We were a little worried the day before leaving because a large portion of flights leaving Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris had been canceled due to snow and we were worried a) our flight the following day would be canceled or b) our flight the following day wouldn't be canceled but we wouldn't be able to get back to Paris on Sunday and would be stuck in Barcelona the week leading up to finals. In the end, after polling our respective host parents, taking a deep breath and going for it, we took the train to Paris on Friday and arrived in warm, sunny (not hot but much much warmer than frigid France) Barcelona at about 4 p.m. After checking into our awesome hostel (somehow I didn't take any pictures of it but it was very cheap and very nice; the best deal I've encountered this semester), we went out to explore.
We saw the Torre Agbar, which I've seen in numerous architecture books, and which towers over Barcelona as one of its tallest, most uniquely shaped buildings. After walking around admiring Christmas decorations and lights for a while, we decided we were too hungry to ignore food anymore but it was still too early to go to dinner (gotta wait til about 9 p.m. to do that) so we stopped in a little side café to get a snack to tide us over. Hearing nothing but Spanish or Catalan, of which we understand nothing, is one thing. It's entirely different to decide on what you want based on the illustrated menu outside and to walk in and realize you don't know how to say anything past "hello". The woman at the café didn't know much English either but we played a game of charades and somehow ended up sitting at a table eating what we had each wanted. When it came time to pay at the counter before leaving, I realized again just how helpless you feel trying to get some idea across and having absolutely no idea how to do so. I didn't even know what the thing I ate was called because what I asked for had been out and so I had pointed at something in the glass case like a mime and had gotten it after receiving a "si, muy bien" and a friendly nod from our waitress helper. When it came my turn to tell the cashier what I had eaten, I uttered a weak whimpering sound and walked to the end of the counter to point at the remains of the quiche-type food I'd eaten to get the idea across.
At the very least, such an experience made us realize how grateful we are to know French so well at this point. There are still plenty of times when we don't know a vocab word, but in the worst case scenario that just means that a conversation ends up taking longer than it needs to because you spend half of it playing a game of Taboo explaining your way around mystery words. In Spanish, we didn't even know how to say, "sorry, I don't know the word for this."
We ate at a Spanish restaurant where Amy and Abigail got seafood paëlla (spiced-up sauced-up rice with tons of cooked swimming critters in it), I got pasta, Preston got something else that is yummy but I can't remember and we all got a pitcher of yummy sangria.
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| Seafood paëlla arriving at our table of anxious eaters |
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| Quickly emptied Sangria pitcher. |
wandering the city and eating yummy food, we headed back to our comfy hostel, mingled in the hostel bar (mostly with ourselves, given that most of the population was boy scouts or full-grown adults) and called it a day, falling asleep in our record-breakingly comfortable hostel beds.
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| Sagrada Familia melting part |
La Sagrada Familia, a large Roman Catholic church designed
by Gaudi and built around the end of the 19th century. It was
so amazing and bizarre; aside from the appearance of part of
it melting, the baskets of gigantic statue fruit perched atop its
spires, the square-headed Jesus and various disciples
inhabiting the opposite side of the building and about
everything else about it, the church is completely normal. That
is to say, it's the opposite of normal. We didn't go inside
because we didn't want to spend our birthday girl's birthday
standing in line, but it was a very cool sight to see.
After visiting the Sagrada Familia, we made our way up to the
top of Park Güell, an area that climbs steeply to the top of a
tall hill and overlooks Barcelona, with lots of Gaudi buildings
at its entrance and sprinkled throughout the park itself. We
went into it a back way without realizing it, which turned out
for the best because we climbed up to the top and got the view first, then worked our way down and saw more and more Gaudi buildings as we went along, finally ending up at the entrance to the park which is this spectacular collection of buildings and patios and coverings and walls all covered in gorgeous intricate tile work, equipped with artists and musicians everywhere you look. You are never out of earshot of music and the sun shining down on hundreds of happy, relaxed people made the place even better than we had imagined. We chilled there for a while, just drinking it all in, and then worked our way back into the city to tour some more buildings and wander around.
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| Yeaahhh, the view was aight. (You can see the Torre Agbar sticking out like a... sore thumb? in the distance) |
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| Dr. Seuss City Extravaganzaaaa! |
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| Preston's and my "ohhhh my god it's beautiful!" face |
After our siesta we went out to dinner at La Rosa Negra, a Mexican restaurant, where we took full advantage of the foods our beloved Mexican cuisine has to offer that we've been missing in France. After a birthday dessert that couldn't be beat, we headed downtown to meet up with Jack, Amy's friend. We shared a drink with him for a while killing time catching up between our late dinner and our later birthday festivities.
