Pamplona & Barcelona: June 16th and 17th, 2007

Pamplona was a really cool city. I got to see where they do the running of the bulls, and the place where they have the bullfights. A couple of us walked into where they have the bullfights, and some guy jumped onto a forklift and chased us back out into the street and then started yelling at us - we had no idea what he was saying though. Met up with Sarah and her group and we spent the next hour or so just walking around the back streets doing some shopping for people. Then we met up with the group, boarded the bus and drove another 4 or 5 hours to Barcelona.

Barcelona was a very interesting city to say the least. The first night we got there Real Madrid and Barcelona were playing for the Spanish league cup (Those are Spanish soccer teams for those of you who don´t know much about European soccer), so we weren´t allowed to leave the hotel because rumors were spread that if Barcelona lost than there´d be a riot. The next day we toured around the city for a couple of hours, and then we were allowed out on our own to walk around and shop. That was fun, and I got to see alot of the downtown area, which was really pretty.

That night I decided to go bar hopping with some friend since I hadn´t gone out in the last few night (I was feeling sick, remember?). We hit up an Irish pub where I had a Guinness, and then we walked around looking for other places. We found a few, but they were all really expensive. Some of the group decided to go back early, so they took a cab, but I decided to stay out a little longer. Those of us who stayed went back to the Irish pub for about another hour, and then one of my roomates and I decided to take a taxi back to the hotel.

Ok, this is where the story gets really really funny- assuming you have a very childish sense of humor. As my roomate and I were walking up Las Ramblas (one of the main shopping\bar streets) some woman came up and grabbed me and asked me if I´d like to pay her for sex. Now, I´ve never even talked to a hooker, much less had one come up and grab me, so I was in complete shock. The only thing I could get out of my mouth was "hell no", and I freed myself from her and continued walking. As my roomate and I were walking down the street we had 2 more hookers proposition us, another one try to grab my roomates butt, and then a male prostitute proposition us. All of this happened in about 5 minutes, so once we got a cab we told him to floor it and get us to the hotel in a hurry.

The ride home was fun. The driver was pretty cool, and he was speeding and doing all sorts of maneuvers you´d see a NASCAR driver do. We were weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off, etc - like I said in one of my last posts, Spanish drivers are insanely crazy. It was alot of fun though. He got us there at the rate of 21€, and we ran to our hotel rooms and went to sleep.

The next morning we left for Valencia, which you read about the other day.