Monday 25-08 - wrong day

We got up early, very early. We packed all our things in the dark of the dorm room. I was just about done when Josh called "stop packing". He showed us the hostel booking sheet. We were only booked into Valencia from the Tuesday. We were very confused. We went down to the reception and then realised what had happened.

When we had booked the Barcelona hostel we realised we had one night spare between then and Valencia, so we added another night to the end. We had forgotten and gotten mixed up. We still had one more night there. We felt a little silly and annoyed at having gotten up so early. But on the bright side we were out of the hostel before midday. It meant that we could finally catch the free walking tour of the gothic area that we missed every morning despite the best intentions.

So after a quick breakfast we trained to a bar called the Travel Bar. It was kind of like the Walkabout in London. Only english spoken there, mostly Australian. Only enhlish TV played above the head of the travellers. I tried not to frequent these places if I could help it. I would much rather try out a local bar where I didn´t speak the language. We hung around the bar until the tour started.

We were out into the group led by a loud blonde Californian guy. He started by taking us to the plaza reale to give us a quick history lesson about the city. It was kind of interesting. We learnt that growing pot and public nudity are both legal there. We mostly went to the area with the roman ruins and places were Colombus visited.

We spent a lot of the time in the old Jewish quarter. It was a forced ghetto until the expulsion from Spain. It seemed like everywhere we went in Europe, there were sad Jew related stories. I thought I was done with that once we finished Isreal and Poland and Prague. And then Italy. And then France. And then Amsterdam. But everywhere we go we get reminded of it. I just wanted to find a country with a happy story.

I smiled as I thought about Monty Python, Spanish Inquisition.

Other things we found out about Barcelona. It only got beaches and running water in 1992 for the olympics. 1992! I couldn´t believe it. I had always pictured Spain as a modern thriving country.

The tour ended back at the Travel Bar, where we all got free middies of beer. It was decent as a tour, although not as good as those in Amsterdam. We were starved by then but didnt want to eat at the bar. We walked La Rambla and tried a pasta place. The prices looked decent. Until we were served 5 largish shells of tortellini in a flower pattern. It was ridiculous in the way that you just had to laugh about it.

We left and made our way to the train station to book the next day´s tickets. The queue was huge and took forever to get through. we took our number and waited for it to come up on the screen. Josh and I wanted an early train rather than one in the afternoon. I like just getting the travel bit of the day over with. We booked for 8.

Back at the hostel. I sat on the cough by the reception and slowly made my way through the Spanish comic I picked up on the first day. It was relaxed. None of us felt like going out.