Day 20 (Friday, June 2)

This weekend, I am heading to Barcelona with a new friend at GTL, Richard. The plan is to take a night train on Friday to take out a good chunk of the 15 hour trip, and arrive in Barca around 1:00pm tomorrow.

Before I left for the train station, I had dinner with Jonathan, Michael, and Brett at Cora. Sorry, but I have to rant a little bit about about French culture:

I hate how France doesn't have any ordinances against smoking in public places. I absolutely abhor the fact that you can be sitting in a restaraunt, enjoying your meal when anybody can (and more than likely will) light up and blow smoke all over you while you're enjoying your wonderful French cuisine. Cora was no different with people smoking while waiting in line, smoking after they ordered, smoking throughout their meal, and having a nice smoke for dessert. Isn't it ironic that a country and a people who are so obsessed with taking care of the planet don't even know how to take care of their bodies? I also realized another reason why people aren't that fat in France: smoking suppresses hunger, and since everyone smokes, no wonder there aren't many overweight people. The whole smoking thing has really struck a nerve with me, and I just needed to get that off my chest. :-)

Back to Cora. After dinner, I came back to my room and had just enough time to finish stuffing my bag before I had to leave. We got to the train station and found out there were more GTL peeps going to Barca...a lot more. There were about 30 of us total getting on the same train!

Richard and I got reclining seats instead of dishing out the extra 20 euro for crouchettes (beds). We maybe should have gotten the crouchettes though, because it was really hard to find a comfortable position in a chair, and it was even harder to try to fall asleep. I didn't catch any shuteye until after midnight, and even then, I kept waking up with new aches and pains.

The night train moves us into the next day...