Nice and Barcelona

Nice turned out to be pretty great. If you were waiting for me to say Nice was nice, I am sorry to dissapoint you. I´m going to warn you now: Nice doesn´t exactly scream ¨culture¨. In fact, it screams party. So the cultural experiences have (for the most part) been put on hold until I depart from the French Riviera. I think you will all understand.

Shortly after writing that last post I met a family of five from North Carolina who were (and still are) traveling all over Europe. I ended up having dinner with them and the guys from Colorado that night. As you can see, pasta seems to be the standard for traveling backpackers.

A lot of people go down to the beach at night to, well, drink as well as enjoy the night. There was a guy who wheeled a piano out from his house and played classical music for about three hours every night. He was a genius. I asked him to play some Chopin and not only did be oblige, but he obliged with my favorite song.

While sitting on the beach you could look out over the Mediteranean Sea and gaze at the bright orange moon reflecting off the water. The beach was also full of fire eaters and other performers, so it just added to the already fantastic ambience of a lit up beach town at night.

I stumbled across some very cool people on the beach including a guy named Osan from Turkey who had an affinity for Americans and a guy named Patrick who lives in Italy. Patrick volunteered to show me a good time when I arrive in Naples on the 8th so I have decided to definately take him up on that. I was also lucky enough to meet two Italian girls (especially the one on the left) who Osan and I skipped around town with for the rest of the night.

The next day was a pretty peaceful day. I went out with the Swiss Family Robinson (as the other people called them in the hostel) and Osan to the beach where I ran into the Italian girls again and was invariably given the cold shoulder (but I´ve heard that´s the norm with Italian girls so I´m not too bothered).

That night we went out to the beach again with the group, plus two guys from Finland and a guy from California. The piano guy was back, and this time he was playing some improv jazz with a guy he had apparently met that night. And just when I thought a night couldn´t get much better, fireworks appeared out of no where and went off for about ten minutes. You can´t ask for much more.

The next day me and the family went to Cannes. We were actually planning on going to Monaco, but we got on the train going the opposite direction and we decided it wasn´t that bad off an alternative. If you remember, there is a film festival there each year and a lot of famous people make their way there for the event. The beach was sandy (which you would think would be a plus) but it was a dirty kind of sand that left a dusty residue on your skin. The view was nice, though.

That night I once again had to say goodbye to all my new friends and got on a night train to Barcelona. Leaving these people has been the hardest part. You spend all this time getting to know people and having fun with them and you ultimately end up leaving them to start all over again in a strange place. It can be hard, but just when you think you´ll never meet people that great again for the rest of your trip, you meet new people that are just as great in completely different ways. It does wonders for your social skills.

Unfortunately, the train from Nice made a stop about every twenty minutes so it made sleeping impossible. Needless to say, I arrived in Spain grumpy. But grumpiness has a habit of disspearing when you make about ten new friends in less than two hours, so the day turned out to be pretty good. The hostel here is really comfy. It´s actually a house that they just let people stay in and you pretty much take care of yourself. That night I met two people from Toronto, two girls from Arizona, a couple from Australia and a couple from Croatia. We all had dinner and then headed out around town for the rest of the night.

The next day I went off on my own and explored the town. It´s quite different than Paris here. It´s much more new and commercial. The art, along with the city, is very bright and optimistic. It´s a very nice place but it does lack a bit of culture when compared with Paris and London. People always say that Paris and London is dirty, but I think Barcelona is much more dirty. None of their fountains work and it makes all of the water in the parks green. The sewer gasses also have a nasty habit of creeping up and smacking you in the face every two minutes when you walk down the street, too. That rarely happened in Paris. So anyways, I ended up in a museum that housed the collection of traveling oddities a man named Frederic Marès collected over fifty years of travel. His collections included everything from ancient religous art to pocketwatches and cigar wrappers. I have a feeling Mom-Mom would really like this musuem full of collectable trinkets and antiques.

Every big city has a tourist strip, and the Las Rambles is the Champs de Elysees of Barcelona. It has enough street performers, tourist traps, mediocre artists, overpriced restuarant, pickpockets and just the plain odd to satisfy anyone´s desires.

Today I checked out the beach and the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. Gaudí pretty much put Barcelona on the artistic map, and one can see why. His buildings are unmistakable. The Gothic Quarter is basically a maze full of very narrow streets and very eager merchants. The beach in Barcelona has so far followed the pattern of the previous Mediteranean beaches I´ve been to: Full of beautiful women who just happen to be topless. (You were hoping for something to click on weren´t you?)Even the boardwalk is full of art.

Tomorrow I am off to the Picasso museum, as well as the cathedral and the park that Gaudí designed. As of right now the cathedral is set to be completed in 2025, so it´s pretty spectacular from what I have heard.

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