second stint in barcelona

today marks a week since we have been in spain. coincidentally it has not rained during the last week... hmmm... it seems like a very long time ago that lisa and i were moaning and groaning about cold and rain and never getting any sunshine. right now there are no clouds and it would be really weird if it was less than 25 during the day. so nice!

we flew back to barcelona from mallorca yesterday on our first delayed flight of the trip - good thing we didnt have anything to do except be on vacation. it was an hour or so late, funny because the flight is only 30 mins or so.

we found our new hostel and they were expecting us as usual. we are staying in a 3 bed room this time with an american guy named john who is nice. (liz, he does not seem like a psycho killer, dont worry). once we had checked in we went out in search of chinese food and sagrada familia. the first was hard to find, the second is huge, so not so much. once we found a place to eat asian food we had our first point-at-the-menu-and-hope-for-the-best experience. the meal turned out pretty good but not what we expected. it was fun.

http://titan.iwu.edu/~business/iwubts/barcelona.html - if you have not seen pics of sagrada familia take a quick look. its not like any church you have seen. its unreal! it is still under construction and expected to be completed in around 2020. unfortunately when we got there the tower was closed due to high winds (weird) and so we decided to leave it for later. instead, we went to parc guell, another gaudi creation. by the way, if i havent mentioned it so far, antoni gaudi is a barcelonan architect who created all sorts of cool 'modernista' type stuff all over barcelona. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudí i stole a pic from the internet of the view from the terrace in the park. we had to take escalators to get there! ive seen stairways that counted as roads, but never escalator roads. cool!

when we got home from the park we hung out for a while before going out again in search of something asian. we wandered and wandered and finally found some indian food, so we ate that alongside a pitcher of sangria! lisa decided to go slow on the sangria which means that i drank most of it, to her amusement. she had her fun and we got to bed early because we had big plans for today.

lisa has been dying to go to a waterpark, so last night she looked it up, found the biggest one in europe near barcelona, and figured out how to get there. we set our alarm clock for 8:30 today, woke up at 11:45 and went on our way lol. i dunno how we missed the alarm. oh well.

we took their go-train equivalent out of the city for about half an hour, got off at the stop they said to get off at, and didnt see the waterpark anywhere. just then, an accordian bus came up with an ad for it on the side, so we got on and to our utmost pleasure it took us right there! we got to the waterpark at 1:45 and waited until 2:00 to save 6 euros on admission. and we werent the only ones doing that, it was kind of funny.

the waterpark was so much fun! we spent all day going up stairs and down slides! unfortunately they did not have a lazy river, but that is a small deal! so much fun!! http://www.illafantasia.com/eng/index.htm

and it was nice change to be in chlorine water instead of salt water.

tonight we are going to go out for dinner and drinks with some people from the hostel. hopefully it will be fun! lisa is having a nap, she is all tuckered out from a big day of sliding and being silly!

tomorrow we are going to try the church again, and then go to the beach or to the picaso museum, depending on how hungover lis... i mean 'we' are.

adios!

simon