This little trip to Spain almost didn’t happen. At first we planned to leave Wednesday night of March 21st because Mark and I didn’t have class on Thursday. Then Mark remembered he had play practice Wednesday night, so we pushed back our time of departure to Thursday morning. Then I got called in to go to the kindergarten in town and we had to push back our time of departure again. So our plan was leave Thursday afternoon, get into Budapest Thursday night, stay at a hostel, get a cab to the airport super early and fly into Barcelona Friday morning. So we’d have Friday and Saturday and fly out early Sunday morning back into Budapest. Our other problem was that we had waited super long to buy our plane tickets, and they had definitely gone up in price. Also, the next weekend began our 10 day break, and I was leading a mission trip the first part. I didn’t know if I should be going on a trip so close to mission. But we threw caution to the wind, pulled out our passports and bought our plane tickets, packed our bags and headed to Budapest… Just me and Mark.
And let me tell you, it was one of the best trips of the semester. But I get ahead of myself.
The trip to Budapest went by flawlessly. We hopped from train to train and slept a little and worked on homework a little and talked a little. It’s so easy to travel with just one other person… We made it to Budapest and took the metro to the stop where our hostel was. From there we really had no idea where to go. We stopped in a little bakery and asked for directions. After a little bit of searching we found it. It was one of those that you go through the big door/gate thing into a courtyard of sorts and then up a bunch of windy stairs and finally you reach the door to the hostel.
It was a super cheap hostel. And we slept in a room with like 10 other people or something. The majority of the people there were American, which was funny. The man at the front desk was Italian though. We were able to call for a taxi to come get us at like 4:30 am the next morning and there was a computer so we looked up directions to our hostel and emailed Marta to get directions into the city from the airport. We went to bed around 11 or so and woke up at 3:45 am. Not much sleep at all… We stealthily tried to make it out of the room without waking anyone. We stumbled down half of the windy stairs in the dark before realizing we had a flashlight on our phones. And finally made it out to the taxi.
We made it to the airport but the wrong terminal. There were only two though… So we trudged to the other one. Having no idea what to do with our tickets or anything, we go to security. He scans it and we proceed through the line. I was stopped and patted down like I’ve never been patted down before. Pretty sure it was my consecration chain… I started giggling when she did the two fingers around my pant line because it tickled so bad. She’s probably like, “Dumb ticklish American…” But anyway, we made it through and got to our terminal. Thinking we were way ahead of schedule we chilled. Finally I looked at the ticket again feeling a sense of unease at the fact that this had all been too easy, and realized it said we needed a stamp of some sort. Grabbing our bags and making our way back to the main desk we discussed how ridiculous airports were and how much we hate them.
After minutes of not knowing what to do we hopped into a service line and got the stamp we needed. Heading back to through security it had tripled in size and we were worried now. We were escorted to a different line and luckily made it through without the tickling this time. We made it to our gate with time to spare and were even able to get seats next to each other on the plane. You see, ryanair is a great airline because it’s super cheap. But it’s crazy about baggage size and it doesn’t give you an assigned seat, so it’s first come, first serve.
Almost as soon as we got into our seats we passed out. Four hours in a hostel bed had not prepared us for our already stressful day of traveling. We finally landed in Barcelona and we were so excited. Looking back we had only finished like 5% of our traveling for the day. We landed around 9 am.
Jumping off the plane and removing some layers, as it was already significantly warmer than Budapest, we made our way to the train Marta had told us to take into the city. Her directions were flawless and we made our way to the train easily. We bought a 10 trip pass and hopped on. There was a team of I’m guessing soccer players and they were singing, or chanting, or yelling, but it was really cool. We made our way to one of the back cars though. And soon after we sat down a man came back and played his violin for us. “A Whole New World.” Fitting, as we had just made our way to another country. We easily made it to our stop and hopped on the metro per Marta’s instructions.
When we finally reached our last stop was where our problems started. Having not eaten all day and sleeping fitfully for probs a total of 5 and 1/2 hours we meandered down the street… turns out, the wrong way. It was all down hill too, which meant that we had to turn around and trek back uphill to get back to square one. The bank in which we stopped basically looked as us like we were crazy and told us we were completely on the wrong side of town. Determined to walk there we set off again, this time in the right direction.
