Barcelona

Meet Adi and Mike. Adi is from India. He is a VJ for the equivalent of vh1 over there and he just filmed a movie in London do he is taking some time to travel before he heads back. Mike is the kid we told you about in Rome. We met him in Prague and we keep bumping into him in this trip. Both awesome dudes and hilarious. You'll hear their names a lot in this post but I'll get back to the when we arrived.

Finally, we arrived in Barcelona and we were nothing but relieved. We planned this trip perfectly because there wasn't too much to see in Barcelona that we had to cram everything in. So we knew we were going to take our time, stay out late and not worry about seeing the sites like the past 5 weeks. The hostel was one of the best we have had. It was a little family from Argentina who started it up so it was really laid back. Great thing about this place too, it was packed with Americans which was really comforting. The picture on the left is the sun rising and the moon going down on the train ride over.
We went to the nearest pastry shop and picked up some really good sandwiches. Working on no sleep we just hung out with Mike and Adi. They can both play the guitar and sing so they just played some songs that we all knew like Soul to Squeeze, Free Fallin and all the good stuff.
We also met a couple girls from the Boston area were studying in Florence and they were with a bunch of other girls from all over the US. The 8 of us all went out to dinner at the pretty nice place and the food was OK. We had tapas, Sangria, wine and some other Spanish food. After dinner some of us split up and went our own ways, so the two of us went with Adi, Mike and two other girls to a bar and hung out there for the remainder of the night.
Next morning we took it real easy and woke up whenever we wanted. The last month we have been waking up between 7-8 so this was a treat. We watched Superbad with a bunch of people due to the fact it was pouring out. Which, I might add, is the only day it really rained our whole trip..we kind of took that for granted. We then went to the Sangria Famalia which was a wash because of how rainy it was...but hey, we tried doing something productive. It was Halloween so we expected to do something regardless if we dressed up or not. So, just like every Halloween all of us scratched the idea of dressing up and just went as super sexy Americans....ourselves....get it.
We went to a club right on the beach called Shoko. Not having costumes worked out great because only about 25% of the club were dressed up so we fit right in. The music was a lot better than the club we went to in Berlin. We could just imagine what this place would be like in the Summer. The back end of the club was all outside on the beach. This club was pretty high class too with hired dancers on platforms and VIP sections scattered around. Reminded of us of some Vegas clubs. We got back at about 4:00 AM but it was OK because we had nothing planned for the next day.
The next day had a lot better weather than we expected so we got out right away (like noon time) to go see the Guell Park, known for it's really good view of the whole city, mosaic dragons and celings and some other cool architecture. Mike came with. The view from the top of the hill was one of the best city views we have seen the whole trip. We went to the Sangira Familia once more to check it out and it was much better because it was nicer out. Reminded us of a huge drip castle that you used to make on the beach. The sculptures were insanely perfect all over the whole building. Pretty cool to see. After doing some walking around the city we went to the market and bought some food for dinner. It was a prett nice dinner. It was pasta americana with some bread and red wine. Made by Clint, Mike and myself. It was the best dinner we have had in Barcelona.

The 4 of us and 2 other girls from our hostel headed out to this club called "Razzmatazz," which was a huge warehouse type building with 5 different genres of music split up into huge rooms. The club opened at 1AM and the cover was about 15euro with a free drink included. This place was massive and could probably fit about 2500 people. Come 3:00am this place was shoulder to shoulder with people and it was bumpin with music we never really heard but we loved it regardless. Later on a band came out called "the presets" and they had about a 2 hour performance, and this wasn't your typical band. One guy on drums and another on keyboard who was also the singer. They played dance music too so it was something we haven't ever seen back in the States. We could go on with the stories but I rather not. Long story short, this was our best night of the trip and we felt like couldn't have done it any better. We got home at about 7:00am all in one piece and went to bed...then woke up at 9 and got our free breakfast. From that point on was a whole lot of nothing. We made dinner again that night because we didn't want to risk eating crappy food again.
The next morning we packed up our bags and headed to Madrid.

