After a way-too-long ride on a not-so-good bus, we made it to Provence, France, a place known for…wait for it….RATATOUILLE! We’re not sure if Provence is really famous for ratatouille, that’s just what we heard, and we all like the movie…so we just went with it. We made about 3 stops in some small towns with some sort of Roman ruins (note: almost every place we’ve been has some sort of Roman ruins, the Romans ruled most of Europe for Pete’s Sake, of course there’s gonna be ruins from them!!!), but we were pretty tired of seeing roman ruins at this point in the trip, especially when it turns an hour long bus ride into a 6 hour long bus ride! But, after some frustrating stops…we made it to Provence and our lovely BEST WESTERN HOTEL. We cannot even express the joy felt throughout our whole group when we realized that not only were we staying at a common American hotel chain, but that our hotel also has a pool! Since we’ve all had a couple too many French pastries and gelatos, we decided against going to the pool, but we were glad to have the option nonetheless! We ate at the hotel because apparently Provence is not a nice area of France…our tour leader told us to go into town with guys on our group and stay in at least groups of 4. (We were told the same thing when we went to Bryan middle schools like Jane Long for volleyball games so it brought back memories.) We had an “index finger meal” at the hotel. If you don’t know what an “index finger meal” is, let me explain. When you are in a foreign country, you cannot read most of the menu, your waiter doesn’t speak English, and you don’t want to completely butcher the language by trying to say what you want, you simply point with your index finger at the item you can recognize the most words in…and that’s what you’re having for dinner! Even though we only pointed at one item each, we got a salad, entrée, and dessert that we didn’t order, but had to pay for…perfect! After a comfy and relaxing night in our Best Western, we hit the road again, this time in route to ESPANA!!
For the trip to Barcelona, we had the same crappy bus (smelled like smoke, gum all over the place, little space, and a bus driver who never ceased to have a cigarette in his mouth) so that made the trip all the more pleasant…sarcasm. We only stopped once in a town to have lunch, a stop we could all be pleased about. Our hotel in Barcelona only had 3 person rooms, so again we had to pull a bed from another room into ours and squeeze like sardines. It’s a good thing we still love each other. We couldn’t complain too much about this hotel though because it had air conditioning…and air conditioning makes us happy people. The next day we set out on a sightseeing tour of the huge and beautiful city of Barcelona! We went on our crappy bus, but had a different driver so that made it a little better. Unfortunately, the bus ride, mixed with someone’s feet poking through the seats and making her queasy, was all a little too much activity for Kaci, so she decided to opt out of the rest of the sightseeing and took a taxi back to the hotel. The rest of us went through Parque Guell, which is an interestingly designed park that has amazing views of the city. There we saw the walkway that was used as the runway for one of the finals of America’s Next Top Model (for fans of the show, it was the final between Caridee and Melrose where they were in wedding dresses), so naturally, we all took turns strutting our stuff and posing for the cameras! If only Tyra or Miss J would have seen us...ha! After the park we saw Sagrada Familia, which was absolutely amazing! I can’t believe how intricate and massive it is! When the sightseeing tour was over, we decided to end the afternoon in traditional Spanish fashion…SIESTA time! A short four hour nap was all we needed to get up and get going for dinner time. We went out with a big group of people down to the harbor where all the really good food is supposed to be. It was indeed there. We had the BEST paella! We got a mixed meat and veggie paella and they were both incredible, we stuffed ourselves full, had some Sangria, and finished off our meal with free shots of “schnapps” (which our waiter said everyone does after meals)…whatever, they were free and they were good! After our dinner, which ended at 11:30 PM, we decided we needed to rest more, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed. The next day, we got up and went souvenir shopping with some other girls in our group. After walking through a super sketchy ‘flea market’, which looked more like a junk sale, we headed back to Sagrada Familia in search of good soccer gear and souvenirs galore! Boy did we find it…found some great soccer shirts (at good prices thanks to Kaci’s bartering), tons of good souvenirs, and even a good smoothie place! By this time it’s early afternoon, it’s getting extremely hot (Spain’s temperatures have been in the 120’s!), and Brittney isn’t feeling too good. The four of us go back to the hotel room, where the “bummer” part of this title begins. After being in so much pain for so many days, Britt is tired and thinks something more is going on, other than kidney stones. So phone calls begin, our tour guide comes in to help with the situation, and after weighing the pros and cons, Britt decides to get a flight, and go home. Although we are all sad about her leaving, we know she’ll be more comfortable at home. We can’t imagine the pain she went through, but we tried to make it better for her! We’re proud of our little trooper; she made it to all the countries, and carried her kidney stone to 3 countries in Europe! We know Europe loved her and we loved getting to share this experience with her (the good experience, not the bad one…we wish she wouldn’t have had that)! We’re jealous that she’s back in the U.S., with air conditioning, plentiful amounts of free drinking water, ice, her own hair straightener (maybe the thing she’s most excited about), and in her own bed. We miss you already Britt!! You’ll be hearing from Kaci about the “Final 3’s” days in Madrid, our last city in Europe…stay tuned!
-Erin and the other 3 chicas (while only 3 chicas are present when writing this, the 4th is with us in spirit!)
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