Now what?!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , Tuesday, July 20, 2010 3:23 PM

So, we didn't end up going to Pamplona. Instead we woke up late, since we didn't get to bed until pretty late the...well...that morning really. Once we woke up we headed to the next hostel that we were staying out while in Barcelona. (Yes, this will be the 3rd place in well...4 days) Once we dropped our stuff off, we headed to the beach of course!!


We had gotten pretty bad sunburns the first day on the beach so we rented an umbrella and some chairs, GREAT use of our money. We fell asleep for a while and got in the water for a little bit. Apparently Barcelona is pickpocket and theft central, so everyone kept telling us to sleep on our purses so no one can take them. The first day on the beach, there was a group of girls next to us and they all fell asleep. While they were sleeping someone tried to take one of the girl's bags!! Some nice beach-goers started yelling "Ladron!!" and the guy walked away without the purse! It was nuts!!! So after that we were super cautious about where our stuff was at all times!!

Later that day we ended up getting some doner kebabs. This was my first experience with them and they were DELICIOUS!!! They were so delicious that I ended up with most of it on my pants....haha. Since we weren't going to go back to the hostel before we were going out that night, I decided to buy a skirt at a little market on the way to the bar. We watched the Germany vs. Uruguay game at the bar we had now claimed as our own. It was the bar we had been to the last two nights. We ended up meeting these two nice guys from Austria who were there on business/fun.

Germany beat Uruguay but just barely!! We hung out with the guys from Austria for a little while longer. We ended up going to the beach but didn't get in the water...no worries.

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BEACH DAY!!!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 2:58 PM

The next morning, July 8th, we woke up and headed straight to the beach. It took us a little while to get there. We obviously knew where the sea was but it was a little tricky getting there because the Marina was in the way. :) After I asked the police officers how to get to the beach, we were there in no time!

We found a nice quiet place next to some students who ended up being from Michigan State. We laid out our towels and fell asleep. It was nice not having to walk around all day long!! When we woke up, to our astonishment there was a big group of guys that had set up camp right in front of us on the beach. They were a very loud group of guys from somewhere in England. After a while we started talking to the guys and found out they were from Liverpool! They were there on a long weekend get away for their friend's "stag weekend". Essentially they were there on a glorified bachelor's party.

The beach was a GREAT idea! We got to relax and get in the water, which was actually pretty cold. One annoying thing was all the people trying to sell stuff on the beach. You couldn't go more than 10 seconds without someone coming up asking if you wanted a henna tattoo, wrap around dresses, 5euro massages, beer or pretty much anything else you might want/need. We just learned to ignore them. It was interesting though because apparently it is illegal for people to be selling things/services on the beach the way they were doing, so anytime a police officer was in the area, all the vendors would lay down or stop what they were doing and try to blend in!! I did see some Police Officers take some of the vendors away.

After a long day on the beach we went back to the hostel and got ready for the night. At the hostel I met a girl that was sharing our room. Her name was Tina, she was from Germany. She had just gotten into town and didn't know anyone and had to plans for the night. I invited her to come out with us for whatever we ended up doing. We finally headed out and stopped at a restaurant to get some drinks. They were incredibly overpriced but I guess that's what we get for getting HUGE drinks. Late that night we ended up meeting up with the guys from Liverpool.

The next morning, Juliana and I had to catch our bus to Pamplona around 7:30am. So we thought it would be a good idea to just stay up all night so we could sleep on the 7 hour bus ride! So...that's what we did. We stayed up with the guys going from one place to another until about 6am. That's when we decided to go to the hostel pack up and head to the bus station. We end up running into those guys again before we leave our hostel. We make it to the bus station around 7am. We thought it was enough time to get on the bus. Due to things that happened and other circumstances we ended up NOT making the bus to Pamplona.

So now we were NOT going to Pamplona and are stranded at the bus station without a place to stay. At this point it was probably 7:45am and we still hadn't gone to bed...so sleep deprivation was about to set in. After a little while I decided to call the Hilton. I thought we deserved a good day/night's rest on a nice bed. Around 9am we get to the Hilton and check in early, thank goodness a room was ready!!

We went STRAIGHT to sleep! We woke up around 2:30pm and decided it was time to make something of ourselves for the day. We ended up getting ready and heading back down to La Rambla. Of course, later that night we met up with our new friends from Liverpool! Funny thing is, we actually ran into our friend Tina as well!! We stayed out way to late again but it was well worth it!! We got back to the hotel around 6am. :)

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BARCELONA!!!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 2:32 PM

(I ended up spending an entire week in Barcelona so I'll break this up into a few different posts.)


