Barcelona!

When Katie, Julia and I decided that our last leg of this big trip should include a flight to Barcelona and a train to Madrid, we immediately booked a hostel in Barcelona. We used the same methods for all other places we have stayed at: We got accommodations for three people at a relatively inexpensive place with good ratings for location and cleanliness.

After a looong day of travel and with our big packs on our back, we were glad to arrive upon the Sun & Moon Hostel in downtown Barcelona. The reception looked nice and was 24 hours - we checked. So, I paid for our 2 nights and we were handed a key....

Then they walked us across the street and unlocked a door inside a coin shop. Which looked like Spain's 'Check-into-Cash' type of store. We then walked up about 6 flights of stairs to an unmarked door... which lead us to another unmarked door... where our room was.

Sure, there were 2 beds. Does A/C matter if the windows don't seal? The room was a DIVE and each of us took in more details as the minutes passed - the mysterious gunk on the walls, the lack of a solid door to the room... Katie noted that you could see into other bathrooms from the unexposed stairway we walked up... in short, we had the heebie-jeebies. (In castelan its the 'heebie-jeebith')

So we put our backpacks back on and marched ourselves back down the nasty staircase, past the coin-shop man, and across the street to the '24hour reception desk' and demanded our money back. I was in a fury, but I believe I used the words 'disappointed' 'deceived' 'dangerous' and 'misleading' alongside 'immediate departure' and 'full refund'. We did the best we could on the financial side of it and high-tailed it outta there.

Which left us on the streets (it was on an alley, really) of Barcelona with a map and our backpacks. The adventure had begun! Katie and Julia were cool as cucumbers while my redhead fury continued to storm. We traced our steps back to a bar we had passed called 'Travel Bar'. It was perfect - a total ex-pat bar with free internet and tons of friendly Americans that recommended the hotels and websites they had found in the area. 2 orange sodas and 30 minutes later, we were booked and in a cab to our nice little hotel in a neighborhood a bit more removed from the very beaten path of La Rambla. We are safe, clean and happy!

After getting our spirits back up we took the suggestion of one of Julia's friends and took off for the Xampañeria, a cava bar from 1929. It was adorable and in our exhaustion we got tapas for dinner across the street. We didn't even make it back for a glass of cava but took a stroll for gelato before heading in for the night. It was relaxing and very fun. Tapas were just what we craved - croquettas, patates with fried eggs and sausage, fried camembert, artichokes, eggplant. Delicioso!

The other thing we've loved noticing about Barcelona is the language difference. I really expected to see Spanish and perhaps a touch of Catalan from the region, but things here are much more like French than Spanish, down to the exit signs and menus. It really is amazing.

I think we have been blessed to have traveled such border regions this entire time because to learn about a cultural through a literal progression is one of the clearest ways to see what makes us different and similar to our neighbors. Germany to Austria and then Austria and Northern Italy overlapped so incredibly, from the food to the architecture. To me, the same is true here in Barcelona - the food, language, architecture, street signs and landscaping look like a cross between Madrid and what I saw in Paris. These details are one of the reasons I love not just learning about language and culture but really travelling .

The other best part about travel, at least this trip, is the experience I'm having with my sisters. And with that, we're off for the evening! Julia has promised us a bar called 'Dow Jones' where the price of drinks change on an electronic screen as the popularity of said drink changes with the demand of the crowd. We'll consider it a study in economics.

Off to enjoy the last night in Barcelona!