Verona Ventured, more than meets the eye in Barcelona

I decided to skip the second day trip to Venice, as I didn´t really feel there was anything left to do, sside from the glass blowing demonstrations, which I didn´t feel warranted an entire trip back to the city of islands.

So I spent the next two days just hanging out in Padova, moving from my hostel for the Saturday and Sunday nights to the cheapest hotel I could find. The only hostel in Padova has a lock out curfew of 11:30PM, which stunted most nights spent at the Highlander pub shack with Paul. Deciding that we were going to spend a good couple nights of the weekend hanging out in the pub shack area, Paul and I rocked up about 7PM on Saturday to the Highlander, only to find they were just beginning to set up. We left and found some kebabs for dinner; kebabs which had no less than three different types of sauce and a few other bits and pieces that differentiate from what we get at home. They were excellent, and by the time we got back to the shack they were able to start pouring drinks. We would alternate between Aperol Spritz´s, Corona´s, and in not to long a time, we decided to try the Bulmer´s. I´d heard of the stuff not too long ago from Ian, who described it as quite a nice drop, and this resulted in us cleaning the place out of every bottle within the next 48 hours.

We made friends with the bar staff, Albani (the Albanian), Angela (the hot chick) and a greek dude who was only there for the Saturday night. It was on this particular Saturday night that Greekguy, as he will now be known, was playing with the music on his phone along with Albani. They weren´t allowed to put on a stereo, lest they be fined for some reason, and so between the two of them, they piped out a tune or two on their phone during the quiet periods. At some point Greekguy started playing the Zorba dance, and tried to teach Albani the steps. If you´ve never experienced the Zorba dance, basically it consists of everyone linking shoulders, kick to the left, kick to the right, do a sidestep to your right, and repeat. The speed slowly increases until the end becomes a flurry of kicks and people tripping over. Albani just couldn´t get the hang of it, and Paul and myself offered to give it a try ourselves. Even in our semi-lubricated state we were able to work it out, and proceeded to scare the rest of the potential customers away from the joint for the next 5 or 10 minutes.

We also made friend with the Irish owner, Kevin, who was happy to provide us with a couple free drinks whenever we caught up with him. So not to look like barflys who just kind of cling to the one place (no matter how true that may have been), we were sure to change venues for about an hour each night, which involved walking up the road a couple hundred meters to another shack with some funky red couches, a venue at which Paul attempted a drunken pickup of a very attractive Argentinian woman. Unfortunately his attempts were not quite successful, but in his stout defence neither were those of several other potential suitors who gave it a crack themselves. It was after this little sabbatical that we returned to the Highlander and reclaimed our spots at the bar, and finished off our night there. This included Angela informing me through Paul´s translation that I had ¨very beautiful eyes¨ and also resulted in Paul prodding me about this for the rest of my stay in Padova. In his drunken state he also tried to convince me to go for her phone number, despite the fact I was leaving in two days and didn´t speak more than about two words of Italian. We tried to get Albani to put in a good word for me, but unfortunately nothing further eventuated. Still, being told you´re pretty by some hot chick is always fun, and no, she wasn´t just trying to sell us more booze....

On Monday I headed to Verona to see the sights, and a half hour train trip later and the same amount of walking time saw me in the heart of the place with a map and a few a few highlights circled. I started with the arena, which is a large old Roman amphitheater, which I was highly recommended by Paul to check out after my dissapointment at Trier. Unfortunately it seems I don´t have a lot of luck with amphitheaters, as this one too was being kitted out for some kind of opera, and there were plastic seats and stages being set up in it also. However, it wasn´t quite as offensive as the one in Trier, and there were still good sections where you could clearly see the structure itself, including one large wall piece which I think is supposed to be one of the main original parts. I wandered around and checked it out, and it was indeed quite impressive and in good condition, however I´m certain most of it has been rebuilt once or twice.

Next I wandered around the town a bit, had some lunch in one of the main squares, and then checked out some of the surrounding buildings and statues. I found another statue of Dante Aligheri (I´m not sure why I thought the on in Barcelona would be the only one around), and there seems to be quite a lot of monuments to him in the area. Eventually I stumbled across Juliet´s house (of Romeo and Juliet fame), where you can see the balcony that Romeo climbs up to see his girly (although I am skeptical of the authenticity of this balcony, considering R&J is a work of fiction), and there is also a bronze statue of Juliet standing in the courtyard. This statue is, like most old, weathered and kind of black, except for her right breast which is brightly polished from the hojillion tourists who come here to have their picture taken whilst groping said boobie for good luck. There were hundreds of people in this little courtyard, all queuing up to have a picture taken with the statue, and yes, I also followed this little ritual and will hopefully have some funkiness headed my way soon.

The entrance hall to Juliet´s courtyard is plastered with little love notes stuck to the wall with gum, and the gates also have quite a number of padlocks linked to it, all of which I´m assuming is to provide some kind of good fortune to a relationship. The whole wall of gum is actually pretty gross, and some of the more oblivious didn´t seem to realise as their would sit and rest their backs on said wall, and probably came away with some of it as a souvenier.

I left the throngs of tourists and checked out a small castle on top of a hill looking over the city. The walk up the stairs was quite an effort in the hot, humid weather, and whilst the castle didn´t seem to be open for inspection, the view from the hill was pretty cool, and allowed you to see over most of the city. I left this vantage and headed to one last museum containing Juliet´s tomb. There were some nice marble sculptures by some artist I´d never heard of, and I eventually made my way through the place and found the tomb itself, which consisted of a graffiti strewn room with an empty sarcophagus (save for a couple of lillies).

At this point I´d had enough of the town, having seen all I´d come to see and not finding interest in other of the locations listed on the map, so I made my way back to Padova, checked into the hostel for one more night and met up with Paul for a final drink at the Highlander. After a few drinks, I gave my goodbyes to the bar staff and received a farewell Aperol Spritz from Albani, organised when I´d meet Paul in Germany the coming Friday, and headed to my bed.

The next day found me up at 5:30AM to get the series of trains and busses to Milan Malpensa international airport, and I got back to Barcelona at about 2PM. I was quickly reminded of the Spanish work ethic as I waited over half an hour for my bag to arrive on the carousel. I found my way to the main train station, and transferred a small amount of clothes and essentials into my small backpack, leaving my large case in the lockers of the train station. In fact, I used the exact same locker I did last time, a moment filled with nostalgia and memory.

I had about 8 hours to kill before I was to meet Miriam at her hotel, so I used a few minutes of this to transcribe some of the more interesting sounding bars and pubs from my guidebook onto a small sheet of paper. It was during this that I found in the guidebook a cinema that showed English movies, and nearly losing myself in excitement, grabbed all the things I had together and high tailed it as fast as I could to said venue. I had been killing myself trying to find somewhere to see the new Transformers movie since I found it had been released, and this was my best chance so far. It turned out the movie wasn´t on for another three hours, having just missed the more recent session. I decided to fill some of that time by seeing Shrek 3 as a prelude, which was OK, but not really as good as the last two.

When the time came close, I excitedely found a good seat in the cinema, and to my surprise the previews and ads all happened before the scheduled time of the movie, rather than after, and at almost precisely 6:30 the actual movie started. It was pretty awesome, and seeing and hearing Optimus Prime in full live action was very satisfying. They got his voice just right, and whilst I think it could have used a bit more robot to robot fisticuffs and laser blasting, hearing many of the original sound effects and themes through the movie was very cool. However I think they spent way too much time dealing with people and the army, rather than just having robots smash each other around. There was no space stuff at all (aside from them crashing into the planet), and there should have been some more actual Transformer characters. I think what I´m saying is summed up pretty well in this comic, but no matter how much whinging is involved, the movie still kicked ass.

After this I headed to Miriams hotel and met up with her about 11, showed her around a few of the main night sights of Barcelona, and got some dinner. Yesterday we met up with a couple of her friends from England who had come over for a weeks holiday, and spent the day checking out the Sagrada Familia (I actually went into it this time, it was so-so), checked out Gaudis park, had a siesta and then met up for dinner and drinks later that evening. I don´t really have much to say, as I´ve already seen and described all there is to do in Barcelona, but it has been fun hanging out with another bunch of friends. The girls have met up somewhere today to go shopping (I respectfully declined), and after finding somewhere to do my washing, I´ll pack up my stuff ready to head to Freiburg and meet back up with Paul in the Black Forest tomorrow.

Pics of Monaco and Nice now available!

Halfway Reflections

I'll get to my last couple of days in Padova in the next entry, which includes my trip to Verona for the day and learning from a very cute barmaid that my eyes are "Belissimo!".

I have hit the halfway point of my planned journey. Today is actually slightly past that, at about 43 days of my original "Around Europe in 80 Days" plan, with my acknowledgements to Jules Verne. In fact, that came a very close second to being the name of this blog. I do have a fascination with the word "shenanigans", which is why the current title won out.

I've more or less been on track with my original itinerary, with some changes in duration and some extra stops along the way. The second half is going to vary greatly from my original plan due to my return to Barcelona, and then the excursion up to Germany to the Black Forest with Paul.

So what are my thoughts so far? I have seen many different countries and cities by this point, tried a variety of beers and food, talked to and met many different people from all over Europe, been chased by some rowdy bovines, seen many famous icons and taken a lot of photo's. Let me take each of these points in turn.

