I was sitting in the lounge area waiting for my name to be called, and I saw a guy across the room who looked much like me, exhausted and hopeful to get in to the place. Then I realized I knew the guy. He gave me a nod. It was Simon, an aussie from Melbourne that I had met in Lagos, Portugal. It was great to see a familiar face, and we lucklily both got into the hostel.
Kabul is one of several supposedly "famous" hostels in the world-who would have known there even was such a thing? By famous, this means it's a desitination that all the students-i.e. party animals- want to go. Kabul has a roof deck and has bbqs and kegs every night and hosts a 3X a week pub crawl from their place. They also have $1 heinikens from the vending machine. That's pretty much all you need to know about Kabul. It was not necessarily clean, but it was fun. After 4 days I was ready to collapse. Simon fared better as I left him there as I went to France since he wanted to go to the Tomatina (huge tomato fight in Valencia) on the 27th. I think we will meet up again in Italy.
I stayed in the Barrio Gothica area of the city, which is the old town next to Las Ramblas. To describe Barrio Gothica think Times Square, Fisherman's Wharf, and Waikiki Beach all in one. It is incredibly touristy with a million street vendors and "artists"-question, who really likes the guys who pretend to be statues? Obviously somebody.
My days in Barcelona consisted of checking out a lot of the Gaudi archetecture, including of course the La Sangria Familia. It is really impressive and just bizzare, as is all of Gaudi's stuff. Park Guell was really cool too, with the world's largest park bench that is actually really neat.
I also checked out the Olympic Park that was built for the Olympic Games in Barcleona in 92, and they were really nice as well. If you remember, Barcelona games were the ones where the archer lit the torch with the arrow. Gotta be the coolest torch lighting ceremony ever.
I also saw Camp Nou, the largest soccer stadium in europe. If you can, take the tour of the stadium and the museum. It's interesting even if you don't like soccer. Being there you get a sense for the real passion for soccer and the home team. It also has all sorts of cool memorabilia of past teams and players (like Diego Maradona).
I was honestly getting a little sick of barcelona after the 4th day, and especially barrio gothica. There were just too many nasty people and theives everywhere. In my first 3 days in barcelona, I saw -with own eyes- 3 people get their things stolen.
I was actually really disappointed in barcelona at that point, I had heard so many great things about the city, and had thought I would really fall in love with it. I think some of my disappointment was a function also of being in Spain for almost 5 weeks and itching to go to a new country. I thought about leaving early to go to france, but I new Joyce (from SF and Gap) was coming the next day so I figured I would wait.
Barcelona really started to turn around once I met up with Joyce (aka Joythe) and Reyna (Joyce's friend from SF). They were staying in Barc for 3 days before heading to Madrid.
I met Joyce and Reyna at their luxury Barcelona hotel in a very nice downtown area. It was great to get out of barrio gothica. A nice hotel was something I had yet to experience on my trip, and the man at reception confirmed this thought by looking at me as I came at the door, then at my backpack, and then at me again. The look all but screamed, "You are obviously in the wrong place senor." I asked for Joyce at the desk, and he reluctantly let me head up in the elevator.
I have to say, it was great to see a familiar face. Expecially the always cheery Joyce. I met Reyna and she of course turned out to be cool as well.
I dropped my backpack on the floor as Joyce and Reyna looked at me with a strange fascination. This was my statement that I planne to stay at the hotel tonight, even if it meant sleeping on the balcony or the bathtub. I had had more than enough of the Kabul party hostel.
We headed out and had a teriffic dinner at hostel de Rita (not a hostel) which served traditional catalan food. We had the classic brucceta like appetizers of tomato and sardine paste and other assorted things on toasted bread for appetizers, and then we all had a cod dish for the main course. It was really good.
After that we went to some cool bars in barrio gothic in the plaza real. We ended up meeting some people from NY. One of the girls was actually illegally living in Barcelona, so it was interesting to hear her story. We ended up drinking and hanging out on the beach ntil God knows when. We all woke up the next morning at 3 in the afternoon, which didn't leave a lot of time to sightsee. It was fine since the previous night was well worth it. The girls were very very motherly and gave me countless things for the rest of my trip including toiletries that I still have no idea what they are. Maybe I give myself a facial tonight. I'm taking a 7 PM night train in a sleeper (my first) to Nice tonight and will have ample time on my hands..