New Years Eve

I woke up that morning with plans to walk around the city with a girl named Kristen from Oregon that I had met the night before in the hostel. She and I really got along great right from the start. She's convinced we think similarly but I'm still not sure if it's just that she is so easygoing that it's tough for anyone to not like being around her.

Before we headed out we found Krista, a girl from Australia lurking around in the hostel and somehow convinced her that she would have a fun time checking out Park Guell with us. So the 3 of us headed out.

Park Guell is a free public park which has works of Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect from the 19th and 20th centuries. I'll tell you more about him later but at this park we found architecture that reminded me of the movie Alice in Wonderland.

We took quite a few pictures that day that I will attempt to share later.

I had to leave them at 2pm because I needed to buy tickets to the nightclub that night and to get to my haircut. The girls moved forward to visit Sagrada Familia, a church that was worked on by Gaudi as well. I had already seen part of it the day before and I was planning on seeing it again when Renee came to visit so I didn't worry about it at all.

I did some socializing with people in the hostel after my haircut. I escorted Krista and a guy named Eugene (that I had just met) to the music store so that she could purchase her ticket (she changed her mind :) ). I took a 2 hour nap after that so that I could last the night. Rohit, a guy from Texas that was like my long lost cousin, Eugene, and I went to a Punjabi fast food place nearby to pick up a quick bite, beef durums. Basically kebab sandwiches with another name but wrapped like burritos. They were excellent.

Soon after that it was time for all of us in the hostel to go downstairs and start drinking together. I had opened a bottle of wine myself. We hung out as a group of 20+ people until right before midnight when the hostel owner Marina brought out bottles of champagne and we passed it around to everyone. She brought out canned grapes with 12 in each pack and then at 12 seconds before midnight we started swallowing one per second for good luck during the new year, timing each one with the countdown on tv.

One grape for each month. That's the Spanish belief. I would have preferred throwing them at people but it would have made too much mess indoors.

After that of course the champagne toast, and just tons of pictures and more socializing. Around 1am we started forming the group that was planning to go clubbing and by around 2am we were finally out the door. The subway was going to be running all night so we used it to get there.

Clubbing went on until 6am when the club was closing. I was walking around the 5 floors of Razzmatazz getting lost a couple of times and recognizing people a couple of times. I had let a couple of girls, Jenna and Sam from Missouri, check in my jacket when we got in, but then didn't see them with Eugene until the very end of the night. I had already given up on getting my jacket back because I couldn't find them all evening, so that was a good thing.

I got home at 7am. I drank water quietly until 8am when Marina offered me breakfast early with Eugene. After having breakfast with Jenna and a guy I'd never met before that liked to debate with Jenna, I went to bed and ended my night at 9:30am.

Jenna had gone up to bed when she came into the hostel but ran down to the kitchen about 30 minutes later claiming that she was extremely hungry and needed breakfast. That scene was good for a serious laugh.

3 hours later I woke up and went out to the beach in the Barceloneta area with the same people.