Adios Barcelona, Hola Salamanca

Alright well Barcelona was quite the whirlwind of a trip, and unfortunately I did a little less sightseeing than anticipated. But it was a great time, nonetheless. My friends and I arrived and stayed there for 3 nights, and while we spent the first few nights enjoying ourselves, New Year's Day was spent catching up on jet lagged sleep and recovering from the night before...luckily although we had a bit of a dilemma- a girl in the group got her purse stolen (right off her wrist!), we made the best of it and everything turned out ok.

So here's what happened:
We were just walking down a side street (with plenty of restaurants and shops around, but it wasn't a main road) and yes although it was after midnight and we were having fun, I can't say we were being out of the ordinary uncautious. She even had a small wristlet purse and he literally ripped it so hard it broke off. Several of us took off running after the fellow (even a chef from a restaurant ran after him as well!), and people in the street all kept pointing which way to run, but we never found him.  She unfortunately had another girl's money and credit cards in there too, as well as our room and hostel keys! oops. The credit cards got cancelled, and luckily no one had any passports in the bag, so that was good. Strangely enough, 6 of us we were actually staying in the hostel owner's apartment about 2 blocks from the actual hostel. See there were too many of us to stay in the regular hostel (there were about 12 of us total), and the owner was going to be out of town, so he apparently was ok with letting us stay in his place...? Awful trusting, these Spaniards are. And luckily we had another set of keys, but it took some searching to find the spare to our room. So moral of the story, it never hurts to be too careful...

As for what I saw other than the inside of our hostel, well it consisted of a trip to the Sagrada Familia, and a run down to the beach with my friend Jarod. We went to the Ciudadella Park, where there was a beautiful fountain and some really neat buildings with greenery and benches inside. Very neat. So other than the excitement of new year's, we didn't get to do too much...so i will have to make a trip again to see the things i have now missed in my first and second trips to Barcelona! I will say, we are eating a lot of jamon, which is a major staple in the diets of people here, and i have a feeling I'm going to tire of it pretty soon! Although it is tasty! I did try the meat off of a pig leg on New Year's Eve, which was not as bad as it sounds or as you would think!


Now I'm in Salamanca, with just 3 others- Shannon, Jarod and Nevin.  We arrived yesterday and we are planning to go check out our school, get cell phones, and look for a place to live tomorrow...