It has been good to see the different countries and cities around Europe. It has been very interesting to see each country essentially merge into the next one, as because I haven't taken many long journeys, you can see the cultures blend near the edges. I'm glad to be able to say I've visited these places, and whilst I still think that humans are humans no matter where they're from, there have been some distinct variatins in culture as I move around. It is interesting to see that the Italians take their siesta much more seriously than the Spanish do, as every Italian shop (except more popular restaurants) in Turin, Padova, Verona and even Venice are shut between about 2 and 4. Contrastly in Spain, though I only saw a small portion of it, there doesn't seem to be as much of a ghost town during these periods. It is interesting to go from France and Belgium, where while the service isn't always terribly polite (north Belgium excepted), it is usually prompt and reasonably efficient. In Spain and to a lesser extent Italy, you get served with a smile, and they are usually genuinely trying to help you, however there is a definite lack of urgency about the place, and if you want anything done quickly, these are not the places to be.

I've tried to sample the local cuisine at most of the places I've been, and certainly Belgium was a highlight in the beers department. Certainly there was some nice French food, and some occasional highlights in Spain and Italy, but to be honest, generally I haven't been quite taken aback by the international cuisine. I'm not a hardcore food critic, but I know what I like, and so far I think we have a better variety of food of much higher quality back home. Italian pizza, while nice, I didn't find terribly exciting, and for the life of me I couldn't find much pasta on the menus (apparently southern Italy is better for this). Those who know me, will also know my signature pasta dish, and I did not find one lasagne on any menu in Italy. Spanish food didn't grab me, but that's because I'm not too big into seafood, and I was too busy browsing the beer lists in Belgium to really care about what I was eating.

I've definitely met a lot of people in my travels, as most would expect this happens primarily in the hostels. It's difficult to meet people out and about, primarily because of the language barrier. I have taken a lot out of just talking to different people and seeing what they think about various topics and why. I've also spent a lot of time interrogating people about their respective countries and what makes them tick, which has yielded some interesting ideas, including what seems a complete lack of German nationalism, the expense of living in Norway, that somehow even with all the oil and carbohydrates in their food, the Italians are the skinniest in Europe. Given all this, though, it is difficult to form long term friendships with people when you only know them for a few days at the most. So this exchange of ideas is very interesting to me, but I also realise it is the most I can expect out of most encounters on my journey. It is always fun to run into other Australians out here (and trust me, there are plenty of us around) and see what their experiences have been like so far. It has also been a huge bonus being able to hang out with friends I know whilst on the trip. Travelling by oneself doesn't get lonely per se, but hanging out with close friends can make many experiences shine that much more. That said, I have thoroughly enjoyed spending days with new people I've met, as they often offer a perspective that you and your close friends may not consider. Oh yeah, and as far as the scenery goes, Italian girls take the gold so far. That said, I'm yet to visit any Slavic or Scandinavian countries, which I've heard good reports of quality from also.

I haven't been a lazy traveller, and I manage to see the main sites in each city. Eiffel towers, crazy buildings, nice views, to be honest, they're cool to see, but each does little for me in and of itself. I've always been much more of a 'doing' kind of person, which is why I am generally enjoying myself more when there is activity going on, such as the bike tours, walking tours, etc. I have taken many, many photos (there are so many left to release on the gallery), and my little mascot Donald is making more appearances here and there.

I haven't experienced many real "wow" moments that a lot of travellers talk about, however I will re-iterate that the Running of the Bulls was one of the most incredible things that's happened to me, and I still get a cool buzz just thinking about it. I do, every now and then, stop and kind of "realise" that I'm actually half way across the world, for instance "I'm in Italy having dinner... that's a bit bizzare", or "I'm in southern France, just walking around... hmmm!".

All in all, it's been pretty cool so far. I fall short of saying that this whole trip is "life altering" or anything like that, as you often hear from travellers. I expect that I will actually appreciate a lot of these experiences after they're all said and done. I will be able to associate things that happen to me, or that I see in the future with things I've encountered on this journey, and it will hopefully give me a broader perspective with which I see the world at the end of the day. As stated in the caption, I'm only halfway there, and there is surely a lot left to be explored. I am intrigued to see at the culmination of this journey, what my reflection on this trip as a whole will be, and whether I will take anything singularly profound out of it, or if it will simply be one of the more interesting chapters in that book we call Life Experience.

Pamplona Pics Published!

Photos

Voyage to Venezia

It takes about half an hour to get to Venice from Padova. I undertook this journey with an American guy in my dorm room, Graham. He'd been travelling Italy for a while with a large group of family (about 25 people apparently!) and once this had finished up, he decided to continue his journey backpacking style for a couple more weeks.

The previous night I had spent a couple hours having a drink with Paul at one of the shack pubs known as the "Highlander", one of a series of pubs run by an Irish bloke who moved to Italy some years ago. He happened to be running the bar on this particular night, and we got to chatting. Once I mentioned I was headed to Venice the next day, he became quite exasperated and held back no small opinion on the crowds which he described as annoying obese Americans, albeit in a much more flowery language than I am willing to publish here. Assuring me that upon encountering these crowds I was more than likely to turn postal and throw several of these walking jelly-bowls into the Grand Canal, he wished me luck, and then I had to return to my early closing hostel for the night.

Graham had spent the previous day wandering Venice already, so he had a bit of a feel for where things were. Not exactly knowing what to expect, we arrived at Venice central station about 10AM, and entered into the throngs of people crowding the place. The description that the Irishmen had given me wasn't far wrong, the crowds of people were indeed dense, however it was a bit more multi-cultural than a group of fat Americans. Graham and I began to wander the streets of Venice, and essentially continued to do this the whole day. Except for the main thoroughfares, the streets of Venice are quite narrow, often being difficult to fit even two people abreast, but the buildings and architecture were quite interesting. Most of the houses look quite similar, flat faced buildings of old construction, puncuated by churches and other important and official looking buildings. I had hoped that this wandering would follow the Grand Canal, but unfortunately the canal doesn't actually have a footpath following its route. There are also only three bridges to cross the Grand Canal, one up near the station, another somewhere in the middle, and the final right near the end.

It is said that it is quite easy to get lost in Venice, and this would probably be true if you were trying to get to particular spots. Due to our general wanderings, we didn't ever get lost, per se, but we did run into a couple of dead ends here and there. Something that surprised me was that Graham hadn't seen San Marco's Square, somethind I'd heard about and was quite keen to visit. Luckily the main parts of Venice, such as the square, have many many signs pointing in their direction, so it wasn't too hard to find. Eventually we made our way down through the windy streets into the square, and it was very impressive indeed. There are large, kind of uniform buildings down one side of it, with a very large bell tower known as St Marks Companile in the middle. There is the Basilica which looks quite impressive, however the entrance queue to get in was equally as impressive, and the concept of waiting at least half an hour in the (very) hot Venetian sun did not appeal to Graham or myself, and we satisfied ourselves from admiring it from the outside. I took a bit of a fancy to one of the lion statues on top of a large column, which was one of two such statues that you can see as you look into the piazza from the water side.

Another thing that should be pointed out are the millions (exaggeration) of pigeons that flock to the piazza every day. This is apparently one of the famous aspects of the square, and one they are apparently not too worried about losing. They encourage these rodents of the sky to overrun the place by selling bags of corn to the tourists who either scatter these kernels amongst the pigeons, or hold some in each hand with their arms outstretched, at which point these flying rats will jump up onto their benefactors arms and peck the corn out of their hands. I saw some with no less than 7 or 8 pigeons perched upon their person, and secretly hoped I would see them all expel their white gunk en masse onto these crazy people. Actually, for all of the many thousands of pigeons that were in the square, the place and statues were suprisingly free of bird dung. I'm not sure how this is possible, but someone, somewhere must have either devised a mirical bird poop cleaning system, or the corn they're stuffing these animals with is some kind of special, poop inducing free variety.

After spending a while in the square, we went over a bridge to the left of the piazza to have a gander at the Bridge of Sighs, a monument that Graham was familiar with, and was apparently the last sight that prisoners would see of Venice just as they would be incarcerated. It is a nice bridge, and one that you can walk across (if you can find the entrance). However, it was difficult to get a clear photo, as hundreds of kids managed to trump along the bridge, and every single one of them insisted on putting his or her arms through the small gaps in the walls, and wave out to the people examining the structure.

Graham and I spent the last few hours of the afternoon continuing our wandering through the streets, stopping here and there to chat or grab a drink (I must have gone through several liters of water that day), having a look at the shops, most of which were selling the exact some variety of wares, usually Venetian Masks, and come about 5PM, Graham headed back to Padova. I decided to hang around until the evening, as I've heard sunset in Venice is quite nice. I bought myself a ticket for the water bus, and headed off to the island of Murano, the famous glass blowing island just off Venice. Unfortunately the actually demonstrations had finished by the time I got there, but I spent a nice hour or so wandering around checking out all of the shops selling their blown glass wares. Some of if was very creative, and had I not been required to carry it around for the next couple of months I would have considered buying some of the smaller items. However, I knew that these would simply be ground back into the sand from whence they came in my bag, so I was content to snap a few photos.

I made my way back to the main island, and got the water bus (Vaporetti) to the top of the canal by the station. Come about 8PM, I then reboarded another Vaporetti and took my first trip down the Grand Canal, just as the sunlight was starting to fade. This turned out to be timed extremely well, and seeing the buildings in the twilight was quite picturesque. Also, it was at this point that I understood why there were no footpaths along the canal, as having throngs of people in the way of the buildings would really have detracted away from their natural elegance. The boat made its way along, under the famous Rialto Bridge, and eventually deposited me back at San Marco's square. I spent 15 minutes or so snapping some photos of the square in the evening light, and quickly reboarded the Vaporetti to go back up the canal to my waiting train. Seeing the canal in proper night was also quite interesting, with many of the larger buildings and churches lit up well. I chatted to an Australian couple that were spending the night in Venice, and once the boat reached the station, I helped a lady work out her train ticket to Rome (she looked very confused in front of the ticket machine), and headed back to Padova.

