The last chapter of Spain

Alright, home stretch! On to day five.

DAY FIVE:

Krista and I, the soldiers, fight through a drowsy morning starting at 8am to catch a train to Figueres, and hour and 40 minutes out of town. Figueres is home to the Salvador Dali museum, a real gem that a person really should check out when they're in Barcelona. The entire building is a work of art; it is like being inside the brain of the crazy surrealist himself. There are archways covered in art to mimic the patrons entering girls' mouths, there are traditional sculptures of gods atop stacks of tires, there are shoes thrown in to sculptures, holograms, everything. It's like the second you think you've found something that's boring, you take a closer look and see that it's actually moving or has a hidden image or a double meaning. He's just fantastic. So after a few hours of making our way through his twisted world, we headed back to Barcelona. I spent the rest of the evening doing a little shopping until we met up again with the whole group of nine from the night before. We had a little take-away Chinese food on the beach, said our good byes, and then Daniel, Stacey, and I were off for the next leg of our trip, Sevilla! 

DAY SIX:

Once awake and preparing to get off the sleeper train in Sevilla, I cursed the train company for their false advertisement; it should have said no-sleeper train, because I definitely got better sleep in my seat on the last train than in that bed in the loud cabin from the night before. But anyway, we were in Sevilla so there was nothing to complain about. We found our way to our hostel (which was also beautiful and accommodating!), settled in, and then took off to scout out the town. At the hostel we had discovered that we had the great fortune of being in Sevilla at the same time as this huge one-month Flamenco festival they put on each year, so we were on the look-out for a place to check out show times. Before we could put together any of that, we decided to stop in at La Catedral, one of the most famous churches in Spain. As seems to be the common theme everywhere in Europe, it was undergoing construction. Nonetheless, it was a massive church and was beautiful to wander around in. Apparently there's controversy over this, but it's contended that Christopher Columbus' tomb is actually there as well! So after we saw the inside of the church and after we climbed up its sky-scraping tower (La Giralda) for the awesome view of the city, we set off for the Palace of Alcazar. What we expected to just be a neat palace ended up being an elaborate building covered in mosaic and reliefs and surrounded by never-ending gardens. We spent hours there but could have easily stayed longer. There were ducks and orange trees and PEACOCKS! and hedge mazes and so many vivid colors everywhere. It was beautiful.

After a quick coffee/ice cream break, we found our way to the theater at which the only Flamenco show we'd be available to attend was playing later that night. The people we had spoken to about the festival before made it sound like there'd be no way for us to get tickets this late, but we totally lucked out and got two of the very last tickets! (Daniel didn't here want to go. Silly.) Excited for the show, the three of us went back to the hostel, freshened up, had some dinner, and then Stacey and on were off to the flamenco. I didn't know much of what to expect, but it completely blew any expectations out of the water. I can honestly recall only a handful of times that music gripped me so much like it did in that show, and here I couldn't even understand what they were singing about! I could literally feel the emotions pouring out from the singers and right into my heart. That's what flamenco is about: They choose an idea or a phrase and then just sing it over and over again; whatever moves them, however it moves them. A few of the performers even cried while they were singing. It was hypnotizing. And the audience was so energetic that it made the whole experience so much more of a cultural exposure!: they would shout out encouragement at random moments throughout the songs, and they all seemed to inherently know when exactly to shout "¡Ole!" during the dancing parts. And I lucked out because the girl I sat next to actually interpreted the whole show for me so I was able to leave with a better understanding of what I had just seen. The whole show lasted two hours and I swear it was the shortest two hours I'd had in a long time!

So after the show we met up again with Daniel (and probably rubbed in his face what he missed.. :)) for tapas. On our way back to the hostel we got lost, walked for twenty minutes in what we thought was a better direction, only to emerge from an alley looking right back at the place we had just finished eating! Haha it was great. Sevilla is fun to get lost in.

DAY SEVEN:

Stacey and I walked about 30 minutes to an archeological museum (Amy and Jaimie, I walked through your school!!! :)), rocked that for about an hour, strolled around through some more beautiful gardens, made our way over to the famous Plaza de Espana to relax for a bit, then met up with Daniel for a late lunch. Walking was the name of the game that day, because after making our way through the city to the bullfighting arena, we discovered that it was kind of pricey to tour it so we ended up just walking around the place for a while. The arena was right near the river, so walking along the riverside elicited some great pictures with palm trees in them. :) Basically, we were saddling up for two full days of hell in the traveling that would get us from Sevilla to Östersund, so we spent our last full day in Sevilla taking it as easy as possible and soaking up every bit of our surroundings as we could. 

DAYS EIGHT AND NINE OF HELL:

9pm: Catch sleeper train in Sevilla to get back to Barcelona. Arrive in Barcelona at 8am.
9:30am: Take 1hour 15min bus from Barcelona Central Station to Girona, a tiny town outside of Barcelona, where we're to catch our flight to Stockholm.
10:45am: Run into the airport in Girona because we know it'd be be tight to catch out 11:05am plane and are comforted to see that they're still boarding. We run to the check-in counter, and they tell us we're too late. I remind them with my sad eyes face that the plane in still on the runway and is still boarding, and they repeat their first statement. I tell them we got stuck in Barcelona and there was nothing we could do and we had to get back, and they yet again repeated their first statement. 
11:00am: Sitting on the floor of the airport, defeated and un-showered, we hear the sixth and final boarding call for our flight to Stockholm. 
11:15: We figure out a new way back to Östersund, pay 75 Euro to change it, and then sit in the airport for six hours until it leaves because Girona is in the middle of nowhere and there's nothing to do there.
5:00pm: Fly from Girona to Göteburg, Sweden. 
8:30pm: Get in to Götenburg airport, take a little minibus to the city's bus/train station, where we scout out a place to sleep for the night. The plan is to camp in the station for the night, as we're broke and exhausted.
3:00am: After four straight hours of freezing cold sleep attempts (turns out the buses come all night and the doors get propped open for ten minutes at a time constantly...), I can no longer feel my toes or fingers, have put on every single t-shirt I brought under my two light sweaters, and am curled up under my new bull fighting beach towel. And then it hits me that there's a fine fine line between being adventurous and just being unresourcefully idiotic. We had wanted to save money, but not at the expense of our health, which was already quite vulnerable considering our extreme partying followed by even more extreme sight-seeing the last six days. So I just say SCREW THIS, gather up my stuff, and march out the door to chose from any of the six hotels across the street. Daniel and Stacey don't question the move in the slightest.
8:30am: Wake up on a fluffy marshmallow cloudlike bed of glory, SHOWER!!!, and eat a COMPLIMENTARY BREAKFAST!!!.
10:40am: Hop on the train from Göteburg to Stockholm.
4:00pm Hop on train from Stockholm to Östersund
9:pm: AT LONG LAST ARRIVE IN ÖSTERSUND!!!!!!

So yes those last two days most likely don't count for my trip, but they were still quite eventful I'd say! I have plenty of reflections from the trip, but there you have the epic novel of Katie's Trip to Spain! 

Thinking of you all!

Katie