Back in Greece

I arrived back in Greece very early this morning. I had about 1-2 hours of sleep last night so I'm very tired today! I'm in Athens now and have most of the day here till I catch the ferry at 5:30 for Paros.

My trip to Barcelona in a nutshell was: tiring, lol! The city is very large and everything is quite spread out. I did a ton of walking and it didn't help having my foot stepped on by a lady on the metro (by mistake of course but it hurt quite a bit afterwards!) I'm not going to recap day by day like I usually do because it would take toooo long!

I saw most of the attractions that I wanted to, it's easiest to do a list:

Gaudi creations:
- Sagrada Familia Church which was very beautiful from the outside. I paid to see the inside but it wasn't worth it; the lift to the top wasn't working and there was scaffolding everywhere because of the ongoing construction.
- La Pedrera and the Casa Batllo were right down the street from my hostel but I didn't go inside those, just admired the outside.
- Park Güell was really cool and had a great view over all of Barcelona. Gaudi created a bunch of interesting sculptures and architecture all around the park including the longest park bench in the world made of mosaic tiles.

Other sights:
- Picasso Museum which was interesting and in a really beautiful building.
- Montjuïc Hill is a park on a hill overlooking Barcelona which has a few museums on it. I wanted to go to the Miro Museum but when I got there, it had just closed. Near there, at the bottom of the hill is what's called the Magic Fountain and at 9pm, it starts up and the huge fountain turns different colors and shapes in time to music - really cool!
- The water front was a nice area to walk along. The day I wanted to go to the beach though, it ended up being cloudy so I skipped it and went to a spa pool instead...
- Poliesportiu Marítim - Centre de Talassoteràpia was the spa pool I went to. It consisted of 4 salt water pools and a few freshwater pools, waterfalls, bubble jets, steam room, sauna, warm marble area, lap pools.... basically, it was sooo relaxing! I went from pool to pool and just vegged in them till my limbs turned to raisins. A swimming cap was mandatory, so I had to buy one to go in. I also got reamed out (in Spanish) by a lady in the locker room and didn't understand a word she was saying but I think it was because I accidentally took her locker (even though she had nothing in it!) anyways...
- I did a ton of shopping and bought some much needed clothes. I barely ever bought clothes the past year so I thought I deserved a few new things. It'll also nice to bring back European clothing back home because they'll be more unique.
- La Boqueria market was right off of La Rambla and sold tons of fresh produce. You could get a plate of a variety of fresh fruit pieces for less than 2 euro and pure fruit smoothies, mmmmm!
- I walked a lot in the Las Ramblas, Passieg de Gracia, and Barri Gotic areas which are full of shops and cafes.

On my last day, I took a train to the town of Figueres where Salvador Dalí was born. He later converted a theatre into a museum to house his work called Teatre-Museu Dalí. This museum is one of the most visited in Spain and I can see why. I was so surreal! There were weird sculptures, paintings, holograms, visual illusions everywhere. The thing that's so interesting about this place was that Dali created not just the art work inside but also the whole look and feel of the building and rooms which display his art. So the whole museum is an art piece in itself and a very strange one!

I'll post pics in the next couple days when I get back home and sort through them all.

Army Update: Tony has only 2 days left in the Army so you can imagine he and I are sooooo excited! He'll be a free man finally! He won't be told when to get up, what to do, where to go, what to eat, or what to wear anymore; he'll be able to make his own decisions! He's really looking forward to getting back to Canada and returning to college. He's doing Computer Engineering so there are a lot of things he'll have to brush up on and get back into after being away from it for a whole year.

I guess that's all the news for now, I must go and have a bite to eat.

M