, and one guy in our room tried carving it out with his swiss army knife lol..bad idea.. in the end we just had to punch the cork into the bottle to get at the wine we so desperately wanted lol... Mmmm cheap corked wine... We didnt know where we were goinna end up that nite, so we just wanted to finish as much of the shit as we could... The 3 of us took some cups at the bottles out to the back garden stairs and tried holding the stuff down lol.. good times!
Finally we made it to La Ramblas, prolly round 12am when things got started down there. It was pretty cool seeing the Barcelona nite life all along la ramblas at this hour. There are many small side streets branching off la ramblas, and we had NO clue where we could find a bar/club, so we ended up following a group of people hehe...
Eventually, we came upon a lounge kind of bar (Name?), and we had a drink here, but thats it cuz it was pretty dead... But ofcourse this was enough for Udai and he started talkin to the bartender and asked him directions to a better club... The bartender was a nice dude and gave us directions on a napkin to Fon Fons! Udai gave the guy a hug! haha
So we got into Fon Fons, which was very much a dance club, mostly euro/electronkia stylez muzak... and the video screens were fuckin trippy! Overall it was a good time, but it was weird cuz none of the guys were hittin up any girls (and there were a few hotties), it was like the guys were there just to dance hehe .. and no it wasnt a gay bar sheeeesh!
Unfortunately, the place just died at like 2am which was real wierd, people just started leavin...
Getting back home was an adventure again... There were night time buses (Noctaum?) in the main square north (?) of the waterfront... We realized that our bus was on the other side of the square and was leavin real soon, so we booked it across the square.. but luckily the bus was pretty crowded and people were still getting on. Then, during the ride, this SWAT team somehow showed up, I dont remember where they came from. There was like 6 of them and they spread in formation through the bus and started asking everyone for IDs. One guy didnt show what they wanted and they tossed him out in the middle of no where!! It was very weird, and all we had was our international student cards, and passports maybe. After consulting each other, I guess they were satisfied.
Luckily we were also able to figure out where we were supposed to get off, I dont know how we knew. I think I just recognized the subway stop and the rolling hills. It was an awesome feeling gettin off that bus, with a bit of a buzz, jasmine smell in the air, and partyin in Barcelona! How cool is that?!
I don't remember giving the man a hug... but yeah, I probably did. Frankly, we were a little buzzed, and I take credit for this, because I made Girish and Karthik chug wine from a giant tetra-pack box which we purchased from the gas station.
You remember that Mr. Bean episode, where he tries to make white wine by mixing vinegar and sugar? Yeah, that's what it tasted like. But it got us quite tipsy (well, me at least).
Anyway, that first club was nice... it was just empty! Really nice couches (leather I think) and very expensive looking lighting.
So Karthik, Girish, and myself have been debating whether or not the night buses in Barcelona are called Noctumbuses. I was of the impression that they were.
Well, I googled it. Night buses in Paris are called "Noctumbus". Night buses in Barcelona are called "NitBus" or something like that. Either way, the swat team incident happened in Barcelona for sure! Okay.. i'm not that sure..
I think the first day in Barcelona we also chilled around the fountain and main square north of La Ramblas. It was a gorgeous day out, and we decided to just lie down on the grass, though it was a bit wet from the fountains.. it was cooling. There were tonnes of people in the square, and a lot of pigeons too.
The second day we saw a lot of the churches and cathedral I think. There are so many such sites in the small streets branching off La Ramblas. Many of these cathedrals were in the Gothic Quarter.
I remember we ran into the random lady who spoke absolutely no english. But it seemed she wanted directions and so we spent like 10minutes trying to understand her. Then she started walking down some alley and we were trying to follow her. Then she pointed at one of the large buildings there and told US to go there, and then she left! I don't tihnk we ever figured out what she was really talkin about but I think she thought we needed directions to some cathedral?! (PS this could have happened in Rome...?)
The second nite in Barcelona we decided to hit up Fon Fons again. This time we avoided the corked bottles and went straight for the 2E wine-in-a-box! It was also not very good, but what do you expect from wine bought at a gas station?! Actually it was slightly better than the previous nite's wine, and I a managed to keep this one down.
As fas as I remember Fon fons part II was another great nite on the town!
i think one our last days in barca, we just decided to relax. we just sat on the benches in front of our manor and read under the sun and palms! it was very relaxing after all the touring we had done.
another time, i remember we were upstairs in the hostel, and we saw this guy and girl making out on a bench in the hostel foyer. except, they were both from the slightly disabled group, and they werent really kissing. the guy was kinda flopped over, and from where we were standing, it looked like he had pretty much passed out on her! yeah kinda mean, but funny.
we also looked into getting tix for the ibiza ferry ride. but, note to self, those get booked like 6mnths in advance and are pretty damn expensive!
all in all barcelona was a great time. we prolly woulda mixed in better if we weren't wearing running shoes and hoodies, but we didnt have any problems. awesomeness!
italia! roma!
unfortunately, to get to rome, we had to to take a mighty long train ride. in fact, it was 4 separate trains. we left sometime in the afternoon on the day of departure, and arrived sometime in rome later the next evening! something like 16hours! we were all feeling pretty wrecked after about the 10th hour. i was getting a bad sore throat and just wanted to arrive.
i do remember part of the nite leg, when we rode through the french riviera. you could see the moon glinting off the mediteranean, it was cool. it prolly looked much better in the daylight though.
at last, rome! i was excited to see this city, one of the big names on our trip. actually, one of my friend's frends suggested a place called freedom traveler (if i remember correctly). luckily, this place was very close to the train station. and true to word, this hostel was very free.
the main hostel attendant guy looked like one of those dudes from an alberrrto commercial. we got to our room, and realized the rooms were co-ed. there was a girl already there, i forget her name or where she was from (i think the usa). karthik and i had a bunk, i was on top. udai had another bunk.
from here on, the order of events gets kinda hazy. a lot of drinking, thats for sure!...
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