Barcelona and Italy

So today I moved from Madrid to Barcelona and the shift could have goon smoother, I started out early hoping to make the 10:30 direct from Madrid to Barcelona and was disappointed to find that train was full and the only other one was at 12:30. Ouch I had to wait for another 2 hours at the train station and the kicker was that they only had first class seats left for the 12:30, and since the 12:30 was the last train from that location, I would have had to go and find the other train station to depart from or I would have to wait till tomorrow and lose one of my two full days in Barcelona. I went with the extra money, a decision that I am kinda mad at but I did it and I cant take it back. The extra service you get for your money really is not worth it, more leg room, a movie and radio, and a meal, its was interesting to see what the first class is but it is definitely not worth the cost of the ticket. I'm gong to post a photo of the olive oil that came with the meal since it was a hilarious little oil bottle and looked really cute. Anyway I made it to Barcelona and I was immediately confused as I left the building. I ran into two guys who asked if I spoke English and then asked me for directions, I told them I didn't really know and went to go find my way about 5 minutes later the same guys approached me and gave me a sob story about how one of them had lost his passport and they were only like 6 Euros short and if I gave them some money, I stopped him right there saying I could not give away money. I might have come off kind of mean since I just spit it out but especially in retrospect it seems like a con. If you lost your passport you go report it to a consulate you don't try and get money so one of you can go home and get copies of the other guys passport. Also I'm a poor traveler, even if I was fooled by the story I don't have extra money to give away. Back to me navigating the rails, I was super confused by the maps of the rail system and I told myself as I entered the station, “this is gonna be just like Germany” where if you will recall I boarded a train in the wrong direction....well I was right, having misread the map I took a train away from my hostel and when the line ended and I found a map I realized that I had to take the same line the opposite direction to get to my stop. I re boarded the train and I made it to the Hostel no problems from there. The Hostel itself is nice, its in a slightly low end area (lots of graffiti everywhere) but the place itself is very nice. It has a full bar, TV area, Wi-Fi as well as computers for guests to use, nice big rooms and even a Gym for guests. The location is pretty good too, its very near a busy street lined with restaurants and about 10 minutes walk from the cities central street. It certainly feels like a good place to explore Barcelona from and its near to the airport as well. So Barcelona and then onto Italy.
So this blog was written in two parts, this first part came when I had just gotten to the Hostel, the second one I am writing on Sunday morning so I ca complete the story of what happened. So after I logged off the Hostel room totally filled up, we had a group of 3 Greek guys enter as well as another guy from California and the 3 girls who had been in the room before I showed up. The Greeks were doing a small tour of Spain and weirdly enough the 3 girls were from UW (university of Washington, it was great when I told them I was thinking about going to WSU, the schools are rivals) and were doing a study abroad program, two of them are spending a year and one is spending a half year, they had come up from Cadis (where there school was) since they had a longer break from school and wanted to explore Barcelona. We had a great time as a group in the room and at around 1:30 we decided to go to this local bar we were told about( the Greeks unfortunately stayed behind), we spent around 2 hours there and met a friend of the girls who was also in there study abroad program and his buddy. We decided to change bars and find some food along the way to the next bar. We had been told that the next bar was a really chill place that was a hidden treasure but when we got there it was PACKED, we spent all of 15 minutes inside before deciding to go back to the Hostel. We walked back to the Hostel and found some food before deciding that at around 5 or 5:30 we should go to bed, we just got up around 11 so we missed the breakfast at the Hostel but the night was super enjoyable. This Hostel is definitely the best I have stayed at both thanks to a good facilities and for sure the best roommates I have had my whole trip
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We woke up in the morning around 11 and started to get ready for the day, we had all planed to go hiking in a mountain range nearby, we had to take an 1.5 hour train to get the the location but it was definitely worth it. We actually missed the initial train we wanted at 12:30 and had to wait for the 1:30 train so we went and grabbed a bite at a small restaurant nearby, the food was really good and it was a good choice since we had gotten up to late to get breakfast at the Hostel. Once were there we had to take a smaller train up to the entrance, there was a monastery as well as the usual visitor attractions and we all took a little elevator like thing up to the top of the mountains (they were around 3000 feet above sea level). They had a variety of hikes to good viewpoints from half and hour to 2.5 hours long, we had arrived at like 1:30 and we needed to be back at the elevator thing around 5 and we did not want to miss the last lift since we would have to walk down if we did. The hike itself was very fun with a ton of great views and I was not very long, I was also surprised to see that many of the rock walls had rings in them for attaching a rope if you were rock climbing meaning that rock climbing was not only allowed but to some degree encouraged. After the hike (where I got a ton of pictures) we went back down the the lower level and spent some time exploring the monastery, it had a very cool entrance chamber and they had the usual place where you can light candles, however there were so