Spain

The person who can figure out the reference in the title of this post will get 50 bonus points. Hint: the older folk reading this may have an edge on this one. The first stop in Spain was Barcelona. It wasn´t as hot the last time I was there which was nice. Another day spent on the beach felt amazing again. There really is nothing like sitting on the beach looking out on to the Mediterranean. The beach at Barcelona is nothing to write home about, even though that is what I am doing, and it was packed but the water was warm and took away the aches from climbing the hill to our hostel. The hostel was nice, clean, had free Internet, and interesting people to talk to but it was a hike. It was farther out of town and up on one of the hills. My things are still feeling it. We went into the Sagarda Familia this time instead of just looking at. It is by far the most impressive unfinished building I have seen. If they finish it while I am still alive and that is a big if, I am going to fly to Barcelona just to see it completed.
Then it was train ride to Cordoba and this was our first bad train ride of the trip really because at least the night train was quiet. This train had about three little kids who took turns crying for seven hours. Cordoba was an interesting and frustrating city. The warren of streets in the medieval quarter is fun just to walk through and it was nice not having to take the subway everywhere. The frustrating part is that everything closes at 9:00pm. This is of course after having just opened up again at 5:00pm from the siesta. I am not sure when people actually get any work done. We went to the Mezquita which is the mosque Cordoba is famous for and it was a let down. It would have been more interesting but parts were under renovation and after seeing Chartres and the Sagrada Familia it didn´t have the same impact. However, we saw an excellent flamenco performance and then went to Medina Al-zhara which is the ruins of a palace city built by one of the caliphs outside of the city. I had never heard of it before but it was well worth the stop. I guess if for every famous thing that doesn´t live up to its billing if we find one that we didn´t know of before we are doing ok.
Now we are in Madrid and were luck to find a place to stay. In fact we are staying in three different places in three nights. There is a huge gay pride festival going on and they expect about 2 million people to come in for it. So the city is packed.We made it to the Prado today. It was the first major museum of the trip and well worth it. The collection of Goya´s is not to be missed.
I am running out of time online. It is not free tonight. I will post pictures in the next few days. Keep the comments coming, Neal and I really enjoy them.

So we were heading into Paris on a Saturday to meet Aaron. We had a train from Nice in the morning and got in around 12:30. The major concern was, not meeting up with Aaron but finding a place to stay because it was a Saturday, in June, in Paris and we were without a room. A few phone calls later and some sketcy directions hammered out using the poor English of the girl on the phone and my even poorer French found Neal and I riding the metro out to Hoche. We later found out that we weren´t even in the city any longer but out in the suburb and it was a questionable area at best. We were able to get a room for the night and make it to airport in time to meet Aaron. We were so happy about finding a room that we didn´t even mind his flight being delayed.

That night we went back to the hostel and ate mircowaved mac and cheese. It wasnt easy mac but the stove was broken so what was going to be a good meal of mac and cheese turned into a mircowaved mess of undercooked noodles and semi melted cheese. We then headed out to the the city because Aaron hadn´t been there before. We took the metro to the Eiffle tower and then walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysee to the Louvre. On Sunday we got up bright at about 7:00am and early to get over the Eiffle tower so we could go to the top before the lines formed. We didn´t get up early enough. There were lines and I think that no matter how early we got up there would have been lines. We then took the train out to Versailles and went to the gardens. The line was too long and it was 25€ to go tour the inside unfortunately. The gardens were packed though and we couldn´t figure out why until all the fountains came on. They don´t run the fountains normally and it was lucky that we just happened to be there. The gardens were amazing without the fountains and ten times better with them. We headed back into the city stopped by Notre Dame real quick and then got on our night train to Barcelona.

If you ever take a night train and it only costs 15 more euro for a sleeping car you should probably consider it. The recling seats that were suppose to go back 160 degrees and be nice and comfortable... didn´t and weren´t. We did end up meeting the girl in the row across from us and taught her how to play euchre and were able to get a decent amount of sleep although my back wasn´t too happy about it in the morning. We are in Barcelona now. We have two nights here and then it´s off to Cordoba. We´ll hit up the beach and go see La Sagrada Familia and do some relaxing.