Where in the World is Chelsea Gibbs?: Birthday to Barcelona

I haven't written in a couple days because we've been really tired every night and yesterday we were on a train all day until 10 at night anyway.

I spent my Birthday, which was Sunday the 29th, in Marseille. We took a boat out to an island, whose name I can't pronounce or remember because I'm bad at French. The morning was spent searching for a bathing suit for mom, because she left hers at the hostel in Nice, and all of the stores are closed on Sunday. She finally got one, but it was a bikini, and she wasn't too happy about wearing a bikini. After we made it on the boat, got sprayed because it was so windy, and got dropped off at the island, we realized we were on the wrong island. Typical. The island we were on didn't have a beach. It had a castle. The castle was called If Castle, which was the castle that the hero from the Count of Monte Cristo, and the Man in the Iron Mask are held. I've never read Monte Cristo, or seen the Man in the Iron mask, so it seemed cool, but we didn't pay to go inside. We waited for the boat to come back and take us to the right island.

The scenery there was a lot different. Mom thought it looked Greek. I felt like it was almost middle eastern looking. There was basically no vegetation, no greenery, just rocks and then real blue, clear water. It's kind of hard to describe. I don't think it would have been pretty if it weren't for the water. We hung out on the "beach" for a while, and then decided to go back to Marseille. Mom took me to a really nice dinner that night for my birthday. It was kind of frustrating at first, like every meal is, because it's in French and you can't read the menu and they can't understand you and you can't understand them. Eventually we communicated that we wanted seafood, and they recommended the sea bass, and even brought out the whole fish to us that we were going to eat. I got to eat mashed potatoes, which was a real treat. The fish was really good. It came with some sort of French tartar sauce, which I thought was funny. They brought out a little dessert plate with a firework in the middle for my birthday, too.

The next day we got up and tried to do some shopping before we left for Barcelona. I look at the Europeans outfits and think "did you really think you looked good when you put that on and walked out of your house this morning?" so I knew I wasn't going to like European clothes very much. They're just kind of out there. I told mom it's like they dress to impress or they dress like hobos. There's not much in between. Anyway, no luck with clothes in Marseille. I'm not going to waste money on clothes that I won't wear.

The train ride to Barcelona was long. We had to change trains a couple different times, but we made it every time. We're getting better at the train riding thing. On one of the trains, there were a group of 4 guys sitting in front of us. I knew they were drunk as soon as I sat down by the way they smelled. If you've ever woken up, hungover, with the smell of alcohol coming through your skin, that's what they smelled like. Makes my stomach churn. As soon as the train started moving, 2 of them left. 5 minutes later, the one sitting in front of me started puking into the air vent that runs along the window. Disgusted isn't a strong enough word. We hightailed it into another cabin, and we saw us leave. When we got off that train, those guys were behind us on the stairs, and they made some pretty vulgar gestures at me. It doesn't get more common that that. Scum of the earth? Yep.

We got to Barcelona around 10 and checked into our hotel, which is nice, and we got a good deal on it. Today, we weren't sure what to do here, so we did one of those hop on hop off bus tours. We mostly stayed on and just rode around and looked at everything. We did hop off at the beach. It was an average city beach. I'm sure Barcelona has a lot more to offer, but we really just weren't sure what we wanted to do, or what to do. I did get a few more things to wear though, which is good! We had to go back to the train station and reserve seats for the train to Paris, which took over an hour. We ate some sushi tonight, which was awesome. Normal food!!

Tomorrow we go to Paris, and I'm really excited about that. The Louve, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower!

Best things about today: seeing Barcelona, eating sushi, and getting some clothes
Worst things about today: getting lost and having to wait to get reservations