many candles that when you walked into the candle room you could feel the heat hit you. After exploring the monastery we decided we should head back so we went to find the small tram to take us back to out train stop, we found that there was a HUGE line of people waiting to get onto the tram. We debated how long the line would take and settled on finding some food since it had been like 6 hours since we had eaten our lunch and we had had nothing since then. We walked along the street and looked at a small cafe but it appeared to be out of food so we had to continue on, we also passed a group of stalls that had been set up and we walked through them getting free samples of cheese at every stall, we eventually hit the restaurant and found that it had closed like 10 minutes ago, so we decided we would go back to the initial cafe and get some ice cream to tide us over until we made it back to the Hostel. By the time we had our ice cream the line for the train had decreased unbelievably, we grabbed a spot and ended up waiting probably 15 minutes before getting onto onto the train. The first train ride was short, just down the mountain to the nearby town, but the train was packed, when we got to the lower train station there was a ton of people there too and when the train arrived we could not manage to get seats. This meant we had to stand for the 1.5 hour trip back to Barcelona and since we could not take that after hours of hiking we all sat down around 10 minutes into the ride. After getting back into Barcelona we made our way back to the Hostel and scrounged up some dinner and al take showers (this was around 9:30-10). After that we went for a walk down the streets mainly to grab some simosas at a nearby store and then we continued to walk around for another 45 minutes or so and ended up back at the Hostel where we chilled until around 2 when everyone went to sleep. Unfortunately the girls had to leave to head back to school so they shipped out around 4 in the morning to catch there flight at around 7ands I leave tomorrow morning myself but the experience of Spain was really good. I think that having good roommates really helps to improve the experience, I definitely did not have this much fun when it was just a room full of people who sat there and said nothing.
My second day in Barcelona was spent at two places, the first was the Maritime Museum,a much older style museum with history of Barcelona as a port city and as a Spanish port overall, the museum highlighted the older ships, things like Royal Spanish ships from the 16th century as opposed to the maritime museum in Rotterdam which was more of a modern museum highlighting the development of the port into a modern day port. After the museum I wander all the down Las Rambles which is the biggest street in Barcelona, it had an amazing variety of things, street performers, gift shops, restaurants, flower shops, pet stores(like little stalls selling birds and fish, up to full chickens). It was pretty wild and the street was bustling with tourists. The street was really nice and a great adventure, after that I just went back and had to repack my bag to get ready for the flight to Italy.

The big day arrived and I ended up sleeping in late, I had not been able to fall asleep so I ended up falling asleep way to late and my roommate had to wake me up at around 8, about an hour after I had planned on getting up, I was going t grab a train to the Airport and arrive around hours early so that I would have a hard time missing the plane. After I was woken up I went into a panic mode, shoved everything I still had out into my bag and ran downstairs to check out, I got checked out and started planning. I realized right off the bat that the train was out of the equation, its takes around an hour by train to get to the airport so I had to make a tough choice. I ended up paying 20 Euros take a cab to the airport but it was either 20 Euros for the cab or go buy another plane ticket. I think I choose the cheaper alternative. I got to the airport and it only took around 20 minutes so I made it to the airport with what seemed like enough time to get through the security and check in. Getting my bag checked was easy and barely took 10 minutes, security was also a breeze and took probably the same, I found my way through the airport super easy and made it to the gate maybe an hour before the plane was supposed to leave, I was kinda pissed since I still had all that time and I worried myself through the airport and I still had to wait for the plane. NOT COOL. The plane ride to Italy was good, nice and short and, we got in 20 minutes early. I grabbed a train from the airport direct to down town Rome, the airport was probably the best place I have been so far, it must be all the tourists that come into it but it was easy to navigate and buy tickets. The city was a little harder, I made it out of the station easily enough but I could not find the Hostel I was looking for in the clutter of all the Hotels around the train station, I had to find an Internet cafe and Google the location. I got the directions and found the place, apparently its one of a group of famous Hostels, the place is more like a Hotel, it has free Internet, free breakfast, free pizza at dinner, and the place has a TV room and REALLY nice bathrooms. It is great, compared to some of the places have stayed this is fantastic. I have 3 days including today planned in Rome, then going to Naples/Pompeii, a single day in Pisa and then 2 days in Venice. I am really looking forward to the my time in Italy, its one of the places I have really been looking forward to. I also met my new roommates, I really like them, we went out and explored Rome with one of the girls (there are 3 girls and 2 boys excluding myself) being our tour guide since she has been to Rome around 6 times. It was really great, we didn't enter any of the places but we saw the Colosseum and parts of the Roman Forum, after the walk we all headed back to Hostel for the free pizza they provide as a dinner. All in all, good day.
Really sorry to delay this more but the new place has a time limit on your Internet (30 min) so I probably wont get chance to upload all the photos.