Strasbourg to Barcelona

On Sunday, February 15th, Jeff and I continued our trip around Europe. Thanks to the help of Heather, Hans, and others the night before, we were able to successfully navigate the train station and get on a train to Baden-Baden. Due to the way the train schedules worked out, we got there really early, and ended up spending a couple hours in a cute coffee shop in the station, which happened to have free internet. (Jeff and I took advantage of the downtime to book tickets to Peru, a trip we have been planning for a while but hadn’t had a chance to finalize. We’re headed there March 13-22).
Eventually we caught the bus to the tiny Karlsberg-Baden Airpark, where we caught our Ryanair flight to Barcelona. Our plan was to fly to Barcelona and drive back to Strasbourg, and interestingly, since Ryanair is so cheap, and gas in Europe is so expensive, the flight was actually the cheaper part of that trip.

We arrive in Barcelona-Girona Airport, which isn’t really in Barcelona at all – it’s just Girona, which is an hour north of Barcelona. Luckily, I was already aware of Ryanair’s tricky labeling, so there was no surprise. Pol, our friend from the summer who lives in Barcelona, was there to pick us up.

Back at Pol’s house we had lunch almost immediately. His grandma had cooked a bunch of Spanish food, including a bunch of different appetizers (shrimp, croquettes, etc.) and an amazing Paella. Everything was amazing. After that we spent a couple hours relaxing at Pol’s house – still a bit jet-lagged after being in Europe only 2 days.
Around 7pm, we went to an area near Sagrada Familia, which is a couple blocks from Pol’s house, and met up with friends.
There were a lot of the people we’d met over the summer: Jeff’s roommates, Victor and Alberto, and Victor’s girlfriend, Jenna (who’s from Minnesota!), Anna, who was the lifeguard at the pool I went to all the time in the summer, Pol, Pol’s friend from school, Andrea, from ISU, and oddly enough my friend Janet and her boyfriend, Dan. Janet lives in San Francisco and was in Barcelona for three days, one of which just happened to overlap with the one night Jeff and I were there. It was really fun to see everybody and catch up on events over the past six months – it seemed to go by very quickly!