Trapped in France

We have a lot to catch all you avid readers up on.

Beginning where we left off...the morning after the Irish Rock Cafe we had to check out of our hostel around 10am. Our plan was to take a night train to Geneva Friday night and then on Saturday morning continue on to Bern. The hostel was pretty nice and let us keep our stuff there all day, so we went to the train station thinking we would get our tickets, go around Barcelona for the day sightseeing and then catch the train at night. Wrongggggg. We got to the train station and literally waited in the same two lines about 5 times each. Apparently the timetable we had was wrong and there was no night train to Geneva, although they told us yes and no back and forth multiple times. All in all we spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out how the hell to get out of Barcelona, and came to the conclusion that we had to stay another night. We finally decided to take the 845 am train to Geneva the next day, by way of Montpellier (probably our most hated place on the earth). Problem was, we had nowhere to stay because our hostel was booked. We finally got out of the train station and did a bit of sightseeing- we saw Sagrada Familia, Park Guell which was awesome and some other stuff. Then we went to a restaurant near our hostel, had a really shitty hamburguesa and frankfurt with no buns or cheese like we asked, and then went back to our hostel to try to find somewhere for the night.

There was literally one place open in all of Barcelona, so we booked it and took the metro over there. It was a hike from the metro station and because we are pussies we had to take like 5 breaks on the way. We got there and it was pretty nice and really big-- we were in a room with all these girls from Buffalo and Florida that were really funny so that was good. Although we knew we had an early train, we couldn't not go out on a Friday night in Barcelona. So we took a nap, showered (ps. katie slipped on the floor and fell coming out of the shower and her towel completely dropped off so she was basically lying naked on the floor in front of all these strange girls, so that was not sweet), and went out to the gothic quarter. We went to this bar and met 5 british dudes that were nice, and we went around with them the rest of the night...Carla then became part of a bachelor party while Katie was lost on the street for a long time. We were both very scared that we would never find each other again, but we did so yay. We somehow got a cab home (no idea how) at around 4 or 5am, by the grace of god happened to wake up at 7 and pack our shit (but katie left her towel there so that sucks) and make it to the train station on time.

Now begins our hellish day of travel. We slept the whole 4 hour train ride to Montpellier in southern France, and were supposed to switch trains there to Geneva. The ticket man in Barca told us that there would be no problem-we just had to go to the counter and get our ticket from Montpellier to Geneva. Nope, didn't happen. We got this bitch who told us it was full (although we suspect it wasn't)....and it was almost as if she was gleaming with delight that we couldn't get on it. She told us with a huge grin on her face that the only other train out of Montpellier was to Paris, but we had already missed the connection. Luckily we are smarter than that slut and consulted our handy timetable and realized that there was a train leaving in an hour for NICE. We had originally planned to go there, but liar number 2 aka weather.com told us that it would be raining all weekend so we had bagged that. But now, back to Nice. So we got our tickets and went and stood on the platform for about 30 minutes. We were about to get on board when Katie noticed that everyone else had seat assignments and we didn't, so we asked the station dude why and he was like "oh no! you are on platform C, not A!" Meanwhile, our train was arriving on platform C. So we ran our asses off with our huge backpacks and made it just in time to hop on our train to Nice, via Marseille.

We finally arrived in Nice at around 830...and it is sooooooo pretty. We got out of the train station, went to an internet cafe and booked a hostel called Villa Saint Exupery aka a Little Prince themed hostel way the fuck up on this hill outside of the center of city. We didn't know how to get there, so the website told us to take the tram to the "casino supermarket", then call a number and a white or silver van would come pick us up. How sketchy does that sound...but we had no other option. It turned out to be awesome...this hot dude from New Zealand picked us up, and took us to this place that was really big, really nice, had 1 euro beers and really good food, and tons of people. We took showers really quickly and went out with like 30 people from our hostel and some of the staff. We don't know where we went but we went to some bar with a band that played semi-ok covers of American rock songs (Jess- they played Green Day and we thought of you!!) and then some small "club" where beers were like 8 euros each which was really not sweet. We took a cab back with some staff dude at like 3am and had to wake up this morning and be out of our rooms by 10 which was pretty painful.

Important sidenote: there is a "girl" that stayed in our room that is DEFINITELY a dude. We were at reception and we heard this shman talking and we thought it was a boy and then we looked and they had long hair and makeup on. Then we were up in our room and he/she was in there too....and definitely looked like a boy or a person in some sort of sex transition. Further evidence of our theory included the presence of male shower gel in our shower which was in a room of all girls (besides the imposter) and an adams apple of questionable size. We will never know, but it was sick.

Now we are sitting in an internet cafe, about to go to the beach (we think), after just eating a delightful meal from a place called Asia Fast Food. We just booked a night train (with beds and everything!!) to Venice, so we leave tonight at 10pm and get into Venice at around 730 tomorrow morning. Right now our plan is to spend the morning-mid day in Venice and then take an afternoon train to Salzburg in Austria. However judging by past events, that could clearly change so we'll keep you guys posted.

Hope all is well at home...we miss you guys! byebye