aggienaut | Jun. 2nd, 2009

Day 3 - Monday, May 11th - Kerri had work so I set out once again to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
   ...it turns out museums have this habit of being closed on Mondays. :[
   ...So I explored the OTHER half of Central Park for most of the afternoon. Yep I go to one of the most famous cities in the world and spend most of my time in the one part of it that doesn't look like a city. I don't really like cities.
   When Kerri got off work (she's a tenants rights advocate with a non-profit or some such) I met up with her and we returned to her place. I think this evening and the next one we watched some TV shows on hulu.com, which was a cultural experience for me since I don't normally watch any TV. So I am now acquianted with the recent episodes of The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Rescue Me.
   Also here is the view from Kerri's roof:

Day 3 - Tuesday, May 12th - I set out to see some NY landmarks such as Ye Terr'ism Hole In The Ground and the Statue of Libertines and maybe that statue of a male bovine on Wall Street.
   Well I couldn't find the wall street bull statue, and the Terrorism Hole is more like "Ye Giant Terr'ism Construction Site" these days, but I did find the statue of the french lady with the funny crown.
   Ate lunch at one may have been a mafia front. A little pizza place right down town that didn't seem to have any business but two old men sitting there reading the newspaper (NOT eating anything, not looking to be in any hurry to go anywhere). When the phone rang one of these guys (and not the guy behind the counter) answered it and I don't know if he was speaking another language but whatever he was saying was utterly incomprehensible to me. Conclusion: mafia front. Pizza wasn't even that good.
   That evening I think we watched more hulu.

Day 4 - Wednesday, May 13th - Our flight is at 7:30pm so we just spend the day hanging out and getting ready.
   We fly out of JFK airport, which is MUCH easier to get to than La Guardia (even has its own tramway connecting it to the subway system). British Airways has complimentary (alcoholic!) drinks and wine with their (totally shitty) inflight meals. I noted that the wine they served happened to be from Frei Ranch, which of course is one of the wineries Stacey's company owns and a place I've been! Silly!
   During the flight I watched Tom Cruise try to blow up Hitler in Valkyrie (Cruise probably thought Hitler was Xenu himself?) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (though the flight ended before it was over, which I thought was kind of ironic). Now it's something like an eight hour flight but we lost three hours due to time change. So we left around 7:30pm and came in just after six in the morning local time... which would have been 3am in New York. AND those bastards decided right at six (LOCAL TIME) that it was time to turn the lights on in the plane even though everyone on board was on NY time and fast asleep. DASTARDLY!

Day 5 - Thursday, May 14th - So we're in Heathrow Airport and Kerri points out that it is now Thursday the 14th, ie, my birthday. I try not to think about it.

   From London we fly into Barcelona. Make our way via train to metro (subway) to our hostel. Check in and dump our packs in our room (we got a private room) and head out to wander around. Rather than sleep all day and then be painfully awake all night we're gonna try to stay awake until an appropriate normal bed time in order to get in sync with Spanish time. Unfortunately in the mean time we're like zombies since we basically went a night without sleep.
   So we stumble over to the nearby Sagrada Familia Cathedral, which, you can tell I was delirious because I didn't even get a picture of (so here's the wikipedia article).
   Wandered around the area after that. Eventually we wandered up into a beautiful park that was nestled on a hillside. Sat awhile by beautiful reflecting pool as it gently drizzled.

   Then I think we wandered back to the hostel and passed out.