Barcelona graced us with the most difficult hills and steps we’d climbed since Assisi. All with a huge bag. So we kept walking and looking at street signs and getting more lost by the minute, but still determined to keep walking. A construction worker obviously seeing that we were struggling came over and I used my very little Spanish to see if he could help us. Good thing I new my directions… Eventually, we made it to our hostel. It was about 11:30 am and we still hadn’t eaten… We were slowly fading.
We put our bags into storage as we couldn’t check in until later and freshened up a little. We got a map and looked up some places we thought we might want to go. Marta met us at our hostel around noon. It was so good to see her. As soon as we found her I felt at ease. I knew everything would be taken care of from now on. She would be in control of our day and be able to talk to everyone and communicate for us. This was going to be a great trip, even if I was half dead at the time.
Marta, sensing our half dead-ness, asked us what we wanted for lunch. Seeing as it was a Friday in lent we had to go with the no meat option. I had a calamari bocadillo and it was soooo good. (Could have been because of my ravenous state, or it might have just been that good.) We also had some super yummy champagne which I can’t remember what it’s called right now… But it was a good lunch and after, Mark and I were finally ready to see some stuff.
Our hostel was seriously on a hill though, so we trudged back down our big hill to get to take the metro to get into the heart of Barcelona. We walked around all day. We saw the cathedral, the house Gaudi built to look like a dragon, the oldest house on the street, the city center, what remains of the Roman walls, statues, Sagrada Familia, cute little stores. It was a busy day. But it was a fun day. Towards the end of the day we made our way back to our hostel before going out for dinner and drinks. In Spain, dinner is typically around like 8 pm and drinks are after.
We went out for tapas that night for dinner. Unfortunately since it was still Friday it was all meatless, but still super tasty. And after we went to one of Marta’s friend’s bars. I got some made up drink called the drunk monkey or something Mark got some fruity drink, as per usual. It was probably around 10 pm. Not super late. But Mark and I were sitting at the bar, sipping our drinks and mumbling to each other because we were so exhausted. By then we had been up for like 18 hours, and had been walking all day. Needless to say, we were falling asleep. Like legit. We sat down with Marta and her friends and I was talking to Marta and her friends were talking and Mark was in the middle. I look over in the middle of our conversation and Mark is out. Asleep, gone. And I knew it was time to make our way back to our hostel.
The problem with that idea was, on top of being super duper sleepy, we were also intoxicated. These were the strongest drinks I’ve ever had. And so we were stumbling around, longing to lay down on the sidewalk to sleep… Finally, eventually, somehow we made it back to our hostel. The next day was going to be packed with sight seeing as it was our only full day in the city. We were going to go up to a church at the top of this mountain and then to see some of the houses Gaudi created. So we slept just a little and were up and at it again.
Believing the hostel offered free breakfast we walked to the kitchen and started grabbing food, the lady comes up to us and asks us for 2 euro. Completely stunned we dropped everything and walked out of the hostel. Hah. We made our way to a bakery and bought ourselves some yummy pastries for breakfast and ate them on the metro on the way to meet Marta.
Our goal was Tibidabo. There’s a church up there, but right next to it is a crazy amusement park. And after finding out we had to buy tickets to the park in order to get to the church we said screw that and decided on finding our own way up. We took a bunch of different buses trying to make our way to the top. When we finally decided it was impossible to make it up there we hopped off the bus and walked around a bit. Having no idea where we were, we meandered down some road and then another. We came across a soccer field and a soccer tournament was going on. And I mean, when in Spain right?
So we took out our packed lunches and our huge 2 liter of coke and sat down to watch some soccer. It was awesome. No, I didn’t see an amazing team play, I didn’t see any intense plays, but I can say that I watched a soccer game in Spain. An authentic soccer game. It was great. One of the best memories I have, why? Because it was so random and sporadic. We finished our lunches, cheered for both teams and made our way back down this hill by bus.
