Day 5

Thursday, December 31st

First on the agenda today, besides breakfast, is the Market on La Rambla!! Alex came with me and we left the other 2 in the room to sleep. It was kinda a cold rainy morning, but I enjoyed the walk in the morning air. The market was buzzing with eager early morning consumers and it was difficult to manuver the walk ways. Lots of interesting things for sale, like goats head (including the eyes), the skin from animals (with out the fur), pigs feet and many other things. Beautiful fruits and vegitables decorated the booths and there was so much cheese to choose from it hurt my brain; especially since it was all in Spanish and I didn't know what I was buying. But I bought some any ways, I hope it's good. Alex purchased fresh eggs to cook at the hostel and we both purchased fresh fruit smoothies, this was a GREAT place. It was also explained to us by Simon, that it was Spanish tradition to eat 12 grapes at midnight on New Years Eve, it gave you good luck. The hostel was planning on giving us these grapes, but Alex and I purchased a souviner champainge "glass" (plastic), that was filled with grapes and had a sticker with the year printed on the side. We felt very accomplished when we left and headed back to the hostel, the tour was leaving promptly at 11 a.m. During our casual trip back, we did manage to stop and grab a few sandwiches and water for lunch at Mountserrat, and we purchased a bottle of Red Wine (Tinto) to take as well. Promptly at 11, the four of us joined the large group and headed out to grab a metro train for the 64 minute ride to the mountain. This is a benadicting cathedral and monistary that has a world famous boys choir and we were on a mission to get to the cathedral by 1 p.m. to hear the boys sing. We were instructed that once we jumped off the train (litterally jumped), we needed to sprint to the cable car that took us up the mountain, then sprint up the stairs to the cathedral. However, after all of this effort, we found out that the buys choir was on vacation; every year the week after Christmas is a holiday. Simon was our tour guide and appoligized profussly, but we all just laughed it off. We did really enjoy the sound of the clock bells chiming and we got our history lession for the day. This cathedral housed one of the very rare, Black Madonnas and we were strongly encouraged to go inside and see it. This was an absolutley magnificent cathedral and we all were in awe of it's grandure, detail and the unbelievable spiritual feel. The visit to the inside of the cathedral was done in two parts, one was upon arrival, the second was after a hike to Saint Magdelina point on a trail that wound it's way into the steep mountains above the Monistary. This is where we climbed for 1 1/2 hours before learning that the peak was another 1 hour and 25 mins away, this would be getting awefully close to sundown by the time we decended, so we chose not to chance it. At what we thought was the half way point, we stopped and ate the sandwiches we had brought, then at our stopping point, we drank our bottle of wine, it was absolutley horrible!!! Alex didn't seem to mind it to much, so he drank the majority of it. The pictures I got of the amazing view of Catalunya did not do it justice, it was quiet a site though. Along with the visit again to the Cathedral, we stopped in the gift shop to buy some of the awesome chocolate that is supposed to be a specialty of the Monks in this area, it was really good Chocolate.

After an exhausting hike and ride back to Barcelona, we had to eat again, but not before I printed my boarding pass for my flight tomorrow and making another call home. We settled on another local cafe and discussed the plans for tonight, since it is New Years Eve afterall. The food for tonight was a burger with a fried egg on it, I wanted to see what the beef tasted like. I'm not sure if I like it much, but at least I got to try it.

I fianlly made the decision that I was only going to celebrate the coming of the new year here in the hostel, I have a flight in the morning and I don't think I'm young enough to do the club thing there in BCN. The party at the hostel started after 7 p.m. and we were kinda ready for it. Although 2009 was a great year for me, it hadn't been as kind to others and we were happy to put it to rest, once and for all. Everyone from that was staying in the hostel made there way to the lounge/bar area by 11 p.m. and we drank, took some pictures and had a good time. Just before 12, we handed out the grapes and made sure everyone had 12 of them; oh and a cup of champaigne. We gathered around the TV and waited for the clock to strike. For each chime of the clock at 12 a.m., we had to eat a grape, a little difficult when the grapes we had, had seeds, but we managed. Then we toasted the New Year and drank our champaigne, ick, however, it was fun. I hung out for a little while and then, with everyones disapproval, I headed to bed. I had to leave for the airport at 7 a.m., so I had to be up at 6! I was going to get a little bit of sleep!