Venice was quite nice, but I don't think I need two days there. I was able to see everything I wanted (except perhaps the inside of the Basilica and maybe some glass blowing), and after walking around for 8 hours, many of the buildings begin to look the same. The place doesn't smell at all, contrary to what I had heard, save for a slight ocean scent, and aside from the huge crowds of people, the whole place is very cool to look at. San Marco's square is definitely the highlight, though the canal ride in the twilight would come a very close second.

Catching up on nothingness in Padova

Catching the 5AM train to Padova was tough. To begin with, we had to change trains in Milan, which meant our 4 to 5 hour journey was split right down the middle, and secondly, what we expected to be a night train (it has beds) turned out to be a regular train without said comfortable flat surfaces. As a result, Paul and I tried best we could to curl ourselves onto the seats provided, Paul opting for the rest up against the window and stretch your legs over the end of the chair, whereas I went for the curled up along two chairs in the fetal position maneouver. Either way, neither of us got truly comfortable and sleep was fleeting. We had an hour stopover in Milan, during which I somehow managed to catch half an hours shut eye on the hardest stone bench you've seen in your life, waking up with some of the most excruciating pins and needles in my left arm I've ever experienced. The train from Milan to Padova wasn't much better, as it was quite full, which meant we were restricted to our own, single seats. I tried my best to rest my head on the table between us, but this ended up hurting my neck more than the stone bench did, and after a couple hours travel we'd finally ended up in Padova.

My hostel was a kilometer and a bit down the road from the station, and a short ways down the road Paul split off to go and lose consciousness in his apartment. I continued on my way, sweating continually into clothes that already had over 24 hours of constant wear in Italian weather, and combined with the previous two days of long distance walking, my entire body was about ready to self destruct by the time I'd managed to hobble through the door of the hostel. This was about 11AM, and I was informed that I couldn't actually check in until 4:30. I was, however, able to leave my bags in the luggage room, but it meant that the relief shower I so desperately craved was currently out of my grasp.

Not completely dismayed by this point, I walked back to the station, where a public park was situated, only to find it closed for some reason. In fact, every park around the area seemed to be locked up on this particular day. I spent nearly an hour trying to find a suitable patch of grass to rest my aching body, and nearly losing my marbles completely, I finally found one under a tree near a road intersection that I settled for, and feeling like a regular bum managed to get a couple hours fitful rest there. Finally my hostel opened for business just as I'd made my way back down, and thankfully the showers were of high volume water and I was finally able to bring myself to some level of respectable personal hygiene. Unfortunately by this stage it had hit 6PM, and I got a call from Paul enquiring as to whether I was ready for dinner. This meant I didn't get a chance to have a proper nap, but we met up all the same and managed to find a pizzeria that he was aware of, followed up by a couple of beers.

It is interesting to note that at this point in time in Padova, all of the pubs have closed up, and moved into little shacks along the river. This is pretty cool, as they are all centrally located, and apparently this event happens every year. We spent some time up there, although only until 11PM, as one disadvantage of the hostel in this city is that it has an 11:30PM curfew. The local beverage of choice is an "aperol spritz". It tastes kind of like Campari mixed 50 50 with a pale beer, and is quite nice. It is also quite cheap, and we generally alternate between an ale and one of these.

The next day I committed to finally having some rest, and I spent a good portion of the day in the park just near our hostel. I was a bit frustrated that I didn't check out this park the day prior, as it is in the main square of Padova. In fact, the Prato della Valle, Paul informs me, is the biggest square in Italy, and the second biggest in Europe behind Red Square in Moscow. The place is awesome to relax in, as the elliptical garden area with a nice little fountain in the middle is encircled by a moat/canal, with regularly placed statues of famous local figures on either side. The day consisted of a lot of nothing, including a lunch with Paul, which no doubt consisted of pizza, followed by the dumping of photos onto the inter-tubes. We met again later for dinner, on this particular night dining on a new animal, known to the Italians as "Caballo", or to the rest of us, "Horse". The meat is nothing special, and kind of tastes like a poor beef steak. I won't be rushing out to get it again, but there's something novel about being able to add another species to my carniverous repertoire. We followed the experience with another few drinks at the pub shacks.

I spent the next day seeing some of the sights around the city, after catching a morning nap in the park. I saw a couple of churches, one which is supposed to contain the body of St Luke, however Paul is (and I tend to agree) quite skeptical of the validity of this claim, as the story of how the body was lost, found many hundreds of kilometers away a good deal of time later, and then brought to the church is sketchy at best. There is also the Basilica di Sant'Antonio da Padova, which contains several relics of the old saint, and one of the interesting things about it is that you can walk around the back of his tomb and touch it. This is actually a bit depressing, because as far as I can understand it, the saint is involved in finding lost things, particularly people, which is expressed all too painfully in solemn expression on the faces of those praying whilst holding their forehead or hand on the sarcophagus. No cameras were allowed in the place, so I can't show you some of the fine artwork and opulent relics, which included the lower jaw of the good saint, and, as Paul informed me later, apparently his tongue. Needless to say, these things looked particularly disgusting, but the golden viewing cabinets they were contained in were quite impressive.

After a longish lunch with Paul, I went back to his university office and helped him work out a problem he had with a Fortran program he was writing (which means I can now say I have had something to do with developmental research in the field of nuclear physics), and spent the rest of the day in my now favorite park della Valle.

I spent the following morning from 10 till 1 at the local hospital (they don't seem to have private doctors as such) trying to get a prescription for some antibiotics for a minor skin infection I have developed from all of the stress I've put my body through. I had to wait in the emergency room amongst a bunch of other patients waiting to be seen. There was one other Australian in the room who wanted to get his finger looked at which he'd dislocated a week ago in the Ukraine, as apparently the Ukrainian hospital system isn't too flash. The guy was a roadie for the George Michael concert that is touring Europe currently, and had a few interesting stories to tell about what he'd been up to for the past few weeks. About two and a half hours later I finally managed to see a doctor and tried to explain the situation. I had no less than three people all in the room trying to communicate with me and they began discussing anaesthetic and surgery, and it took me a while to convince them that I knew what was going on, and that no, blades and needles were not required, but please give me some antibiotics to treat the infection. This is one situation where the language gap becomes somewhat scary, however one of the nurses involved with looking after me during this whole ordeal managed to speak a word of two of English and between us we managed to get through it. She was very happy and helpful, and also pretty cute. She looked kind of Spanish, and got very excited when I mentioned that I was headed back to Barcelona to meet up with a friend of mine. Eventually they agreed to give me a prescription, and also gave me a referral to go see the specialist surgeon on the upper floor. I assured them I would (I won't), and the cute nurse took me down to pay my bill, which luckily only came to about 20 euros. I thanked her again, and after she had dissapeared back into the wards, I quickly made my way out of the place. I caught up with Paul and his recently returned supervisor for lunch, and then made my way to the pharmacy to pick up my medication.

I expect that tomorrow (yes, I've finally caught up to current time with this thing) I'll head to Venice with an American guy from my hostel. I'll be in this general area of the world until my flight back to Barcelona on Tuesday to meet up with Miriam, and between now and then I expect to spend two days in Venice and one in Verona as day trips from Padova. It's been good to finally get some rest here, and the run-down sniffles I'd developed from Pamplona seem to be all but gone. There's not much to see generally, but I'm a huge fan of the Prato della Valle for chilling out, and it's a good central spot for anyone looking to check out Verona, Venice, Bologna or any part of north east Italy.

My general plans have changed somewhat from my initial idea, and I've decided to give the rest of Italy a miss for now. I can barely stand the heat even up at this latitude, and heading any further south with the stories I've heard from Rome and Naples would surely spell my doom. Instead I plan to head to Munich from Barcelona, possibly stopping off at Freiberg where Paul will be exploring the Black Forest, from there to Innsbruck, Austria, to Salzburg and then to Vienna. It will be interesting to see how this affects my 80 day timeline, and it may turn out that I have a bit of extra time to explore some of the eastern countries. This could involve parts of Poland, or perhaps further north to Scandinavia. If anyone has suggestions, I'd be interested to read them in the comments!

Touring Turin

Friday's train trip to Turin was uneventful. There was a minor scare when I got to the station in Nice to start my trip, finding the place very over crowded and struggling to work out which train to get on. It turns out my ticket required two train changes along the trip, and I had to find out what the intermediate points along the way were. Once this was shown to me I slowly made my way towards Turin (these are not the high speed trains), missed one of my changeovers and got delayed by an hour, but finally arrived around 6PM.

At the station in Turin I was waiting by the information booth to get a map, standing next to a young group of Brits doing the same. I struck up a conversation with what has become the standard travellers conversation of "Hi, how you doin, where you from, where you going, etc", and they asked if I was here for the festival that night. Of course I'd heard of no such festival, and upon enquiring about the entertainment to be given at said event, found that the Arctic Monkeys would be playing, and that it was free to boot! Once again abandoning my plans of having a proper nights sleep and a relaxing couple of days, I joined them in interrogating the information booth employee about the shenanigans, and she showed us where the event was and the free shuttle bus to get there. I quickly took my bag to my hotel (I couldn't find a hostel in Turin city, and got a cheap hotel instead, again, trying to have a quiet evening of effective sleep), dumped it, showered and hurried off to the bus depot. I got on with many other people, but the bus didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. The Italian weather is hot and humid, even way up north, and rather than sweat on the bus with the other peeps, I decided to stand outside the door. However, I think this bus was being driven by the grumpiest guy on this earth, as he stepped on the bus and shut the doors immediately, when it was clear that there were several people standing outside waiting for an indication to get on. A few Italians threw some stern words his way and the doors opened for long enough for us to shoot through, and then we made it towards the park where the festival was being held.