We were off to see Marta’s favorite park, or one of them at least. Park Guell. At the entrance of the park there are two houses, affectionately called the “Hansel” and “Gretel” houses. At least, that’s what we called them. And then Gaudi’s house was also situated towards the back of the park. Before going to the park we stopped to buy some strawberries to enjoy, they were super cheap and looked delicious. We went into the park, took dozens of pictures and then sat at the benches overlooking the two houses and the city in the background. I had brought a big bar of milka, so we ate the strawberries and milka together. We pretended they were chocolate covered. It was super good nonetheless. After our snack, we continued on, enjoying the park and the flowers and each others company. Super chill.
At long last the Mediterranean was calling our name and we listened to its plea for company. We made our way to the beach where we were warned of the naked man. We sat down in the sand. There were tons of people walking around trying to get us to buy water, beer, massages, anything. It was obnoxious, and then we spotted the naked man. Haha. It was a good time though. The weather was not too hot and not too cold. It was just right.
After our time at the beach we made our way back into the city so we could catch mass at the cathedral. After mass we went out to find the courtyard filled with people. All dancing. I don’t remember what the dance was called, but it was super easy and anyone could join if they wanted to. They had a live band playing and everything. It was awesome to see all those people coming together to dance and hang out. It wasn’t as if they all knew each other either, strangers, family and friends all dancing. My kind of party.
We walked on past some super adorable street vendors and made our way to a place for dinner. Marta ate with her host family and Mark and I ate at this kebab place. We both had kebab bocadillos. So a mix of what we love with what was local. Hah. It was great. We just hung out and talked about the weekend so far and lots of other things. Marta met up with us after she was done and we went to find a place to have some drinks.
We finally settled on this bar called Zombie or something like that. I ordered what I knew, an amaretto sour and I wasn’t disappointed. It was super yummy. Some time in the middle of enjoying drinks, the bar tender brought us some shots. Having no idea what they were, we of course smelled them and then throwing caution to the wind, downed them pretty fast. They were delicious! I’m still convinced there was no alcohol in them… But they were super yummy. And as the night dragged on I became more and more aware of the fact that we needed to get up early for our flight tomorrow.
We said goodbye to Marta and took one final picture with our amazing host for the weekend and made our way back to the hostel. We got lost, no surprise and it took us FOREVER to get back. It was only 11 pm on a Saturday in Barcelona and already all of the Americans were alseep… We were shocked. When we were “too loud” for them they rolled over and yelled at us. The next morning was daylight savings time, we were losing an hour. Checking and double checking our watches and clocks we thought we were all ready.
We weren’t… We woke up an hour late and in a mad scramble to check out of the hostel we probably woke up every guest. We didn’t care. We checked out and ran out of the building. I was pissed, and then I fell. Looking back I can’t help but burst into laughter. But at the time I was so pissed. Mark did the right thing by not laughing at the time. We realized we had already missed the train that would take us to the airport. In a mad scramble of not knowing what to do we decided on a taxi. I’m glad we did. We saw parts of Barcelona we hadn’t gotten a chance to see in the beautiful first rays of light.
We made it to the airport and through security with ease. Making sure that our tickets were stamped correctly this time. We sat ready to board with our bags packed to the brim with clothes and souvenirs. We watched the sun rise through the high windows and talked about how we would be traveling through three countries in one day. World travelers.
Our flight to Budapest went over without a hitch. But now it was all about trying to get from the airport to the train station. After finally figuring out the bus and then figuring out the metro we finally made it to the train station. We bought our tickets and went to a near by store to buy some food for the ride home. By the time we made it back to the station our train was already waiting for us. We hopped on and I changed into some comfortable traveling clothes and we dug into the food we had just bought.
The train ride back to Austria was about the same as the train ride to Budapest. We slept and did homework. Read and talked about the weekend. I was again thankful to only have one travel companion. We made it back to the Kartause safely and were super happy to see our friends and talk about our weekend adventure. That Sunday we had been in three different countries, we had seen the sun rise in one and set in another, we had taken every mode of transportation except for a boat and bicycle. It was a day for the books. And I was exhausted.
As I stated before, this was one of my favorite trips. Laid back and yet exciting. I loved Spain. There is so much we didn’t get to see or do which makes me ache to go back some day. The week after this trip was full of mission planning. Making sure everything was in order for our big mission trip. My best friend was flying in on Thursday and I could not have been more excited to see her.
My next blog is going to be another super long one as it will cover all 10 days of my trip. 5 in Romania and 5 in Paris. 
playwrightfate 