PEST

Hokay, so we are in Budapest right now (well, actually we are in Pest, but whatevsies). So, Barcelona was a lot of fun. We did all the Gaudi's and went inside all the stuff that didn't and then regretted the last time I was there. Going back to Barcelona made me fall back in love with that city. I think mostly I love it for all the Gaudi's, but also the food is good, the people are really nice, and Spain is just beautiful. Now, I think I'm always gonna have Italy as my number one place to be, but I think Spain could easily come in second. I really want to travel around and see more of the country, but hopefully with someone who remembers their Spainish. I got like "gracias", "lo siento," and "hola" down, but everything else I don't really remember. Four years of the language, and I suck at it, that doesn't give me much hope for my Italian. Oh well.

We tried chocolate (their hot chocolate is really thick) and churros and it wasn't as good as I was expecting. Their churros are just like fried dough. And now, I know that in Mexico its just fried dough...but they roll all that in cinnamon and sugar and it tastes bomb, this stuff was kinda icky. One day we also made it out to Velancia, which really made me want to see more of Spain. It's a very cool beach town. We ended up not doing much cos we didn't have much time there and like everything was closed but we did go to a church that claims to have the Holy Grail---and their grail is the only one recognized by the Vatican. Pretty cool. Also a highlight of that day is when we headed over to the beach we saw a large group of guys wearing the Borat-style swimsuit---a one piece with shoulder straps and a thong...IS NICE!!! Our last night there we went to Club Magic, which I had gone to before with my friends when I was there a couple of months ago. It was a lot of fun, but all my clothes reak of ciggarette smoke and bo. gross.

Then on to Lisbon. We weren't there for very long--about a day and a half, so we didn't get a lot done. We went to the castle the first day and a museum. The second day we went to the Oceanarium (where we bought ourselves some pretty cool tshirts), after which we got sushi (which made us feel a bit guilty since the aquarium kept on preaching about how we shouldn't be eating fish and whatnot). And later on watched a calcio match--netherlands v. italy. It was like Em v. me, or at least I thought so, she didn't seem to be ammused. Well, we lost terribly, which was a bummer. While we were watching the game though, two Italian guys came and sat next to us and the waiter would come out and talk to them in Italian--and man, was he being mean. He kept on being like, your team is playing like shit or that guy is a terrible player, whatever. Non me piace, ma I did like being able to understand what he said. The only other highlight of Lisbon was the super fine boy who worked at the hostel desk. Man, if all Portugeus guys look like that, I think I may just have to return. Damn.

Now we are in Budapest, so far we have seen one of the Castles, St. Stephen's basilica, and a bunch of boring landmarks. We are gonna go to the thermal baths tomorrow. I want to go out clubbing tonight cos they are supposed to have an amazing nightlife here, but I'm feeling pretty sick and a bug bit Em on her eyelid so she's all swollen, so it probably won't happen. Oh well. Okay, that's it for now, I'm gonna try to upload some pics, we'll see how it goes.

S