Madrid/Barcelona/Nice

It has been three night trains since I last posted... But now I am clean and clothed, in a honest to God villa (it has it's own chapel! Which is now the hostel lounge/bar...) in Nice. So...

Madrid

Night trained it from Porto to Madrid, ran into a Vancouver girl named Laura and we talked and talked in the bar car before crashing into horribly uncomfortable 2nd class seats.

Madrid was an alright time. I spent two days there, checked out the Prada and Sofia art galleries, wandered around Michelle's aptly named "gaybourhood". Bested a load of Americans at their own drinking games. Did anyone else know that Asshole can be a drinking game? I had no idea.

Barcelona

Night trained it from Madrid to Barcelona. This time in 1st class seats. Which are NOT worth the money. They reminded me of Air Canada seats, with the awful headrest that jutts out and forces your chin firmly into your chest. Who ever designed those seats should be flogged. I managed about 3 hours of sleep.

Go to Barcelona and I went to book my Nice train and found out that Eurail trains schedules lie. There is no morning train from Barcelona to Nice. So instead I booked my third night train in five days to get me to Nice, this time in a second class sleeping car. I went to find an internet kiosk so that I could email my hostel that I would not be able to make that night, and ran into Laura. Turns out we were on the same night train from Madrid and didn't know it. Laura and I seem to have a string of weird coincidences that I won't bother going into.

I spent the day wandering Barcelona with Laura and Gordon, a guy she had met in Madrid. Say some Gaudi architecture, and the big Sagrada Familia (most visited construction site in the world), a massive cathedral designed by Gaudi in the late 1800s and is due to be completed in 2020. It is unlike any cathedral I have seen before. It has to be seen, I don't think my poor descriptions would do it justice.

Laura and Gordon caught the night train to Paris, with Laura saying she'll try to meet up with me when I head to Budapest. I got on the train, and the 15 extra euros for the sleeper car was definetly worth it. I slept some of the best sleep I've had in a while.

Nice

I got to Nice, ran into some Irish girls (yay Irish!) who work at the hostel I'm staying at, and they guided me here. It looks like a nice place in Nice (badoom-ching), and I talked to a guy Paul this morning who said it has a great atmosphere. Nice is my break town from the constant travelling and site seeing, I have five days here to just relax and do as little as possible. Paul said that this is definetly a good place for that.

Future Plans

Due to all the time spent of trains in the past week, I've had some down time to consider what my next steps will be. Places that I want to go, but not nessecarily in this order:

• Florence, Italy for two days
• Rome, Italy for three days
• Somewhere in Sicily is a volcanic area that sounded really cool, but I can't remember the name of it just yet. Two days.
• Budapest, Hungary for 3 or 4 days
• Bratislava, Slovakia for 2 days (might try to find the Voytilla name's home, Provac, Slovakia while I'm at it)
• Trencin, Slovakia for a day
• Vienna, Austria for 3 days
• Salzburg, Austria for 2 days
• Prague, Czech Republic for 3 days
• Brno, Czech Republic for 2 days
• Krackow, Poland for 2 days
• Dresden, Germany
• Berlin, Germany
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Brussels, Belgium

And now that I've made the schedule, I can throw it out the window and tell you that I probably won't be doing anything much like what I've just written. In fact, right at this second I am thinking about throwing out Italy all together (it just doesn't interest me, even though I know so many people who love it) and passing through Switzerland to go to Vaduz, Liechtenstein just for the pure freaking novelty of it. In that case, I'd go to Salzburg, Austria and then head east, then north, then west.

But who knows?