17 of 30 - Spain Trip Pt 5 - Museums

   LAST TIME on the continuing Spain Saga, I went to a monastery and found the Holy Grail. (you know I actually have a photo of it, but posting it would probably be sacrilegious)

Day 10 - Tuesday, May 19th - Kerri and I hopped on the train to the town of Figueres, about an hour north of Barcelona, for to go see the Salvador Dali museum there. It was designed by Dali himself and so the whole museum was kind of crazy. It was neat.

   That's one side of it in the picture above. On the other side it seemed to have statues of women holding baguettes and other such predictably odd things.
   Also in Figueres was "Castell Sant Ferran," which --if local signage is to be believed-- is the largest fortification in Europe. Unfortunately it was closed at the time so we could just gaze at it's immense walls and moats and say "yep, we pretty much can't get in." I also recall that we discussed at length how effective it would be for hiding from the coming zombie uprising.

   That evening a group from the hostel was going out to Club Roxy, which is the club we'd been to with the hostel group previously. The group was of course totally different though since the population of the hostel was constantly turning over. So of course both of us went around trying to get to know everyone as the group made its way through the subways to the destination.
   There was this one lass that at first I was kind of skeptical about even approaching because she seemed kind of withdrawn, but I went ahead and asked where she was from anyway and she turned out to be pretty friendly. She said she was from Istanbul, I said I'll be there in October, and she said we should hang out when I do. These were literally the first three lines exchanged or so. So we exchanged contact information. Subsequently I happened to ask her what her major is "International Relations & Political Science, you?" ("International Relations and Political Science" :D ), and then I noticed that the tips of her hair were faded pink and she was wearing converse, ie she is punkish. Ie, she is the future mother of my children.
   So we talked the whole way to the club and ended up sitting and talking. Then eventually I got up to get another drink, and while I was up some other douchebag stole my spot and started talking to her. Story of my life.
   So I ended up talking to one of the lads from Turkey. Apparently there was a bunch of them. They were studying abroad in Italy and on vacation from there in Spain. He mentioned that they had no idea how they were going to get back to the hostel, but I couldn't think of anything to tell them that would help.
   Presently I became bored with this club. The jackass with long hair was still talking to my girl Damla and I didn't really feel like going down to the dance floor by myself (and the other Turks were all sitting around looking exhausted because they had all come in that day). About an hour previously Kerri had told me she was going to go with some people to a bar down the street called Obama's. I decided I needed a change of scenery and a bar sounded better than a club with no one to dance with, so I headed over there.
   Obama's was a nice little place and Kerri was there with three couples from the hostel. The only one I remember is the couple from Perth, Australia, because I would hang out with them the next night.
   So I hung out at Obama's for an hour or so, but presently I was bored and restless. Furthermore, the Turk saying they didn't know how to get home was haunting me and my strong instincts to be helpful were bugging me (I reckoned I could be of some use as I'd been in Barcelona for a week by now and they had just arrived). So around 2:30 I told Kerri and the others that I was going to go find the Turks.
   I had barely left the bar and gone maybe 50 yards down the street when I spied them wandering around on the other side of the street. I led them to Obama's, where we consulted the others about the best way to get home. They advised us that there were night buses running from a nearby intersection so we struck off in search of that intersection. It was basically a fiasco of an adventure that involved going the wrong way first and then some serious trouble finding the correct night bus to take, so that it was at least an hour before we finally made it back to the hostel. I secretly thought it was kind of fun though. I tried to get one of the turkish lads to teach me Turkish but I didn't remember a thing of it in the morning.


Day 11 - Wednesday, May 19th - All I can remember that we did during the day was go to the museum of the famous abstract artist Joan Milo. That was pretty neat.
   Went out to another club with people from the hostel, had fun.

Photos from this day

17 of 30 - Maps

   Well I've been hanging out all afternoon with amalie_ and her 9 month old son ZOD (well, those are his initials, his first and middle name are Ze'ev Odin). Her husband / ZOD's father is my best friend Aaron, but the Coast Guard said they'd miss him too much if he came up this trip.

   But consequently it is now 11pm and I have an hour to come up with an entry. So I have to choose between my two easy topic ideas of "real life princesses who are hot" or "maps."

   Naturally I have decided to go with maps. So here's a map I drew awhile ago (like a year or two?) of my surrounding area. I'll even put it behind an lj cut

(small version)

( Big version! )

Picture of the Day

From bottling the other day. Which actually reminds me just now that I could blog about that. hmmmm.