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.
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