Grabbing a Corona, I made my way to the stage square, and one of the Brits I'd run into at the station spied me and brought me over to their group. I spent the evening rocking out with them, the festivities starting with a band known as "Art Brut", which were a bit shit to put it mildly. The music itself was ok, fairly generic English rock, but the singer just kind of spoke the words in a cockney accent, and the lyrics themselves were completely inane garbage. After about 45 minutes of this they finally left the stage to be followed shortly after by "The Corals", who were again an English rocky kind of band, but actually had a bit of talent. Their music had overtones of Americana rock. Think of a cool grungy rocky version of the theme from Bonanza and you'll be getting close to what I mean.

They finished up and were followed about 20 minutes of stage setting later for the Arctic Monkeys. I remember wanting to see these guys when they toured Melbourne, but between the $80 ticket price hesitation and the thousands of people wanting to go I missed out. This gig was excellent, and they played most of their songs from the first album and several from the second. They had a great stage presence, and I was surprised to find out that they're all only about 19 or 20 years of age. The Brits I was with couldn't understand how they could go from playing at the biggest music event in Britain not more than a month ago that cost 150 pounds a ticket, to a free concert in Italy. Their set was longer than the others, continuing on to just past midnight. Once the applause died down I bid farewell to my British companions, who were planning on bumming around Turin until the first train out of the place to Venice arrived, and got on the shuttle bus back to the center of town. Unfortunately the bus didn't stop where it had picked me up from, and after a bit of confusion and a lucky encounter with an English couple who were able to point us out on the map, I finally made it back to my room by about 2AM. So much for the good nights rest, I hit the sack and made ready to meet Paul the next day.

My bags deposited in the train left luggage counter, Paul spotted me halfway up the platform and we began our tour around Turin. We had a wander through a couple of squares and decided our first real stop would be, as Paul decribes, "The Holy Tea Towel of Turin", better known as the "Shroud of Turin". This is basically a big old rag that Jesus was apparently wrapped in after his crucifiction, which has an image of his body somehow imprinted upon it. The actual shroud is carefully locked away in a large sarcophagus, and a replica is on display in the church. Paul noted that if the scale was accurate, Jesus wouldn't have been much taller than about 5". The church itself was very basic to say the least, especially compared to others I've seen along the way. I would have thought a place containing such a holy relic would be better adorned, but apparently these guys are going for the spartan look. Perhaps it's to less distract away from the Shroud itself...

After a quick Greek snack of some kind of cheese filled pastry, we headed into the cinema museum. This turned out to be a great decision, and the next 3 or 4 hours were spent looking at the history of cinema, from static images right up to the latest special effects. There were several floors in chronological order, with some cool cinema relics of their own. I was most excited about one of Charlie Chaplins' hats that were on display. Honestly though, the first floor which contained all of the really old stuff like the first steps of motion pictures using such technology as the Magic Lantern I found quite dull. Some of the stereo images were cool, which also included some of the first recorded pornographic images (I'd never seen porn in stereo), but overall I didn't get that interested in the exhibits until it started hitting stuff like the silent films.

Once it got to this point I became much more interested in the exhibits which showed the different techniques used to create a movie, from shooting to editing to sound production, showed various famous actors (there seemed to be quite a love-in affair with BridgetteBardot, who I'd never heard of) and there was one section of the place that involved walking in a square around the whole building where famous movie posters were hanging. There were also several areas with examples of cinema of different themes (Horror, Romance, Western, Sci Fi). Paul and I sat through some of the more interesting ones, and each of these sections was decorated in relation to that theme. One of the more interesting rooms was filled with about 10 toilets which you could sit on, and one of the movies presented in the room consisted of a family sitting down to their evening dinner, however instead of sitting on chairs, the sat, pants down, on toilets. I cannot remember the movie this scene was from, and it was either in Italian or dubbed in Italian, so I've no idea what they were talking about, but it was quite bizarre.

There was also a small section which superimposed your moving image onto a small part of the lobby scene of The Matrix which Paul and I spent a bit of time have some juvenile fun with.

The cinema museum took us to about 5PM, and it was time for the main reason Paul had come to Turin, which was to see the Beasts of Bourbon (Tex Perkins + Friends) playing at a local festival. We walked at least 3 kilometers to find the venue, at which point my body had started to rebel from the increased amount of movement it had been subjected to recently. Unfortunately Paul had mixed the day or the dates up somewhat, and after an entertaining conversation through the fence with one of the security guards, we were to find that the concert was actually scheduled for the following (Sunday) evening. Paul was most dismayed at this eventuality, but being on no particular timeline myself I suggested that we stay here a night and catch the festival at its scheduled time. Paul agreed, and we slowly walked a further 3 or 4 kilometers back to my original hotel, much to my bodies complaint, booked another room and headed out for dinner.

Paul was excited to show me some authentic northern Italy cuisine, but we found that we'd happened upon a Napolese restaurant, and so just stuck with the common Italian food of pizza. My compadre explained the local custom of eating, which usually involved an entre and main, or simply pizza, but almost always followed by a coffee. Unfortuntely by the time we'd had our pizza, it had hit about 11:45, and the left luggage at the station closed at midnight. We declined coffee and got a rather unusual look from the waitress, paid our bill and scurried painfully down to the station to get my bag. Luckily the staff hadn't decided to knock off 5 minutes early, and I was able to retrieve my belongings and take them back to our domicile, stopping at a pub on the way of course. We passed the first pub which had a clear sign "Discogayfashion" (wait for the photo) on the window and went to one a few doors up which seemed a little more low key and more our style. Eventually we made it back to the hotel and quickly crashed out to sleep.

Luckily the following day the hotel staff, whom were very excited to hear we were going to a concert in their fair city, agreed to take care of our bags until the we hours of the morning, and we set about on a second day of Turin wanderings. We headed down to one of the main piazza's, Vittoria, and ended up spending a couple of hours there over some beers discussing all manner of things and catching up on each other's lives in general. This liquid lunch was followed up by checking out the large, Pantheon-esque building at the end of the piazza, which Paul had estimated to be some form of goverment building, possibly chamber of commerce, whilst I had gone with department of justice. It turned out to be some kind of church, and further to this was closed. Taking a few photos and continuing down the river, we eventually happened upon our actual destination that was a replica medieval village, which Paul aptly described in his blog "in a country of medieval buildings, a 'replica' is as lame as it sounds". The whole place was very sub-par and not worthy of the time taken to walk there, and we quickly left the place.

Next on the list were the "Gates of Hell" which were described in Pauls guidebook to be a place of very black and evil energy. This was abundently clear by the pretty flowerbeds and fountains in the area, and we delighted in taking some photo's of each other being smote down by evil demigods in front of a bunch of pansies that apparently marked the spot. After tempting fate for a while we again walked the several kilometers to the festival venue, had a hamburger-ish meal at a cool little shack by the road. I've dubbed this place since as the "Melon Shack", as it did a roaring trade of selling primarily watermelons. Every few minutes a car would rock up, someone would get out and request a melon of certain volume, and the supposed owner of this place would walk over to his large crate of watermelons, slap a few of them (I assume to test their ripeness, though further observation seems to disprove this), and hand one over. It was a very unsual little situation, but the people who owned the place took good care of us and made a very nice meal.

Eventually we made it into the festival, which wasn't very large by any stretch of the imagination, got a few beers and waited for the shows to start. Paul managed to get photo's with a couple of the band members who were wandering around, Charlie Owen, the drummer who barely gave us the time of day, followed by Brian Hooper the bass guitarist who actually stood around and chatted for a while. About 9:30, the Beasts of Bourbon were brought forth to the stage and started busting out their blend of "Swamp Rock". The crowd wasn't huge, probably a few hundred strong, pretty much all Italian. The music was pretty good, but the lead singer, Tex Perkins was, to put it midly, quite a lot of a wanker. During the half hour set he managed to hurl a mostly full beer can between two security guards, shake one up, crack it slightly so it spewed forth its foamy contents, and launch this a good ten meters up in the air above the crowd to come crashing down on one unfortunate girls arm and drop a microphone stand on one security guards head. He wore a button shirt that become more progressively undone as the show continued, and to my minds eye was trying to strut around like Mick Jagger for the entirety of the show, something he impersonated very poorly. He then left the stage at the end of the lyrics of the final song, however the band still had a couple minutes of actual melody to bang out, at which point the Beasts of Bourbon's performance was apparently over.

The band was the supporting act for a more popular grunge group known as "Mudhoney", so the only person there who actualy seemed to know any of the BoB's lyrics was Paul and one other chick who was down the front. As a result I'm not sure how the Italians took the performance. The music itself was quite good, as far as hard rock goes, but the performance itself? I dunno. I'm not that into the rock scene, so perhaps this is just how they go down, but to me, the talented musicians that make up the sound of the Beasts of Bourbon might want to look into getting a new lead singer.

Mudhoney by contrast were quite good, and a little more composed. They performed a great set (even though I didn't know any of their songs), and contrary to usual practise in Australia, kept coming out for a total of 3 encores to the crowds cheers. The crowd, who'd obviously come specifically for this performance, had grown by several hundred by this point, and the entirety of them were very into the music. It was during one of their songs that the lead singer / guitarists suited up Spencer P Jones from the Beasts of Bourbon with his guitar, and motioned for him to come crack out a ripping guitar solo with the headlining band. Spencer came out and proceeded to rip out the worst guitar solo ever heard by human ears, completely out of musical tone with the rest of the band (though the crowd still cheered as loud as ever for the novelty factor) and then made his way back to the sidelines. The reasons behind this became clear after Mudhoney had finished, as Paul, who was intent on getting a picture with each member of the BoB, called Spencer over for a photo opportunity. Spencer did so, along with another member of the band, Brian Hooper, and they were both so drunk that Spencer could barely stand and Brian could barely talk, except to describe slurringly to Spencer how proud we all were of Paul studying his physics PhD, a fact he astonishingly remember from a previous conversation earlier in the evening. Paul described to me later how Brian and he were basically holding Spencer upright, as he stared vacantly towards the camera, barely moving between a couple of snaps.

