We’ve been in Europe a little over a week now and have been
kept busy sightseeing & partying. Sorry, we’ve been a little slack on the
blog front over the past couple of weeks.
We left Bangkok on a 1:30am Emirates flight via Dubai to
Madrid, Spain. All went smoothly and we’ve decided that Emirates are the best
airline we’ve flown on our travels together. It was late afternoon by the time
we actually arrived at our hostel in Madrid where we were staying for just one
night before travelling on to Barcelona. We didn’t do much that first evening
as we were pretty exhausted from the 18 hours travel time from Bangkok.
The following morning however we got to enjoy an awesome hot
coffee with our first authentic Spanish omelette & croissant for breakfast.
I’ve been missing good coffee way too much over the last month in
Thailand. After breakfast it was time to
board the high speed train to Barcelona. Travelling at 300k’s an hour it took
only 3 hours to get there and then it was an easy transit to our hostel by metro.
We were staying in our first dorm rooms in Barcelona as we thought it would be
a good opportunity to meet some people to party with in town. However that
first day we didn’t even meet our room mates as they didn’t come back from
partying until after we had got up the next morning. Turned out they were
pretty rude and snored extremely loudly (so loud that the windows rattled in
their frames) so needless to say we made other friends at the hostel instead.
We had 5 days in Barcelona which was a great amount of time
as it gave us plenty of opportunity to see a few things but also rest time
after partying in the evenings. We did a free walking tour around the old city
on the first morning which was great. We visited Barcelona on our last
backpacking trip around Europe 8 years ago so did a lot of the major tourist
sites then but there were things we wanted to learn more about and see again
this time around. Plus our main reason for returning was to party in the summer
time as the last time we visited was winter and very quiet on the bar scene.
We met two 19 year old Canadian guys and two girls from
Texas at the hostel and decided to go out for a few drinks with them on the 2nd
evening. Our walking tour guide had recommended a great bar which had 3.50 Euro
Mojitos, so of course, those that know us and our love of cocktails would know
that was where we headed first. It was a great bar simply because as soon as
you opened the door you could just smell the fresh mint! Every person in the
bar was drinking Mojitos. It was pretty amazing. Great tasting Mojitos too.
Needless to say the day following was a relaxing one where
we got up fairly late and just chilled out for most of the day. We had been
planning a quiet one that night but after speaking with the Canadian boys again
in the afternoon they were keen to go on a bar crawl that night for their last
night in the city so we tagged along. It was a small group on the crawl but
everyone was pretty good fun other than this really loud Danish guy who just
had no idea when to shut up! It was quite amusing but I’ve never met anyone so
loud before in my life (even louder than my sisters!).
We visited 4 bars during the night and were given a free
shot and/or drink at every bar along the way which was great value. One of the
bars we went to was called “Chupitos” which means ‘Shots” in English and is
literally just a bar that serves 600 different types of shots! A crazy concept
that literally just means the whole bar is full of people getting really really
pissed, really really quickly. The service was terribly rude but we still had a
bit of fun watching everyone doing the different kinds of shots on offer and of
course joining in ourselves.
The last venue was a club which was a really long walk from
the city centre where we were staying so it made for a very sobering walk home
at 4am.
Needless to say the following day there was definitely
hangovers, some greasy food for brunch and a whole lot of nothing until that
evening when we went to see the “Magic fountain” of Barcelona. The fountain is
basically a sound and lights show that happens 4 nights a week through Summer.
There were so many people there and the fountain itself was pretty amazing.
The following day was our final day in Barcelona and was
also our day of sightseeing. We checked out of our room early in the morning
then caught the train to the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. We saw this cathedral 8
years ago on our first trip and wanted to see the progress that has been made
since then as it is still being built. They have been building it for over 100
years already and still have another 30-40 years until it will be complete. In
fact we were lucky this time around as the interior roof was only finished last
year so we got the chance to see that.
In the afternoon we enjoyed a really nice Tapas lunch in the
Born district and wandered around the streets exploring for a few hours before
it was time to jump on the overnight train to Zurich. We had our own cabin
which included breakfast & dinner on board the train which was really nice
after the snoring Frenchmen of the past few nights. However the journey didn’t
end in Zurich as from there it was another train to Vienna.