We got to Barcelona pretty early in the day. We went to our hostel and left our stuff there and then headed out on the town! As we were heading to the sites, I got an email from Matt and Hunter, our friends from Rome. We were planning on going to Pamplona together in a couple of days. They told us they were getting their train tickets and that we should probably get to the train station and get ours too. So we head over there and bump into them. It was fun to see faces we knew, even if we didn't really know them all that well. :) It felt like we were all old friends reuniting after a very long time apart! :) Well we realized that the train tickets were going to be pretty pricey!! So we found an alternative form of transportation...the bus! The bus roundtrip was going to cost about 40 euro. I knew I had to pay that...I have been wanting to go to Pamplona foreverso I forked out the cash. The bus ride was going to be 7 hours long!!! But oh well, I have always wanted to go to the running of the bulls and now was my chance!!

After we got our bus tickets, we headed straight out to see the sites. We started by taking the metro straight to La Sagrada Familia. That is an amazing Cathedral. It's crazy to think it's been in the process of being built for so many years and that it's not expected to be done until at least 2026. We decided against going inside mainly because it would cost 10euro each and I had friends who went earlier this summer and said because of all the construction on the inside, it wasn't really worth it.

After La Sagrada Familia we headed out to different parts of Barcelona. We ended up walking from La Sagrada Familia back to our hostel which was on La Rambla. It was actually a pretty long walk but it was alright. We got to see the other token Gaudi buildings on the way back to La Rambla. It turned out to be a fun and eventful day.

That night we found a small little pub to watch the football match. Spain played Germany! We found ourselves in this little pub surrounded by Germans!! haha The other half of the bar was filled with Spaniards. It was a very intense match the Germans were very patriotic and supportive of their team. Luckily for us, SPAIN WON!!!! About 5 minutes after Spain won everyone poured into the streets!! There were hundreds of people celebrating!! People were throwing water from the balconies onto the people in the streets!! It was by far one of the craziest things I had ever seen!! We felt very lucky that we were able to be in Spain for such a huge win!!

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DISNEYLAND!!!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 2:04 PM

Finally! A day we could just be kids again!!! We woke up relatively early and headed out to Disneyland!! Luckily there is a train that will take you straight to Disneyland which was about an hour outside of Paris.


We get there and decide to get the
Park hopper pass which was going to run us about 65euro. Luckily, Jules and I had our ISIC card!! That thing really did come in handy!!
Since we were students, we got the park hopper for 43euro or something like that! It saved us a nice amount of money!

Jules really was like a little kid in a candy store. She was almost as excited about Disneyland and she was about the Louvre, now that's saying something because she's an Art major!! :) The first stop was the Tower of Terror!! I have never been on the Tower of Terror, or at least I can't remember ever being on the Tower of Terror. It was interesting having everything explained in French! We met some really nice people in line for the rides, including these students from Kenya.

We got to ride a lot of the rides like Tower of Terror, Space Mountain and other rides there. Jules kept trying to find a turkey leg to eat but no such luck in Paris. We stuck to the "American Diner" where I ate a big hot dog drenched in processed cheese and Jules ate a chef's salad sort of thing from a box. Not the best meal we've had in Europe but what do you expect, it's an amusement park!!

After a long day of hanging out in the park, we headed out to Beauvais. Beauvais is a small little country town about an hour outside of Paris. The airport we were flying out of was in Beauvais, that's what you get for flying cheap airlines like Ryanair, the airports are usually a little bit outside of the major cities. That is NOT a huge deal when you get a ticket from Rome to Paris for less than $25!

Anyways, once we got to Beauvais we got picked up by the owners of the little bed and breakfast we were going to stay at. The bed and breakfast was VERY quaint. We wished we could've stayed there for more than just that night. We loved the little country village. Of course we watched the football match that was on. The Netherlands were playing Uruguay. The Netherlands won! During halftime, Jules and I walked around the small little village. It was an ADORABLE little place.

We went to bed relatively early and then woke up early to catch our flight to Barcelona. We were sad to leave Paris, we had fallen in love with Paris and the people really. But we were very excited to get to Spain, after all Spain had made it to the Semi-finals!!!

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Paris Day 2!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 1:47 PM


On July 5th, Jules and I got up early and headed out to Paris! We started by trying to figure out how to get to the Eiffel Tower. We went a very round about way. We finally made it to the Eiffel Tower after passing a random statue of George Washington. The Eiffel Tower was PACKED!! The lines to go up were very long and the prices were not that cheap either. We decided to finish eating the bread and cheese we bought earlier that day. It was pretty cool to see all the sites and see the famous Eiffel Tower.