Not long after this, Paul waved over the drummer of the group, Tony Pola, who exclaimed "Are you blokes Austraaaalian?" and a couple minutes later Tex Perkins strolled past and we grabbed his attention. Paul got a shot with these two, also very drunk musicians, and before we had a chance to move away, Tex pointed in my direction and slurred "What about that guy?!". Not wanting to dissapoint the man for the unique opportunity to have his photo taken with me, I swapped positions with Paul, Tex wrapped his arm around my throat not far from the choking point, and Paul quickly snapped a photo. The guy was disgustingly sweaty, and to say I was glad when released from his hold would be an understatement. Instead of making you wait, dear reader, for me to organise all of my Turin pictures for you to enjoy these wonders of photography, I have created a special album of them here.

Shortly after midnight the festival was over, and after souveniering a poster from one of the barricades, we made the long walk back to our hotel to pick up our bags. Even past 1AM, the lady was very courteous in allowing us entry to recover our belongings, and we slowly walked our sore, tired bodies over to the train station. We then proceed to have some slightly drunken ramblings until about 5AM when our train to Padova finally arrived.

Revealing the Riviera

It was my first overnight train experience. It took another train to get to the French border before I was actually able to board the "coche" train (which in some way or another translates to sleeper train). On this preliminary rail trip I met a couple of Americans who'd been travelling for a few weeks and another who'd been in Pamplona and was doing a tour of the festivals of Europe, in essence, chasing each one from town to town.

Reaching the sleeper train, I found my cabin and was a little surprised. I'm not sure what I expected from the outset, I certainly wasn't visualising a hotel room on wheels, but the cabin itself was quite small with three beds on each wall. Sort of ground level, middle of the wall and above. The bed was about a meter wide, and whilst there was a place to put your luggage, my bag was a bit too big to fit there. It went at the end of my little stretcher, and whilst it resulted in me not being able to stretch out the whole way, it was comforting to know where it was the whole time. I'm not saying the train felt dodgy in any way, but when my bag is out of sight, there is always the niggling concern that someone might be screwing with it.

I slept fairly well on the 7 hour trip to Nice, all things considered. The constant movement of the train and the noise from outside were a little distracting, but I'd become so drained from Pamplona and still hadn't really caught up with the sleep debt. As a result my body was starting to rebel, and a run-down cold was setting in. I made a commitment that Nice would be spent relaxing and sleeping, in order to fend off this illness which would only cause me trouble if I allowed it to linger. One of the problems pointed out to me in Europe by Ian, is that you actually need a prescription to get something as simple as cold and flu tablets, so I knew I wouldn't be able to find relief there.

Once I arrived at Nice, I worked out where the hostel was and made my way down. The weather was hot, and by the time I'd made it, I was very sweaty and uncomfortable. Unfortunately I wasn't able to check in until after 3, but was allowed to leave my bag in the luggage room. I did so and went to check out the city in general.

Basically there's not much to see. I'm either starting to become a little jaded at finding a new city, or perhaps I did all the exciting ones first. At any rate, Nice has one fairly bland cathedral, one main shopping strip and quite a nice plaza. I stopped at the plaza for a baguette for lunch, mostly to cool down from the hot sun for a while. There's a pretty cool fountain in the middle that increases and decreases the amount of water and the height at which it is spraying. That was entertaining while I finished my meal, and then headed past it to check out the beaches.

The water of the mediterranean in Nice is very very clean. There's no sign of seaweed anywhere, and the first 30 meters or so are very light blue, darkening significantly as you get further out. The coastline itself is also very spectacular, and there were thousands of people enjoying the sun, sailing, parasailing and the like. I hadn't brought any of my swimming gear, as I'd decided just to do walking around thing, so I made my way back to the hostel to get a towel and change into some shorts. I was also able to put my bag in the room, and with a combination of the heat, the walking around I'd done, and general lack of sleep, I promptly passed out on my bed for half an hour.

I then made my way back to the beach, and found myself a spot on the shore. At this point I'll make clear that when I say beach, I'm actually talking about a short of small rocks and pebbles. Not a grain of sand was to be seen, and whilst this may sound horribly uncomfortable, the rocks aren't jagged, so while not soft and cushy like the sandy beaches back home, it was still able to be lay upon. The water itself is quite chilly, but I think that was primarily due to the heat of the environment outside. The body adapts to the cold water quickly, and swimming about was very refreshing after a couple days without a shower. One interesting thing I did note was how rapidly the rock shelf became deep. It stays shallower than a meter for the first 10 or so meters into the water, and then quickly drops off well below head height beyond.

After letting my body rest here for a couple of hours, I went back to the hostel and grabbed myself a pizza. There wasn't too much open, and I grabbed the first opportunity for food I had. I ordered a pizza of various meat and cheese, including an egg. This isn't like the good ol' Aussie pizza back home. Due to the Italian pizza's being (generally) quite thin, they don't spend nearly as long in the oven as we expect back in Oz. Due to this, the egg they crack in the middle of the thing is essentially raw. Further to this, they don't slice it up for you, as generally over here it is one pizza per person, and it usually eaten with knife and fork, as the thin base is generally not stiff enough to pick up by itself. At any rate, I met a Canadian couple in the hostel kitchen as I was rummaging around for a knife, who finished serving up their gnocci and joined me for dinner. Louis and Whitney, both from the Montreal area were great company, and it was interesting to see how Louis, whose first language was French and Whitney, whose first was English were able to complement each other in conversing with English. They both spoke English perfectly, but occasionally Louis would want to describe something complicated that he only knew in French, and between them they worked out the best way of converting that to English. Even though I'd wanted to get to bed before midnight that night to begin my relaxing mode, through the chatting and general good times I didn't quite make it before 2AM. We made plans to head to Monaco the next day.

Meeting at breakfast, we got our stuff together and headed for the bus station. There are two ways to get to Monaco from Nice, which is only about 20KM's away, and that is either bus or train. We were recommended to use the bus, as you get to see the entire coastline between Nice and Monaco, which was very picturesque. Unfortunately it seemed everyone else had been given the same advice, and it was very cramped standing room only for the hour it took to arrive, as the busy, thin windy roads along the Riviera make for slow going. Honestly I don't know how the bus made it without side swiping several other vehicles, but it seems with a bit of practice these drivers have gotten a good handle on how to manoeuvre their massive machines around the obstacles.

Eventually we made it to the main marina and checked out all of the boats in the harbour. There were all shapes and varieties, but it was quite clear that the majority of these vessels were extremely expensive. Massive yachts with opulent open lounge rooms floated one after the other in a row down the marina, many with several other small marine vessels attached to them. Most had at least one jet ski sitting on the top, most with a couple. Some home several side boats hanging off the edges, but all were very clean and of the highest class imaginable. Most were white, with various names that elude me now, but later in the day we would see a very sleek black cruising yacht pulling into the marina that looked very bad-ass indeed.

We walked up and around the marina now searching for the famous Monte Carlo casino, and we passed a few buildings, Louis querying "Is that it?". We were the only couple of people walking around, and the buildings themselves didn't look that opulent, so in each case I replied "Nah, I don't think so, we'll know it when we see it". We reached the end of this strip of buildings, only to see more apartment and residential areas, and it turned out that this indeed was the casino. We had been walking along the strip behind it, and with the lack of people and general ritziness, I had been convinced that it must be elsewhere. We wandered around to the front, and finally saw the main entrance with its garden and flower arrangement, and I have to admit I was underwhelmed. Being considered the richest, or one of the richest, famous casino in the world, I expected something incredible. I don't know what it would have taken, perhaps hundreds of pure gold fountains spraying crystal water as semi naked super beauties frolicked under them in the sun would have worked, but all I was treated to was a fairly nice building with a flower garden and funky mirror out the front. Either way, photo's were taken appreciative comments were made, and we moved on. Apparently we had the option of entering the place, I found out later, as I'd was under the impression it necessitated a suit to get even through the doors. However, we skipped this part and got some ice cream which consisted of the the biggest two some Haagen Daaz I've seen in my life.

Hiking up the other side of the hill to see the royal palace was hard going, but the result was quite impressive. The palace itself is nice, but nothing incredible, but the view over Monaco city and the coastline in general is quite amazing. The flag was up, which indicated the Prince was at home, however the main gate is roped off in a 20 meter semi circle from the public. Within this circle a lone guard in whites holding a large machine gun paces in a 15 meter line. Foward. Stop. Slowly turn. Back the other way. Repeat..... and repeat.... and repeat. This poor bugger had to do this all day, and it was clear where he was walking, as there was a definite strip of worn asphalt along the path of his pacing. I'm sure it is quite an honour to have this duty, but honestly it looked like the most boring job in the world, and add to that the heat of the place, and there was no shade, I do not envy his position in the slightest.

More photos were taken and we checked out some of the souvenier shops, grabbed a beer and then took the train back to Nice. All in all, Monaco only took about 3-4 hours to see, and then it was done. The whole place is only about 2 square kilometers, and once you've done the marina, the casino and the palace, all that is left is residential areas. There is the occasional Porche or Ferrari that will wizz past on the road, the main road being the same used for the Grand Prix. There are little sections of the road where the red and white edges are visible, but for the most part it just looks like a normal old road, quite thin really, considering the speed at which the F1's go tearing around.