He gave us some tips for bars and clubs to go to and we were astonished to hear that many clubs in Barcelona don't really get started until 3 a.m. I guess those siestas sure do the trick for those guys. We went to another little hole-in-the-wall bar that we never would have found without his suggestion and, wallets clutched close and holding hands, found ourselves a table and four sangrias through the bustling crowd and had a great birthday evening (I even got a five-euro souvenir t-shirt!) and headed back to the hostel "early" compared to our local counterparts.
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| Our oversized friend (shhh, he's sensitive about his weight) |
We went from there to the Barcelona beach to breathe fresh air and touch ocean water in December. A little chilly at this point to go swimming, but the sand was so soft and the weather temperate enough that if the sun had peeked out from the clouds we would have stripped down and gone tanning.
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| Who says sunny is always better? Clouds aren't all bad. |
Then began the real drama of the weekend.
Knowing that we had left ample time to get from Charles de Gaulle airport to Montparnasse train station, we hadn't been worried about the transition before. Taking thirty minutes off of that time made our eyes widen a little at the prospect of running through the Paris metro station and arriving at our train's platform just in time to see it pulling away to head off to Nantes without us. While visions of RER and metro transitions danced in our minds, we buckled down and slept like it was our job until landing in Paris, when it was Go Time.
Grabbing our backpacks and tightening our scarves around our now-chilly necks, we edged our way to the front of the crowd and speed walked from one end of CDG airport to the other to catch the RER, a special train that goes from downtown Paris to the outskirts of zone 3. Having bought return RER tickets before leaving Paris on our way to Barcelona days earlier, we caught the train minutes before its rolling out of the station, happy that our legs were not only long, but all alike in that trait. Now was not a convenient time to wait up on slow walkers. Our legs twitched the entire train ride as we kept muttering to each other, "we can still make it... we can still make it..." at each train stop that lasted for an eternity.
Upon reaching our transition stop, we ran toward the metro entrance, using our RER/Metro inclusive tickets to hurriedly swipe through the gates before catching our last connection to Montparnasse. Amy and Abigail went through without a problem and I inserted my ticket and ran SMACK into the unyielding metal barrier.
This was not only one of those obnoxious rotating bar gates, but one of those obnoxious rotating bar gates followed by an imposing metal hinging door as tall as me, all of which was stubbornly resisting my frantic efforts to pass through.
Amy and Abigail out of sight, my mind raced with solutions. My ticket didn't work for some reason, although theirs had and they were the same type and price as mine had been. It was too late now to go all the way back and find where a machine might be, let alone select the right ticket and dig through my wallet to find the appropriate change to purchase it. There was no way. As a man passed by me on my right, I slipped in behind him hoping to subtly get a two-for-one deal. Not happening – that guy's ticket didn't work either, for some unknown reason. Refusing to dwell on our shared failure, I turned and my eyes locked on a little old man inserting his ticket into the evil Metro machine two gates down. I leaped after him, reaching forward with one arm to hold open the metal door after he passed while my other arm supported my adrenaline-filled body to leap over the stubborn one-pass-policy metal bar barrier.
Seeing my friends' frantically wide-eyed faces change to sudden looks of horrified relief, I sprinted to catch up with Amy and Abigail and we ran, taking two, three steps at a time, to catch the next Metro train to Montparnasse.
Torture was defined in that seemingly never-ending three-stop Metro ride.
We edged to the door as our stop approached. Pulling the metal door trigger before the Metro came to a complete stop, we leaped onto the platform and all out sprinted. We had three minutes to make the ten-minute walking trip from the metro part of Montparnasse to the train platforms part. We would have to look up at the board to see which platform the Nantes train was leaving from, and we would have to get there before our train pulled away without us. At this point, there was no looking back. We had to make it. All systems go, we hauled ourselves full sprint up the multiple flights of stairs out of the Metro, around the corner, almost slipping on the slick concrete floor, breathlessly blurting, "Pardon! Excusez-moi! Pardon!" to every startled French person we flew past, clipping their shoulder. Legs aching, we continued to run full speed across slick floors to the next set of stairs, taking them two at a time and trying to convince our burning lungs that they would eventually recover from this. We hurtled down the hallway to the train station one by one, Abigail's eyes finding the platform announcements board first and thrusting an open palm at Amy and me behind her, breathlessly mouthing the word "FIVE!" with a look of panic on her face. We quickly realized that we were at platform 9 and our minds whirred as we considered the fleeting possibility of our not making it. We approached platform 5 as the loud final warning alarm filled our ears. We hurled ourselves inside the first car's door as an SNCF employee urged us on, saying "Allez-y! Vite! Vite!"
Inside, we squished in as the last passengers among other people who had been running late. They didn't know the meaning of running late. Panting, lungs heaving, legs threatening to collapse, we edged our way down the now-moving train's corridors to our seats and sat down, still too high on adrenaline to reflect on what had just happened.
But we made it.
And we got to Nantes safe and sound.
And now the countdown 'til home reads 10 days.
your cloudy ocean picture is GREAT.
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