Twinkle, Ladies!

Our next day in Barcelona, we had planned to go to the Picasso Museum, until we realized it was closed :( Bummer! So we decided to do a little shopping. Well, we walked up and down the road with H&M on it (right by our hostel) but all of the stores were closed. But it was a Monday?! JJ had told us on the tour that they have 32 holidays just for Saints in Barcelona, so we thought this was probably one of them.

Then we walked down Las Ramblas towards the beach. This in itself was an experience. We has to be sure and 'twinkle' the whole time. I am sure you are wondering what I mean by that. At the beginning of the trip we decided that we needed a code word that meant that we needed to either check our purse for all important documents and belongings, or hold it tight to you and be aware. We decided on the word 'twinkle', it worked quite nicely! If we were leaving the hostel, it meant to check your bag, if we were in a crowd, it meant to hold it. This was people didn't know what we were talking about ;) I know it, we're sneaky. All down the street they have tons of shops, and people dressed up in wierd costumes. Like they went allllll out! These crazy people looked like they were made of gold or silver, or whatever they had painted themselves. This is commonly used as a distraction for pick-pocketing. Ash and I bought our Barcelona key chains and then headed to the beach. We had to go the long way around to the beach, but we ended up coming out right by the restaurant that we were looking for! Em and I were unable to get our initial choices on the menu, so we all got mixed paella, but it was still great! Then we found a spot to sit on the beach. I ended up laying down in the sand, and fell asleep. It was kind of obvious, because I did that jumpy thing that happens when you have a dream where you fall down, so your body jerks a little and you wake up. It was a great little nap in the sun, though.

We decided to stop by the train station on our way back to the hostel, so that we could double check our route to Nice for in the morning. This is where it got complicating... and frustrating. One of the trains that we needed was completely booked, so for a long time we thought that we were going to have to leave a day later from Barcelona, which would make us pay an extra night there, and still pay for that same night in Nice. Luckily, Katie had found a different set of trains earlier that morning that would get us there, just later. So we asked the train station lady (who was SOOOOO great with us) to just double check to see if that route would work. We eneded up being able to make a reservation for 2 of the 4 trains on that route(only 2 required them), and were set to go. Huge relief! We went to our hostel and then went to the rooftop terrace and had some sangria and paprika pringles. We came back to our room to get ready to go out, but then we all ended up asleep. We were so tired!