I guess I expected the most extreme opulence, celebrities all over the place, and streets lined with the most expensive of automobiles. All in all, it was still a nice city with an incredible view, and probably the nicest collection of boats you'll ever see. It did indeed re-ignite my desire to own such a vessel, and I'll be sure to start poking Dad about getting his boat when I return. Perhaps I should start the poking earlier, so that it will be there for my arrival. One thing I wasn't sure about is how big a vessel need be before it becomes seafaring. Are all these nice cruising yachts restricted to the mediterranean? Is it possible to take them across the Atlantic to other shores? If anyone has knowledge on this area, please feel free to leave a comment!

Once back at the hostel, I hung out for a while in the bar area. I got chatting to a couple of Americans from South Carolina. We had a few beers and tequilas, I tought them how to play the card game I learnt in Toulouse, and after an hour or so of this, a few Germans on the table behind us talked us over into joining their drinking game. Called "Maya", it was a bluffing based game, where you would shake two dice in a cup and announce your score. The person to your left either has to shake the dice and get a score higher than you, or decide that you're lying and look at your dice. If your dice are not what you proclaimed, you would have to take a drink. There were a few other complications, but that was the jist of the thing. This turned out to be very entertaining, and continued on past midnight at which point the hostel staff decided we'd become too rowdy and told us to leave. Most of the group headed out to continue on at some bars around the city, but I'd again broken my curfew and I knew I was heading out to Turin the next day and again wouldn't get the amount of sleep I was hoping for. I think this turned out to be a good decision, as the two Americans who happened to be in my room got back a couple hours later. One of them, Scott, managed to make it into bed and pass out, however I think shortly after making to his bunk, Matt, wasn't quite able to make it out again and ended up painting his bed with his stomach lining. This was the only time that I didn't curse my blocked nose, and aside from the rather unpleasant sound of the event, the smell which I'm sure was prevalent didn't have a chance to enter my sinus.

The next day I gathered all my stuff, and got on the midday train to Turin, Italy. All in all I thought Nice was a bit boring. There wasn't too much to see, and the beach, though the water was great, was a bit uncomfortable and not very conducive to lounging about due to all the pebbles and rocks. I've heard the other main cities of the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) such as Cannes and Antibes have quite nice, white sandy beaches. Monaco was cool to see, it was one of the places I'd been most excited to check out during this trip. I may have over-hyped it a bit for myself, but was still a very nice view and the yachts were awesome. Also, there's just something kitchy and cool about saying "Yeah I just kinda hung out in Monaco for the day". I'm not sure I'd be running back to either place in a hurry, but I think I should return to the Riviera itself at some point, if nothing else but to see one of the nicer beaches.

More Pics

Photo Gallery has been updated!

Back to Barcelona

All did not go as smoothly as one might expect on the train ride home. The nice part was that I was in first class (which somehow cost less than my second class ticket -to- Pamplona), so I had a slightly larger seat, but being on the aisle I struggled to make use of this extra room, as trying to sleep with no head support is a difficult task to say the least. Even if you haven't slept in the past two days included.

As usual the Spanish train was late to Barcelona Sants (the main station), but as it pulled in a few minutes before midnight, I held the hope that I would still be able to retrieve my main bag from the locker storage. I bolted up the stairs and to the locker area. To my dismay, which I illustrated by punching the door a few times, the locker area was itself locked away, informing me that the opening hours were 7AM to 11PM. Frustrated, and with a small backpack only containing the clothes that reek of the stench of Pamplona, I made my way to the hostel. I just made the metro as the doors closed (a fact Jeanine would later rue as she happened to the station not five minutes later to find the metro closed altogether), and got to the hostel around 12:30. I struggled again with the girl at the reception, who was as useful as nipples on the Pamplonian bull, didn't speak a word of English, and in true Spanish fasion, was not in a hurry to get anything done. Even though I'd already booked, payed for and knew my room number, this didn't help the blank expression staring back at me. One thing that swung in my favour, was as I'd spent nearly a week at this hostel by now, the security guard had become accustomed to my face, and whilst he too didn't speak much English, he found a friend of his outside to help with the interaction. I also requested a towel, which was above and beyond the usual supplication of sheets, and whilst Ms Useless began to refuse, I believe the security guard again fought for my honour as he told her (I think) that I'd been here for some time, and I was in enough VIP status to deserve a small towel. Thanking him graciously I found my way upstairs, had a rinsing shower (no toiletries) and found my way to bed by about 1AM.

Thinking myself lucky to be in a 3 bed dorm, and this likely to be fairly conducive to a good nights sleep, at about 5AM, a guy entered the room and started to organise his own nights rest. This wasn't a problem, as he made an effort to be as quiet as possible, however after his own all night effort, he eventually fell onto his bed, face up, and began the loudest snoring effort I'd encountered in my own reality. Snoring is caused by the reverberation of a flap of skin in the back of the throat. For this reveberation to occur, the lungs must build enough internal vacuum pressure to break the seal this flap has created, at which point air will start to flow erratically through the throat. This was demonstrated quite clearly on this gentlemen, as you could see his chest start to rise as this vacuum was created, his mouth would extend slightly, and once the breaking point was achieved, his whole body shook with the resultant explosion of air. There was a noticeable cycle to this symphony, as it would grow and grow to crescendo, as clearly he was not getting enough oxygen with each subsequent breath. At the peak of this, would be an almighty sort of snorting noise, at which point he himself would wake up, wave his arms a couple of times, and then immediately fall back asleep into he same pattern. This noise could be heard well into the corridor with the door shut (I know, as I exited the room to try and find a free emergency bed in the corridor, of which there were none on my floor), so I was stuck with this horrible cacaphony not two meters from my own bed. A word on said bed, which was jammed into the corner; the last few elastic slats had long since been destroyed, and the mattress itself was bigger than the base. This resulted in an interesting experience, as every movement caused the mattress to work itself down and across from the base, eventually reaching a point where it would nearly slide off to the floor altogether.

Needless to say I acheived no sleep from this point, and at 6:30 I decided to head back to the train station to retrieve my things. I did so, made it back to the hostel by about 8, and was able to get about an hours dozing in, as my good friend had managed to reduce his little performance somewhat. After waking up I had my first soap based shower in over three days and went down to the station to meat up with Jeanine, one of the girls I hung out with in Pamplona.

This turned out to be a very enjoyable day, I showed her some of the cooler sights I'd managed to uncover during my time in the city, and we ourselve found some new parts of the city in our own wanderings. We both bought bright, cheap (9 euro) watches and generally just checked out various parts of the city. I convinced Jeanine to pose with a very authentic Edward Scissorhands living statue, one that would clack his scissor fingers at the people who gave him money. Having seen him before, I knew the danger was low, however Jeanine took a bit more convincing. Eventually she creeped up and I got a few photos, of which I'll upload as soon as I find somewhere that accepts my camera. The main place we ended up at that I had not seen yet was Park Guell, which has a variety of Gaudi buildings and structures, including what I am assured to be the worlds longest bench, but it was about halfway through the afternoon at this point, and the main reason I'd wanted to go to said park was to have a lie down on the grass. The park is a good way out of the central strip of Barcelona, and it wasn't until we'd completed the trek there that we found that this park actually didn't consist of grass. It was more shrubs and cactus, which I determined weren't too conducive to a lie down and a snooze. So we checked out some of the exhibits, and made our way to another park not too far off, grabbed some fruit and relaxed for the final hours of the day. This park itself wasn't brilliant, and I may have been heard to exclaim something along the lines of "What a shithole!" after spending near on an hour finding the place. However, we did find a bit of grass to relax on, and when the light of the day started to wane, made our way back to our respective hostels.

I left Jeanine on the metro, fulling intending on going to sleep immediately, only to find Ian and Lisa sitting in the hostel lobby. Having completely forgotten about them arriving back from Valencia that day, I agreed to go and have some dinner with them which ended up being the best tapas I'd had so far on the trip. I gave them the dump of my time in Pamplona, and they gave me the skinny on theirs in Valencia. I still reckon my story took the cake, though Ian's description of the nice beaches, and more particularly, the topless women did pique my interest. After dinner we went back to our favorite Mojito bar, shot the breeze for a while until nearing 1AM once more, my concentration started to wane and we retired to the hostel. I bid them farewell once more, and managed to get in about 8 hours sleep, as the only people in my room this night was an older lady and someone I didn't see at all, but only for the bulge in the top bunk above my head.

The next day I was to meet with Jeanine, however our timetables or directions must have become tangled, as even though we both waited for quite some time (of which I was informed later), we were not able to spy each other in the mass of people. I spent a few hours in the pub and a couple in the internet cafe catching up, and eventually made my way to the train station for my overnighter to Nice. Committing myself to simply getting some rest, as I had a run-down cold setting in, I bade farewell to Barcelona for the second time and started on my next leg of my journey.

El Encierro

I made my way to the train station around midday on Saturday. The train ride was about 6 hours to Pamplona, and fortunately the seats were a bit more comfortable than the flat, unpadded shockers I had from Toulouse to Barcelona.

Unfortunately the air conditioning in my cabin wasn´t working, and a couple of hours into the trip, the Spanish sun started to make the place unbearingly hot and uncomfortable. Being in allocated seating, I wasn´t too confident in the option of moving seats, but talking to the American chick next to me, she informed me that the cabin she was supposed to be in (she was in mine so as to sit with her friends) had a few free seats and was of a temperature that involved people wearing jackets. Jumping at this opportunity, I scurried into the next cabin and found plenty of empty seats. An American guy from my cabin that I´d been talking to joined me, and we both tried to get some more sleep, fully aware of the long hours we´d be pulling after we got off the train.

