Barcelona by Bike

Our hostel was on the beach, which was awesome.  Inside, it was nothing special-but who cares when you can walk outside and see the Meditteranean?  It was in an area of Barcelona called Barceloneta, that used to be a sketchy part until they fixed it up for the 1992 Olympics. 

The rest of the afternoon we spent wandering around the city.  Since we all desperately needed showers, we went back and did that before our wonderful dinner of seafood paella. After dinner the six of us (us three girls and John, Paul and Greg)  walked by the harbor down to the famous tourist promenade, Las Ramblas.  There wasn't a whole lot of activity-I attribute that to the rainy Sunday. 

Our plans for Monday included the Fat Tire Bike tour, which I was really excited about.  Highlights of the tour included Placa Sant Jaume (legal & congressional buildings), Placa del Rei (royal palace where Columbus walked up the stairs to tell Isabella about America), Barcelona Cathedral, Palau de la Musica (fancy music hall), Arc del Triomf (yep, Barcelona has one too...), Sagrada Famila (a magnificent church that has been under construction for 125 years-designed by Antonio Gaudi), Parc de la Ciutadella (used to have a prison here), Villa Olimpica (built 16 years ago for the Olympics) and lunch on the Barceloneta beach (I had couscous with corn, crab and avocado). 

The guide we had was from of all places, Texas.  He went to Texas State and has a house in Austin.  Apparently he did the bike tours in Paris for some time as well.  I think it would be ridiculously fun to have his job and get to live in Europe. On our tour, there were also a group of Miami University Ohio girls studying in Luxembourg, two girls from the University of Colorado and a British couple. 

I can easily say the bike tour made our trip to Barcelona that much more amazing.  At first I was really awkward on the bike- i.e., I had to run next to my bike at one point to keep up.  Then I realized my seat was too high and everything was fine after that.  After the bike tour we had to catch our night train back to Maastricht.

After a long, cold night on the train, I'm looking forward to a hot shower, clean clothes and the internet.  My respite is quite short, though.  Tonight we take a train to the Brussels (really a city called Charleroi) airport and fly to Milan in the morning. 

I think we will be in Brussels when we find out who the new president is.  It's fascinating that even in Europe, the US presidential election is front page news.  No matter what country or what language, everyone here is voraciously reading about our election.  That doesn't really help the whole "USA-being-self-centered" problem.  However, the ramifications of who our next president is will greatly affect everyone else in the world, so I can understand now why it's a big deal.