I am back in the castle. "Why," you may be asking yourself, "would Stephanie be in Holland when she is scheduled to stay in Barcelona for another night?"
After a lovely stay in Venice (more blogging and photos of that trip soon than you will probably ever care to read and see) my friend Alessandra and I flew to Spain for our 4 night trip to Barcelona. When we had made the reservations a week or two ago, we were also traveling with one of our guy friends. He changed his plans last minute in Venice. We got into Spain around 8pm on Wednesday, dropped our bags at our hostel and went to wander the city and grab dinner.
A word on the hostel: definitely a cool experience to stay in a youth hostel. Kids travel from all over (we met Canadians, Americas, Aussies, and a couple of Swedish boys) and it's a really neat way to make friends to go out with in foreign cities. Yet, I've also never been one for roommates, so the slamming around drunk at 4am didn't quite sit well with me. All in all though, I'm glad we tried it.
Anyways, the first night out at dinner, some boys walked up to my friend and started grabbing her and trying to kiss her... The waitress came out and yelled at them to leave us alone, but still. Sort of shook us up. We woke up the next morning ready to give Barcelona a clean slate and wandered all along the Barceloneta down to the city beach. The beach was gorgeous and we fell asleep in the sun for the morning. We awoke, however, to a group of 6 British girls yelling and crying. One girl's purse had been stolen right out from under them, passport and all. Alessandra and I had left all but 20 euros and our keys locked in the hostel and slept on top of our purses, but the incident kind of freaked us out. We went for lunch and got lost down a bad alley. We couldn't walk a block without some boys yelling or whistling. As much as I like to think I'm an independent woman type, the fact is I would have felt a lot safer with some of our boy friends to hang with.
That second night in Spain was the only time I've really felt homesick the entire trip. My friend and I thought about going to Rome to meet up with the rest of our friends, but it was pretty pricey this late to book those flights. Long story short, we got our hostel refunded and caught the first flight back to Holland. It's nice to be back, resting... I didn't realize how much a week and a half of traveling had wiped me out. I slept in late today and we borrowed some bikes from friends and rode the countryside for a bit. Tomorrow we're going to head back to Amsterdam for the day.
A part of me is sad we didn't try to push through being scared and tough out the rest of the stay, but all in all I'm happy we chose to come back early. It was certainly fun to get a feel for Spain though (that countryside is gorgeous) and the morning we left we stopped in to tour the Sagrada Familia Cathedral (pictured), which is just about the most creative, amazing thing I have ever seen. I hope from the bottom of my heart that I get to come back there someday. I love Holland. It's people and landscape has become very homey and familiar, and driving up to the "Verboden" gate felt almost as nice as when Mom takes me to In-N-Out when I first get off of the plane coming home.
Mucho blogging to come. Love from the Netherlands.
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