This lasted for a while, but about an hour out of Pamplona, the train stopped at a station and decided to take a 20 minute siesta so that those who were in the cabins without air conditioning could take a break. I questioned the usefulness of this, as the heat outside was just as unbearable as that in the cabin, and all it resulted in was us being a further 20 minutes later, on top of the extra hour we were late because the Spanish trains seem to travel a lot slower than their timetable dictates.

Reboarding the train after this breif hiatus, a different American guy with a very thick Brooklyn accent informed me I was in his seat, and rather than return to my stifling cabin, I chose to stand in the air conditioned one for the remainder of the journey. I got to know the group of Americans that were travelling together, which would turn out aiding me quite significantly later on that weekend. Eventually our train trundled into Pamplona, which sparked several cheers and chants from all those in the cabin.

After leaving the station and heading towards the Old Town proper, where most of the action was to occur, I quickly realised that my attire was grossly unprepared for the event. I was walking around in a blue polo and black shorts, whereas 90% of everyone else was in traditional San Fermin garb, which usually consists of a white shirt, with white pants or shorts, a red neckerchief and red waist sash. I understood I would need to appropriate these items, and was hoping I could do this at the event. I wandered around for about 45 minutes, seeing thousands of revelers drinking and partying (this was at about 9PM, and the party was even at this point pretty crazy and intense), but somehow I managed to miss any place selling these items. I eventually happened upon something resembling a newsagent which sold the neckercheif and waist sash, and some touristy white shirts with logos all over them. I found the plainest white shirt I could, threw it on and headed back out the party. It was only at this point that I managed to locate the hundreds of market stalls that were selling this stuff in every which way shape or form, and ended up buying another touristy shirt which was more plain, and some white pants, and then another plain white shirt to finally get the exact outfit I was after. I should point out that all this still only cost me about 25 euros, so it wasn´t exactly bank breaking stuff.

I continued in the touristy shirt with my jeans, neckercheif and sash, deciding that I´d put on the plain white shirt and white 3/4 shorts (which I would later be informed by some American girls were known as "mens capris"), when I actually got around to doing the Encierro. Having all my artifacts in place, I turned to the party and exploring the town.

The place wasn´t too big, but the winding streets made it quite easy to get lost. I was mostly trying to walk the bull run course, so I knew exactly where I would be running, on what surface, and about how far the whole course was (about 850 meters all up), but this effort seemed doomed to circumvention every time I attempted it. The first time I tried to walk the course I got lost, and ended up in some other part of the old town. It was dark by this point, and I found a Spanish rock band playing in the street which were excellent. They mostly played covers of rock songs by bands like The Doors, Arctic Monkeys, U2, etc, but also played some Spanish rock stuff as well which was nice to hear. I ran into a Spanish guy who was drinking some weird orange Fanta and alcohol concoction, but as I´d resigned myself to staying fairly light on the booze that night, I didn´t partake of more than a sip. It was about 11PM by this point and the whole city was in super party mode. It was an incrible vibe, as people everywhere were having an awesome time, the music was good, and probably one of the best parts was that everyone was in the same uniform. The white shirt and red neckercheif/sash combination was on about 95% of people by this stage, and the feeling of unity was palpable. More than a few times I just felt an intense rush of positive energy just by walking around, sharing in the huge grins of everyone in the city.

I should point out at this point that the old town itself was not all peaches and cream. Whilst the party was incredible, and the vibe amazing, the state of the city grew progressively more and more rank as the night wore on. Garbage was strewn -everywhere-. I saw few bins around the place, and even in there had been more, they would have filled so quickly to be completely useless before the sun went down anyway. Everyone just threw their crap in the street, and whilst there were a few WC´s (toilets) around the place, nothing would prepare you for the rivers of piss flowing down the street. Imagine many tens of thousands of people all drinking and partying throughout a fairly small and dense old style city and the amount of urine this tends to generate. Toilets were simply not on people´s minds, and the smell of the stuff permeated every street and avenue, the only relief from which usually came from finding a large open square, as the gents usually, and I will repeat, only usually prefer a wall to handle their business rather than open air. Clearly with this many partiers there will be several that go too hard too early, and by the early hours of the morning, most streets started to become littered with passed out bodies as well as general garbage. All I can suggest to these poor souls is that they burn their clothes and get some form of sterlising shower as soon as possible.

After seeing the band and continuing my wandering, I decided to try and walk the bull run path again, and reaching about the halfway point, ran into another Spanish guy who started up an interesting conversation. We talked about the running of the bulls, and he tried desperately to convince me to reconsider my intent of participating, citing the wet streets (it had rained a little earlier, but most of the moisture was due to spilt drinks, etc). I wasn´t surprised to hear this, as I´d heard of other people talking to Spaniards, enquiring if they were participating in the run, only to be told "Are you kidding? Only idiot tourists actually run with the bulls!". After a few minutes discussion of this, some of his friends came over and took me and themselves to another bar in the town that was so packed you couldn´t even walk in. At this point I might describe what people were drinking. There were several stores selling liquor by the bottle, and rum seemed a popular choice to a lot of people, huge plastic cups of beer (probably half liters) were being held by nearly everyone, and if it wasn´t beer inside then it was generally either Sangria, or more commonly, a local concoction known as Kalimotxo. This is basically a 50 50 mix of red wine and coke, something which I decided was not in my best interest to try. Also, nearly all of the bar floors were coated in sawdust in order to soak up the incredible amounts of spilt booze. This was easily apparent, as everyone who left one of these bars would do so either with several blotches of Kalimotxo stains on their white shirts, or completely drenched by the stuff.

I chatted to my new Spanish friend outside the bar for a while (it was far too crowded to move inside, and I didn´t feel like a Kalimotxo shower), and departed to try, once again, to walk the bull run. I found the starting point once more, and talked to some very drunk Spaniards with poor English about the run and any advice they might have for me. All that ended up happening was a lot of joking around, which was actually hilarious. One guy was trying to convince me that he spoke perfect English, while the others were indicating that he was very drunk and had an extremely small penis. We all had a laugh and they took a photo of me with them (with their camera, I didn´t really dare give them mine considering their state) and I finally managed to walk the rest of the bull run. I sat down on a park bench at one point to ponder my map, and a girl came running up to me jibbering something in a dialect I didn´t understand (which would be anything other than English). I informed her I only spoke the British born dialect, and she had a quick think and said "Oh, Hi! Look, one of my friends really wants to meet you!". I got a bit excited at this point, and thought there could be some very interesting events on the horizon coming my way. She quickly followed this up with "So yes... do you like boys?". The little Spanish fantasy that I had been running through my head quickly dissapeared in a shower of realization, and I replied with "Uhh... No!". She thanked me for my time and quickly scurried off. To say I went through a wide range of emotions in the space of about 20 seconds would be something of an understatement.

I ended up walking the whole bull run, and my mission accomplished, and the clock hitting about 3AM, I decided it was time to find a piece of quiet park space to have a short nap. Somehow some people managed to sleep in the old city itself, but with the incredible ruckus that was going on around them, they were either completely deaf, or completly drunk. I walked about a kilometer out of the city to a nice quiet park devoid of people, stuffed my bag with the extra t-shirts and tried to get some shut-eye. Unfortunately lying down in a cold park isn´t very conducive to sleep even without a massive party bustling around you, and the most I got was two hours of gentle dosing. My phone informed me it was 5AM and time to get up and get myself organised for the primary reason I´d come to Pamplona. I put on my clean white shirt, my white 3/4 shorts, re-tied my red sash and neckercheif and headed back to the old town. I found the plaza that had a luggage check in, and checked in my small backpack (I´d left the big one in the train station at Barcelona). I found my way to the bull run path, and found two other Australian guys who were preparing themselves for the even as well.

We chatted about stuff in general, and slowly the path became more and more compressed with people. Despite the claims earlier, the group was primarily made up of Spaniards, Americans and Australians. I would argue that some of the Australians were the most nationalistic, with aussie flag stubbie holders around wrists and flags around necks being prominent in a few places. As we waiting, there were a few Spaniards reading the morning´s newspaper which detailed the results of the previous day´s (Saturday) run. It was very interesting and confidence boosting to see what kind of information they documented. It started with a description of how long the bulls took to run the course, followed by the injury report. According to this very informative paper, which used graphs and charts to transcend language, there were 104 first aid calls during the days run. It detailed at exactly which points along the run these calls were made, and then gave a pie chart of types of injuries inflicted. It is probably known to a lot of my Australian readers that two of our countrymen were injured on this particular day, including one guy getting gored through the butt / thigh area. This paper showed in graphic detail how this occured, and then we pondered the pie graph showing what kind of injuries we were likely to receive if we were hit by the bulls.

The following page then showed the six bulls that were running today, on our run, and the class of bull it was. Being a Spanish word, I had no idea what it meant, however a Spaniard looking over our shoulder quickly informed us: "Oh, yeah they´re the biggest class!". The smallest bull we were running with weighed in at 650KG, the others being very close to 700KG, with one breaching that mark.

Needless to say, the progressing minutes got more and more intense, with the crowd really starting to get into it, various chants of various languages went up, and us three Australians looked at each other a little nervously and we mentally steeled ourselves for the ordeal ahead. Tightening our shoes, and then following suit with the rest of the Spaniards and rolling up a few pages of newspaper which were supposed to be used to whack the bulls as they run past, we got ready for the start of the run. I started at about 300 meters from the start of the course, basically at the top of the first hill. From here, the course kinked left for about 50 meters and then had a sharp right turn for the final stretch to the arena. The place was absolutely packed with wall to wall people, and I had no understanding of it was possible for anyone to move, let alone 6 massive bulls to go charging through the group. At about 7:55, however, the crowd started to move a little and people spread throughout the length of the course. I moved another 50 meters or so up the course, and then before I knew it the first gun sounded.

