Barcelona to Rome

Our final train ride to Barcelona took us on our first night train (we just got off our second this morning arriving in Rome) and it was an interesting experience. We met more awesome people who helped us with language and told us a little about themselves and their and others' culture, including Diego from Austria (Ich gesprecht Deutsch mit er), Fareed from Dubai originally from Iran (who genuinely loves the United States more than I do and speaks better English than many Americans) and one of Justine's cabin mates who helped us with our French as the train went through France to reach Barcelona.

Arriving there, wescorned our packrat mentality after dragging our unnecessarily overpacked luggage across Barcelona to her hotel (we eventually called a cab when we were very close, the cab driver refused our attempts to pay him; he was the first of two awesome cab drivers we met, the second of which brought back my guitar that was left in the backseat).

The good news is the hotel was full, and she got upgraded to a four-star hotel with a pool on the roof, where I met girls from Australia whom I partied with the following night, along with New Zealanders and Norwegians (I had a great conversation with the Norwegians, and jammed with one of the New Zealanders who proceeded to rap over a "Hotel California"-like riff he taught me...

It was possibly more gangster than a large percentage of the shit I have heard coming from actual gangsters.

Anyway, among the things we did and ate in Spain:

Swam in the Mediterranean (narrowly avoided jellyfish!)

Met a guy at the beach who invited us to go to Egypt with him; I might do it, he is a cool guy from California who has a Business degree but is opting to see the world and occupy himself doing things like teaching scuba-diving to tourists in Guam (he assured us the jellyfish in the Mediterranean are harmless and it is the ones you can't see you need to worry about).

Saw a good portion of nicely rounded and toned naked female upper bnodies on display at the beach, although sadly the majority had their tops on

Saw the Arc de Triumph

Explored a museum complex including a geology, zoology and murder investigation museum, the last of which invites you to investigate a murder that has been set up for the purpose of your analysis using all sorts of forensic tools to identify the culprit (Justine and I were both wrong, although I still maintain that my chosen suspect had the largest motive).

Ate Pizza that used a mild salsa instead of tomato paste with mozzarrella and green olives; delicious!

Ate Salmon and squid rings at a boardwalk restaraunt after our last trip to the Mediterranean

Saw a giant phallic building that was lit up in blue and red

Ran through a torrential downpour with thunder crashing and lightning flashing to get to the foot of that building, which unfortunately was not open to tourists (I was hoping we could get drinks!)

We instead ordered French Fries and "Uno Cerveza" at a tiny little bar near our hotel which had a jukebox that we played Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and Jethro Tull on, respectively

Accidenttally ran into a Harley Davidson festival near the Expo Center and at the foot of Barcelona's gorgeous historic art museum which rises like a palace on the hill above the center

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And after riding four trains at about four hours each (seven hours and forty-five minutes for the night train which we departed this morning) we are now in Rome.

We met interesting people on these trains as well; I met a couple Danish girls who gave me some useful information on what to see in Denmark and a couple of Italian gentlemen, one of whom taught us a little Italian using Deutsch, since it was the only language either of us understood very well.

We got very lucky on the train in between these two, which required reservations that we didn't have!

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Rome is Beautiful, to no one's surprise I am sure. Today we saw the colloseum, which I toured then played my guitar in ode to a few of the tragedies and heros I imagined thye games spawned (Justine got me on video singing about a hippo; this relates to the Colloseum because Hippos were sometimes brought in for men to fight!). After touring the colloseum Justine bought twenty postcard for €1 and we walked around the old town and the ruins some more, including the former residence of Augustus.

And now, we will eat Dinner at a nearby African restaurant! My stomach has been a little irritated the last couple days, so I am going to try and stick to vegetables for tonight.

arrivederci, au revoir, adios, tschuss and Good bye!