Sorrento, Pompeii, Cinque Terre, Avignon

So the next few days after Rome were a huge mess due to some confusion of the trains and hostel openings. We headed right to Sorrento which is right outside of Pompeii. It was what we imagined a little town would look like in Italy. Our hostel was actually a hotel converted to a hostel which wasn't really that cool because it didn't have many young travelers around. We needed to get up early to see everything we wanted to see in order to get to Cinque Terre in time...so we thought. We got some pizza and Gelatto for dinner and walked around the city the rest of the night.
Pompeii was awesome. It was a dug up village that was ashed over and frozen after a volcano eruption in about 79 AD. They had body cavities of humans and dogs and their remains were in great condition (The one up top was a guy who was curled up in a ball "crying himself to death"....how sad). They had a mini Colosseum where they had gladiators fight and little villages where you could see where they slept, drank, sold food etc. Paintings on the walls were also preserved really well. It was huge too, didn't even get to cover it all....THAT'S WHAT SH....nevermind. The Roman forum was impressive but after seeing how well intact everything was here it was really something. So....a disastrous volcano eruption that kills thousands can actually have a brightside to it because preservation of everything is impeccable. Afterward, we picked up some pizza and headed to the train station.
The train ride to Riomaggorie (a city near the Cinque Terre) was pretty miserable because our train broke down dead in its tracks...no pun intended. So we got there late at about 10:00. So we get to this small city (population 56) which is one road that is uphill right near the coast and the hostel is closed. The sign on the door notified us that is we didn't get there by 6:00 we would be out of luck for a room and they would still charge us. Luckily, we found a woman closing her restaurant and one phone call later we met a short, curly haired woman on a dark stoop. This is where I thought my final minutes in life would be. She brought us up this dark stairway and gave us a key to a room. We gave her 25 euro each and she left. That's it and that's all. Never saw her again. We were heated about the situation and it got worse once we found out that we messed up the train schedule. The last thing we ate was at 11:00 am so we had to wither away until the next morning. There would no way to get to Barcelona on the nights we booked unless we left the next morning. So we skipped the hike through Cinque Terre (which by the way is 5 cities a trail with really cool views). It was rainy so we weren't too upset about it. 12 hours later of train riding were in Avignon, a big city in Southern France. We went right to a Irish pub (the only thing open in the area). We left at about 1am and headed back to the train station. Our original plan was stop and stay in the train station until our 5:55am train to Barcelona but it was closed until 4am...so we went to a nearby stairwell and stooped it the whole night. That was an experience....pretty cold out too.
Barcelona is next and we will be there for 4 nights including Halloween. We plan on ending our last week with a bang.

When in Rome

We got to Rome at noon. Our hostel was pretty awesome. One of those converted apartments that was right on one of the main streets in Rome. Since we got there so early we went to the Vatican, which was literally 2 blocks away, and checked it out there. We went into St. Peter´s Basilica and got to see how gigantic it really is. They have a lot of Pope´s buried inside the church so it was cool to see their tomb like shrines.
For dinner we went to a restaurant that was recommended by the owner of the hostel, Ivano, who looks exactly like Antonio Banderas. The place had really good food. We got some great pasta and hung out there for a while. In Europe we learned that they don´t bring you your check until you ask for it. It´s pretty nice because they don´t rush you out right when you finish. We then went to get some Gellato. This Gellato was the best we have head in our lives and they pack it on thick. There were about 30 varieties of never before seen flavors (at least by us) so it was a lot different than typical ice cream at home.
The next morning we went straight to the Colosseum. We had been looking forward to that the whole trip. The place was really awesome. We have a really bad craving to watch Gladiator now though and want to slay people. Right after the Colosseum we went to the Roman Forum which was just as cool to see everything left as it was from way back in the day.

The next day in Rome was a free entry to the Sistine Chapel, which had our name written all over it. It opened at 8:30 so we got there at about 7:45 to get a good spot but that didn't work out as well as we planned because we were about 200m back from the doors. We literally moved 20 ft in 45 minutes. This line was getting huge, probably the longest line I´ve ever seen in my life. It turns out there was a reason for the line not moving, it was daylight savings time and Europe does it 1 week earlier than the US for some reason. Probably because that's the only thing they can beat the US in....COUNT IT! We didn't realize this little factoid until the day was over so I, Steve, left the line and went to mass that the Pope gave. 10 minutes later Clint got into the Sistine for free while I had to plan on going in the morning. The mass was really something to see though. People were just taking pictures like they were on the red carpet. Even though the whole mass was in Italian it was cool to be at a mass with the Pope there. Then we went to the Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. We were the only ones walking around in cargo shorts even thought it was about 70 degrees. They must have went out of style over here.
At night we met some more friends and hung out with them. One of them was actually a kid who stayed in our hostel in Prague that we chilled with there so that was pretty ironic. Another kid was on vacation from Iraq for the Army. He flew unmanned spy planes and he had some good stories to tell, mostly talking about how much good we have done over there and the media never recognize it. And there were also about 8 aussies in our hostel and again, they have all the same story and always try to take jabs at the US so it can get annoying.
The last morning we had to wake up early so I could go to the Sistine Chapel and Clint could go to this museum full of monk bones and skulls. The Sistine Chapel was really something. Each section of the wall was something specific i.e. Separation of Light from Darkness, Land and water, Creation of Adam which is pretty well known, Original Sin, the Final Judgment. Again, there were no pictures allowed, but even if there was, it wouldn´t do it any justice. Clint couldn't take pictures of the skull museum probably because he would get his soul taken away from him if he did.
Rome was definitley one of the top cities we have been to so far and we are looking forward to hitting up the rest of Italy and Spain for the remainder of the trip. Anndd here's another picture of, you guessed it, Clint and Steve....wearing the same clothes that you see in most of the pictures.