(Originally published May 7, 2007)
(Pictured: Me looking like a donk in the FC Barcelona Stadium. I just look SO into it!)So Wednesday rolls around in the lovely city of Paris and after a national holiday on a Tuesday in the middle of the week (cause that´s how Frenchies roll) it was time to get back on the tourist trail. Today we hit up a couple of those things you gotta do in Paris, even if you don´t want to, as we headed to the Louvre art museum and Notre Dame. I´ve been to both of these places about ten years ago, and they bored me to tears then and they still do now, but hey you gotta take some for Team Tourism. We also did the whole Arc de Triomphe and Avenue Des Champs-Elysees. All over Paris there´s mad gypsies everywhere trying to hustle cash off you by asking you if you speak English. So as we´re standing by the Arc talking to these stupid-as-fuck American girls, and this gypsy catches us speaking English. She argues with me about whether or not I´m speaking English, when Slim blurts out, "gypsy give me your tears". The gypsy then says, "no, you are the gypsy", and proceeds to pull Slim´s hair. Good times all around. That night I went out to watch some soccer with our new roommate Anne who was from Toronto and happened to have the same girls´ backpack as me. Hey, it happens. Later we all hooked up with some drunk-as-fuck dude from Calgary and some German sounding American who claims he was born in America and proceeded to indulge in some more alcoholic beverages.
Thrusday I slept in and had my first official day of doing nothing. Me and Super Slim split up for the day and I basically just walked around Paris and got lost. I made it home pretty early and then decided to do some reading and drink some tallboys. Then Anne our roommate came back and it was time for her and I to have a red wine party. Slim came back and was pretty sure we were both a couple of hammer cases. Then our new roommate showed up. He was some recent university graduate from California who thought we spoke French in Toronto and thought it was cold 24/7/365 in Canada. We polished off a couple of bottles of red wine before we went to back to the Wall where I was basically now best friends with the bartender. Anne didn´t like the fact that the bartender brought over Slim´s beer before hers, but I told her that we were their best clients EVER!
Friday morning it was time to leave Paris. We got on a train to Bayeux in the Normandy region of France. We were heading up there to do a tour of various D-Day sites relating to Canada´s/Allied Forces most notorious/famed mission during World War II. We did about a five hour tour with six or seven other Canadians. It was an amazing tour. Really makes you appreciate what those men and women did for our country and the world. Don´t ever forget that if it wasn´t for those brave soldiers we might all be speaking German right now. Schiza! (
Saturday was basically just a ridiculous travel day. We woke up early and caught a two-and-a-half train back into Paris. From there we took an eight hour ride to Barcelona, Spain, where we got in around 10 pm. By the time we found our hotel it was after 11 so we just stayed in and drank some beers and played some crazy eight countdown.
Sunday we had to switch to another hostel in Barcelona because we didn´t really plan anything too well and ended up staying in three different places in three nights in Barcelona. So after relocating from the hotel back to the more familiar grounds of a hostel, we decided to hit up the town. We checked out Las Ramblas (famous street with performers and shops), the Barcelona Aquarium (very cool, featured on the Amazing Race, and also the largest aquarium in Europe), and some other famous buildings and shit. Barcelona is definately a whole different vibe then Paris, everyone seems more laidback, although a lot of the tourist stuff is kinda shiot and boring. We went back to our hostel that night to find we had been shacked up with some stupid Americans (recurring theme here) who didn´t even know what Toronto was. They were some dumb hick girls from Northern California so me and SlimJim just chilled and watched some TV and dranks some brews.
Today, we decided to go check out Picasso´s museum, which is the busiest museum in Barcelona. But low and behold it was closed on all "working Monday´s" so we then promptly headed to the Chocolate History Museum. There, I learned all about why I love Crunchie bars so much and chocolate milkshakes. They had a ton of crazy stuff built out of chocolate, like a gigantic Chicken Little and Ronaldinho (soccer player for all you Bradford non-Portuguese people) just to name a couple. After, keeping in the spirit of soccer, we decided to head over to the FC Barcelona stadium and to do the tour. This is one of the most storied sites in all of sports and the tour and subsequent museum are a definite must even for the most casual of sports fans (seats over 120,000 people with 90,000 season ticket holders). Well, tomorrow we are off to Madrid for a few days, but not before we have one solid-as-fuck party night in Barcelona.
Stay classy B-Dot!
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