the adventure continues: chapter Barcelona

Hi !
So. I am still in lovely Barcelona, though things here did not turn out exactly as planned (what is new). Friday night Kyle was supposed to arrive to meet me here- though it was supposed to be very late- perhaps 2:oo in the morning. And, ofcourse, my cell phone died so I have little means of getting ahold of him. So I go to bed here at Sant Jordi´s Hostel, and assume that Kyle will make his way here. But each time I turn over.... Kyle has not arrived. Finally I check the office at the hostel around 4:00, however I realize that it is closed, at which point, I assume that Kyle has missed check in - and that he will be along in the mornign. But when morning comes, I finally check my email to see what is up---- and sure enough, due to some stupid rules on Ryanair for non-EU citizens, Kyle has not been allowed on his flight, and never made it to Barcelona. ( Let´s add Ryanair to the list of airlines not to take-- or atleast take with caution).

So, I am here by myself. You would think that since I have been traveling for about a month and a half I would be used to this by now, but actually this is really the first time that I have been alone all trip. In London I have so many friends, Gilly in Scotland, and I felt like I knew a lot of people in the village in Africa- and there everything was so small that I had to work to have some alone time.

So yeah, my abrupt entrance into the world of autonomy was unexpected- so weirdly made me a little sad ( I mean obviously I was sad that Kyle couldn´t make it), and for the first time I found it a little hard to motivate to get out and do things- which is pretty ridiculous given the amount of things to do in this city.

But I managed to do alright. I walked over to the La Sagrada Familia, which is a cathedral that Gaudi spent the last 40 years of his life designing, and it still is not finished, but is currently beign worked on. It is some pretty intense art noveau architecture, though different from the art noveau of paris or brussels. These need pictures really to describe, which I will post when I get back to london.

I also went up the the Park Gueil, which is another od Gaudi´s designs, and was originally intended to be a leisure village with houses and stuff, but only two of the houses were ever actually built. That was pretty cool as well- everything was mosaiced and twisty. Again pictures are needed.

I am such a sucker for art in public spaces. I love it. And there seems to be some similarities between Gaudi´s work and Klimt´s- and for those of you who know, I am near obsessed with the work of Klimt- so that is pretty exciting for me. I am not generally a photo taker, but I was pretty much glued to the back of my camera for a lot of my day yesterday.

There is a lot of art to see. Street art included. And even the architecture of regular buildings is pretty cool. I also walked arounf the old section of town, which had a totally different, but equally rich feel to it. All the ¨streets´¨ are pedestrians only and you sort of wind your way through the old part of town.

The only bad thing about Barcelona, is that I am not the only one who likes it. This place is crammed with tourists- all shamelessly touting their guidebooks around. Perhaps this was just my personal perspective on the city, because I broke down and did one of those hop on- hop off bus tours yesterday because it seemed like a good idea for the infirmed ( ie me and my foot), but everywhere I went the tourists were swarming. Also I am staying in a hostel- so i guess that this has been my first truly touristy weekend on this trip, however, barcelona does seem especially plagued by tourism. It doesn´t help that I have been thoroughly unimpressed by every american that I have met thus far .

Anyways, I have one more thing I want to do this morning, and then I leave Barcelona- brief but great. I am going back to stay with Kyle for one more night (I am sure he is thrilled), but after that I have found a "sublet" in the middle of London for a couple days-----------with some real English people! haha.

Miss you all! I´ll keep you updated on fun things, and less fun things (the old foot) very soon.

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