phase 2

so...we made it to barcelona. helloBCN. barcelona´s beautiful, but weird---after being totally pampered in the middle of london. hehe.
so, day spent with robert. brine and i lazed around and took our time getting downtown, and yet wanted to fit in some touring before we met robert. so we headed off to camden town, had a total of 30 minutes tops (that was already a stretch) to tour the market...it´s all gothic/punky. pretty cool. but no cash, so no purchases. when we´re back in london, we´re so going back there! (awesome bags, pashmina scarves, clothes, STUFF!)
so we got back on the tube and met up with robert at big ben, then off to the Tower of London. wow! that was a lot of fun. and we got a text in the middle of it that mom had been to the bank and i had to try out my debit card asap so she could either raise hell or go home, depending on whether or not the debit actually worked. well, it worked. so of course i had to spend money to celebrate---off for a pint! we went back into the tower to finish our tour (we really wanted to see the bloody tower...just the torture section---specially fun after a pint---then we could go home)
so we saw that...and then the day wasn´t quite over yet---we were done touring, but the night was still young! so after much deliberation, we headed off to the cheap ticket booth in leicester square and got some cheap tickets for phantom of the opera. (SO tempted to just make brine and robert go see mamma mia---but i HAVE seen it three times. don´t really need to see it a fourth. although...they haven´t seen it yet...and it´s SO worth it...maybe in october when we´re back)
phantom was awesome. even though we only saw about 85% of the stage because of where we were sitting. sigh. but brilliant. home again afterwards (brine and i mastered that train trip that we´d been avoiding. much quicker and less painful than the tube and bus situation, esp at almost midnight) it involves a short walk, which of course was rainy, on the only day that neither of us brought a sweater or jacket along with us...silly. but it smelled good.
so we returned at...11 30? some crazy late hour. no key, so we had to wake up eileen---who had things to tell us anyway, so i guess that was ok...(except for the 5 30 am start she was looking forward to!) so we got some last minute transit instructions, packed up some last minute things, showered, and got a grand total of...2? yeah 2´s about right. 2 hours of sleep...then got up at the unearthly hour of 2 30 am to catch a 3 am bus-taxi-shuttle ride to the airport. crazy. but better than not sleeping at all at the airport. brine of course slept on the plane, while i might have drifted threw a few jack johnson songs, but i´m not sure. then some crazy train trips and metro through barcelona---that train stayed still more than it moved! ew. the tube here is frustrating---because mi espanol es no mui bueno, of course. took us a while to figure it out, between tripping thru the turnstyles at the first station to getting on the wrong train...we got here. and took a walk, did some postcard browsing (they´re coming. soon. if i have your address)

that´s all for now.
barcelona´s a scary part of the trip, because...i don´t know why. it´s entirely different from the comfort zone we´d established in london, so i´m looking forward to experiencing real backpacking, but i miss the comforts of english...:)

ok well...ttyl.