Eurotrip Day 5 – Paris/Barcelona

Happy Birthday Vero!

We awoke pretty groggy after an amazing night involving Moulin Rouge.  We slept in a few hours later than we expected, but it was of no matter…all we wanted to do was go to the Cimétaire Pere Lachaise for a bit and then hit the road.

After cleaning up the apartment and packing our stuff, we hit the road, stopping by a bakery for some sustenance and found ourselves at the cemetary.

I had gone to the cemetary before and it was one of the highlights in my trip.  I love cemetaries (morbid?) and I sure love this particular cemetary.  It is unlike anything I’ve seen before with their crypts and statues.  I think my previous trip was a little more fun as it was a dreary day with some drizzle, ambience and crows all over the place.  Today was a bright sunny day, but it didn’t stop Vero loving the place as well.

Vero doing her serious pose.

She ended up visiting the grave of Moliere who is basically the French equivalent of Shakespeare.  We also saw the graves of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison (he lives!).  I was disappointed to see quite a bit of vandalism on Oscar Wilde’s gravesite compared to the last time.  However, maybe my memory is playing tricks on me and it was the same amount the last time around.

Part of the graffiti.

Vero excited for her two crepes from Paris!

After the cemetary, we found a creperie which was the last thing on Vero’s list for Paris.  Her eyes were bigger than her belly as she ordered TWO crepes with nutella.  She is nuts for nutella.  We are carrying a jar of it on our travels.  I can’t stand the stuff.  Ugh…chocolate spread.  On the metro ride home, she was  begging me to finish the other crepe but I would have no part in her gluttony!

Loaded with our packs, we headed to le Gare de Lyon, and waited a bit.  I love how the stations are wide open so pigeons end up walking up next to you.  Trish would hate Paris.  Or many other stations in Europe for that matter!

This was our first ride on the train and it was fantastic.  The TGV is a pretty wild ride…I think I saw it reaching speeds of over 200km/hr.  After writing some postcards, I played some Plants vs. Zombies and then had a snooze.  Then I heard an announcement that the bar car was open and I begged Vero to go so I could get some food.  🙂  While we were walking to the bar car, the train swerved from something (wind?) and I nearly stumbled right into someone’s lap.  Vero had a grand laugh.  We picked up some supper with a beer, and ate it back at our seats.

Good eats on the TGV.

I must admit that the scenery was quite lovely…France is quite nice when you get out of Paris.  However, I noticed that a lot of fields looked like they had been tilled awhile ago.  Turns out that it’s been a hot summer so a lot of the crops have been handled already.

We switched trains at the Spanish border and laughed at how on the temperature gauge it showed that the temperature was rising every ten minutes by a degree.  So we left a 20 degree Paris and ended up in 30 degree Barcelona with our jackets and jeans.  Ugh.  BOILING HOT.  This was also 10:45 at night!  I could tell that Barcelona was going to be amazing.

We hopped on the metro fairly easily and heard a myriad number of languages.  Turns out that Barcelona is one of the tourist hotspots of the world, so it’s very easy to get around because many locals know a few languages to speak to you with.

Vero and I got off our metro stop and it turns out that we came about a crowd taking pictures of an interesting building which was created by the architect Gaudi.  It looks like a dinosaur.  His stuff was quite out of the ordinary.

We found the apartment and were excited to see Carrie for the first time in a year.  We rang the buzzer.  No answer.  We rang again.  No answer.  Oh man, what was going on?

 

I am a lot happier after seeing Carrie and a six back of Spanish beer!

After an hour of trying to figure out if we had the wrong address, trying to find a wifi signal, finally getting inside the building when someone exited, Vero going to the attic apartments and yelling out “Carrie!”, there was nothing else we could do.  It just so happened that an hour after us waiting, I am waiting inside the lobby and I hear someone coming down the stairs and they stop when they reach me.  “Well, fancy meeting you here.” I hear (or something to that effect).  Sure enough, it was Carrie who was in the attic apartment all along texting Katie wondering where the heck we could be!  Guess the buzzer doesn’t work at all!  We were relieved, she was relieved, and everyone hauled into the rickety old elevator (which halted a few times due to my bag accidentally hitting the emergency stop button!), went to our swank apartment, had a few beer and hit the hay.  We were glad to be able to chat with Carrie for a few hours before the onslaught which is Barcelona hit us!