After a little while, we headed down to
Napoleon's tomb. That was pretty cool as well. On the way there we saw cool sites that we weren't necessarily
planning on seeing but got to see anyways. We finally ended up at the end of the Champs Elysees. We walked down and went into some of the posh shops along the way. Finally, at the end of the road we made it to the Arc de Triomphe. It was really cool to be able to see these amazing structures!! Afterwards we headed back towards the Louvre, not before we got some gelato.

We found a lovely park at the entrance of the Louvre. We sat and relaxed for a bit. Ross ended up meeting up with us later that night. There was a sort of carn
ival going on right next to the park near the Louvre. We walked around there for a little while and Jules got a nutella crepe! It was pretty delicious! The night before we had a "salty" crepe with egg, cheese and ham. That was pretty delicious as well.

After a night of walking around Paris and hanging out with Ross, we headed back to the hostel. I was dead tired so I headed to bed. The next morning was a BIG day for us! It was the day we spent a lot of money on something other than flights and hostels....we went to DISNEYLAND!!! :)

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Paris!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 1:13 PM

On July 4th, we woke up a bit late but headed straight to church once we woke up. We made it in time for most of Sunday school and sacrament. After Sunday school we met some guys in the ward who were from Utah actually but were in Paris for different reasons. It was funny because as we were walking to Sacrament, we all ran into someone we knew! Juliana ran into a friend from BYU who she also ran into in Singapore last summer. The guys ran into people they knew and I ran into Kate Lund! She was a friend from BYU who is serving a mission in Paris. Sacrament meeting was wonderful! There were tons of people from the States there, there was even a big group of students from BYU on a study abroad. They actually broadcast Sacrament meeting into another room so it could be translated into English!


After church, we decided we needed to do something to celebrate Independence Day!! We ended up walking to a shopping center with Chad and Ross and ate at Quick Burger. We were going to go to McDonald's but that was a bit to cliche. Quick Burger is a fast food burger place in France, it was actually pretty good! After we celebrated by eating a burger...we went to Ross's place for a bit. Since it was the first Sunday all the museums were FREE for EVERYONE!!!

So, Jules, Chad and I went to the Louvre. It is an amazing museum with beautiful artwork. We were very lucky to be able to get in for free! We walked around for a while and saw some key pieces of art like the Mona Lisa, and the Aphrodite and the Venus. After a while we decided to head back towards the Notre Dame Cathedral. We wanted to make it in time for a concert that was going on that night. We showed up in time for Mass. We sat through mass, an interesting experience for us. It was my first mass in French so it was a bit confusing for me but I kind of understood what was happening since I've been to quite a few masses in Spanish.

It was cool to be able to go to Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral, not going to lie. After Mass we ended up going back to Chad's dorm to figure out where we were going to stay the next few days in Paris!! I know, we planned really late but that was half the fun!! :)

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We visited the Pope!

Posted by Where in the world is Rachel... , 7:15 AM

On July 3rd, we woke up early and headed out to the Vatican. We went with Hunter and Matt, the guys from the hostel that we met the other day.


There are certain rules you have to follow when going into St. Peter's, such as
no shorts and long enough skirts. We were all wearing pants except Juliana who was wearing a more than modest skirt. Apparently, the modesty guards didn't think her skirt wasn't long enough. They made he keep pulling down her skirt, it was pretty ridiculous actually. After fighting with the guards for a while we finally made it into St. Peters.

St. Peters was an amazing location.
I couldn't believe all the detail and the beautiful art work there. We spent quite a bit of time just walking around and looking at all the amazing things present. After we were done there we headed over to the Sistine Chapel. Thankfully Jules and I had our ISIC cards, which got us discounts into the museum!! :)

The museum was very clever because we all had to go through pretty much ever part of the museum before we ended up in the Sistine Chapel. It was alright though because there was some incredible pieces in the museums. Once we arrived at the Sistine Chapel, it was PACKED and there were tons of guards who kept "Sssshhh!!" everyone and demanding silence. The Sistine Chapel is actually pretty small and there were hundreds of people in there, there is no way we are all going to be dead silent. That part was kind of annoying but what are you going to do. We got to see Michelangelo's Creation of Adam and all the work on the ceiling and walls. It was incredible having the opportunity to be there and see the amazing work that has been done.

After admiring the artwork for a while, we all decided we were starving. We walked away from the Vatican and found a nice little restaurant and decided to have a nice sit down meal. We all got some form of pasta of course! It was a delicious last meal in Italy.

After lunch me and Jules left the boys and headed to the airport. We had arranged to meet the guys in Pamplona for the running of the bulls on July 9th. That night we ended up in Paris!! We got there and had a hard time finding our hotel but after figuring out the metro a bit and then getting a cab, we finally made it to our hotel!!! :)

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