The crowd of runners roared, and people started lightly jogging up the course. Some more brave souls stayed on the sides of the roads, firmly holding their ground. The first gunshot only indicates that the bulls are being prepared for release, and that they´ll be on their way shortly. About 20 seconds after this, the second gunshot fired to indicate that the bulls had been released. At this noise, the noise level tripled, and the crowd surged forward with an indescribable urgency. Everyone ran as hard as they could, and turning the final corner, unto the last 400 meter stretch, I was running like I never have, constantly flicking my head back to see what if there was a rather annoyed looking male bovine behind me. Everyone else was doing pretty much the same thing, and the problem this invokes is that many people slip over on the slimy cobbled surface. Dodging these unfortunate souls, and maintaining my own uprightness, I continued to surge up the street, and about 100 meters up the stretch, the clamoring of hoofs and the roar of people gradually built up in crescendo until suddenly I was forced, nearly unwittingly, to the right side of the road. At this point I might describe that this final strech of path was about 8 or 9 meters across, including about 1 meter either side of curb.

Suddenly the bulls, packed in a tight group came roaring past, and luckily by this point everyone had managed to get to the wall, at least 5 people thick managing to squeeze into less than a meter of space. The massive animals thundered past not more than 2 meters away from me, and knowning that the worst danger was now in front of us and moving away, the crowd roared and started charging after the bulls. The bulls run at about 20K´s an hour, and understandbly no human runner could get close. So we charged in their wake and got another few hundred meters up the course, when the steer came up behind us. A few people thinking it was another rampaging bull freaked out and charged to the side. The steer is brought up behind the bulls to ensure that they keep moving forward and don´t get distracted and start charging people, but being a neutered animal with a cowbell around its neck, it is a fairly placid creature, and whilst I wasn´t able to give one of the bulls a whack with my paper baton, I was able to give the steer a good couple of smacks on the rump.

A minute or so later, completely out of breath I made it to the final corridor into the arena, and thinking that my adrenaline was all worn out, I got closer to the entrace gates. Even as I type this I can feel an incredibly chill through my whole body, as walking through the doors to the bull arena is definitely the biggest rush I´ve had in my entire life. Ten thousand or so people in the spectator stands are all cheering at the top of their lungs, and walking through those huge doors into the arena at the centre of their discourse makes you feel like the absolute king of the world. I felt it start a few meters before stepping through the door and yelled "Yeah... Yeah... YEEEAAAAAHHHHH" in the biggest braveheart style scream you could imagine and ran around with a couple hundred other people that hand managed to make it that far before they closed the arena gates. The rampaging bulls had been ushered back into a safe area, and those left in the arena were left high fiving and cheering each other on. The look on everyone´s face, regardless of nationality spoke exactly the same words that were "Yes, we made it, and we´re OK!".

This revelry lasted for about 10 or so minutes, and I can garauntee you, dear reader, that the chills and excitement didn´t subside for this entire period. However, at the end of this time, it was time for the next round of activities as a younger bull, probably about half the size of the big bulls was let out into the arena to frolic with the runners. This bull had its horns taped up with cork to remove the dangerous sharpness of a natural horn, but bursting through the gate he picked up at least one revelrer, and carried him halfway across the arena before flicking him into the air. The young bull then ran around through the crown, and all of the runners now left in the arena ran from side to side trying to avoid his charge. This wasn´t too difficult, as if you saw the bull running directly toward you and you weren´t one of the more braver souls bent on becoming the next champion matador, you would run at a right angle to his path. Assuming you hadn´t made direct eye contact with him and he´d fixated on this new challenge, you could run at a right angle to his path and would generally remain unscathed. That said, even those who copped a full on charge by the young bovine and were flicked up into the air, got up a few seconds later, seemlingly unhurt. The main trick was, if you were struck by the bull, you simply stay in the fetal position on the ground. If you begin to get up whilst the creature is still warily eyeing you, he will charge again until you stay down for the count.

The crowd in the arena, at least ten thousand strong, cheered and roared in accordance with what was going on. If the bull struck someone, flicked them into the air or carried them for some distance along the arena, the crowd would respond with a loud "Oooohhh", and if someone managed to jump the bull whilst he was standing still, the crowd would give a loud cheer of appreciation. What the crowd didn´t appreciate was ganging up on the bull. Occasionally the bull would stop to take account of his situation, and some of the runners would whack him with their batons, or several would grab him at once, much to the dissaproving whoots and whistles by the crowd who felt it unfair. Probably the best hit I saw was when the bull charged a group of runnings lingering near the fence, and threw no less than 6 or 7 directly over it into the air gap between the fence and the crowd.

Personally I was content in simply dodging the angry bovine, letting the more adventurous do the whacking and the jumping. After 5 to 10 minutes the young bull would get tired, and the herders would send out the fully grown, cowbell wearing steer who would settle the young bull immediately and guide him back out of the ring. A fresh young bull would then be sent out, and this cycle repeated itself 5 or 6 times. After this, the whole show was ended, about 10AM, and the crowd left the arena, and the runners left the stage.

The incredible buzz stayed with me for the rest of the day, and after gathering my wits, I found my way to the baggage reclaim to get my things. The line was about an hour long, and I met up with some of the Americans I´d talked to on the train. It was within this group that I met a 3 very cool American girls who´d been studying Spanish in Grenada: Jeanine, Aleen and Chelsea. After some chatting in the line, and a lot of waiting, we eventually recovered our belongings. The girls organised their bus tickets out of Pamplona, and we then grabbed some food and spent the rest of the day in a park away from the ruckus of the old town. Within this park there was some kind of lumberjack olympics going on, with wood chopping competitions and the like, but we were content to sit on the grass and catch up on some missed sleep from the previous 24 hours. I learned that Jeanine was heading to Barcelona herself for a couple days, and I gauranteed that I would meet up with her the next day and show her some sights. After handing her my Barcelona map as collateral for meeting up, I hung out with them for the remainder of the day until my train arrived, at which point I bid my farewell and headed back to Barcelona.

The whole weekend was probably one of the most incredible experiences I´ve ever had in my life, and I doubt that I´ll ever see as big a party as I did in Pamplona that weekend. The vibe of the place was unbelievable and the rush I got from successfully completing the run, and then challenging the bulls in the arena is second to none. I cannot describe how happy I am to be able to say that I partied in the Festival of San Fermin, participated in the Encierro (Running of the Bulls) and came away unscathed with such an awesome story.

Short Catchup

Ok, so this post is just going to be a quick roundup of the following two days from the last post, because I really want to get stuck into the weekend following them.

So here we go: Basically we slept in a bit the next day, mainly because by the morning Ian and Lisa had been struck down by the evil Paella illness, and none of us were in a huge mood to do anything. Part of this mucking around involved going to the train station. Ian got tickets to Valencia for himself and Lisa, whilst I got myself a ticket to Pamplona. We went out and got some lunch, mucked around for a couple hours and then went back for a nap.

After this we decided to go get a coffee and beer. Whilst sitting in a nice little cafe on the middle of Las Ramblas (the main Barcelona drag), I happened to notice Adam, a guy who I´d hung out with the first night I was in Paris. Waving him over, he and his New Zealand friend, Holly, he´d met at his hostel joined us and ordered some food. They convinced me to join them on a pub crawl that evening, Ian and Lisa weren´t so keen as they were heading to Valencia the next day.

Adam and Holly went off to get themselves sorted for the nights shenanigans and Ian, Lisa and myself went off to find our own dinner. After a nice Italian meal, sort of like a ritzy La Porcetta, I said my goodbyes to Ian and Lisa, not expecting to see them until London, and headed off to the pub crawl.

I arrived late, just before they were moving from the first to the second bar. I quickly downed my first free beer and shot, and followed to the second bar. I´m not going to detail what happened very thoroughly, because honestly, it wasn´t a great night. At the second bar one chick grabbed my ass a few times, only to turn super cold a bar or two later, and the whole crowd just became less and less social as the evening progressed. I wasn´t drinking that heavily, and tried to talk to as many people as I could, but the vibe was just all wrong. I left with Adam after the 4th bar sometime after 1AM, deciding that the final destination (some club) wasn´t worth the effort.

We found the main intersection, however I wasn´t too sure on which direction we should head. I asked one Spanish guy who wasn´t much help, and there were two girls standing a few meters away with suitcases and such. I asked them for the direction to Las Ramblas, which they were able to provide. I´m still not sure exactly how I kept the conversation going, but I learned in short order that they´d just flown into Barcelona and hadn´t worked out a hostel to stay in. This is past 1AM on a Friday night, and Adam and I looked at each exchanging the "I think they´re screwed" glance. We convinced them to follow us to the main strip assuring that we´d be able to find them some accomodation. After checking a few hostels around the place, we ended up at Adam´s that had a few spare beds. He sorted that all out and I headed back to mine.

The next day I met up with Adam at his hostel. The Norwegians were just getting their stuff together and were heading out to find an apartment to stay in for the next week or two, so Adam and I went to do some sightseeing. Not much to talk about really, I took him to the main sights and such. We both organised train tickets to Nice, which took about 2 and a half hours of waiting at the train station. I also had the opportunity of helping a very attractive French girl to get her ticket to Valencia, as she had arrived at the station too late to be served by the ticket windows. There are machines that allow you to buy train tickets to common destinations (such as Valencia), and she informed me that she couldn´t use these as she didn´t have a credit card. I suggested to use mine and she pay me in cash, an opportunity that she was overjoyed to engage. I sorted that out, Adam and I left to get some dinner and checked out the Magic Fountains. These were pretty cool, basically a massive fountain display that moved and changed colour in accordance with some generic classical music. The whole thing was pretty nice, and after the show was over we parted ways and I crashed out at the hostel.

The next day, I headed to Pamplona....