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It's 2:30 am. We're leaving for the airport at 3:00 am. Our plane departs at 6:00 am. We were out around the city all day long. I slept for less than an hour.

You can tell I'm only capable of short thoughts.

Nevertheless, I'm about to come home. I'll post up the photos of my day in Barcelona once I'm back for anyone who's interested.

Barcelona

We took an overnight train from Paris to Barcelona on Monday night. It wasn't too bad, but trying to squeeze four people each with their two months of Rome luggage was a bit too close to Tetris for my taste.

We arrived, ate at a little restaurant across the street from our house (11.5 E for a three-course meal, Barcelona is much cheaper than Paris) and settled down to rest for a little bit. We planned out what we were going to do today and met up with our friend Ashley, who has been staying in the city for about a week now. She took us on a tour down to the waterfront, where we enjoyed a fine meal (her last in Europe as she's flying back tomorrow).

Today we have quite an itinerary planned: Barcelona Pavilion, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo, La Sagrada Familia, and a Picasso Museum. This should be exciting.

Notre Dame

Looking out from one of the belltowers.

Eiffel

Paris III

Me

Us

Paris II

Scott, look at what you've done to us. We have a serious addiction. We just can't stop drawing. Not even for dinner.

Of course we're keeping it. You shouldn't even have asked.

Paris I

I took some pictures today:

Here are some pretty leaves. A building got in the way of the background though.

Some tower everybody's always talking about.

An Arc.

A lovely light fixture. Oh, and something about flying buttresses and stuff.

This was the way Notre Dame was lit when we entered. Seriously. It was absolutely fantastic.

Train to Paris

Our plan for the week kinda fell through: we weren't able to get the overnight train ticket to Barcelona, so instead we went ahead to Paris. The good news is that we won't be backtracking (Barcelona --> Paris --> Barcelona), the bad news is that we'll have to bring our 2 months worth of luggage around with us everywhere.


But of course it's not all bad. The train ride through the alps was absolutely gorgeous. And a single, long train ride gave me a chance to read about half a Steven King novel (I'm on Part II of his Dark Tower series) and to do a couple sketches.

Some ladies sitting across from me

A building I made up

I'm now officially finished with my sketchbook, every page filled. I guess it's now time to hunt down a new one to use.

End of Days

I'm enjoying my last few minutes of Rome, I'm leaving this morning to take a train to Milan, then to Barcelona. It's an absolutely beautiful day, I'm so sad to see this place go. But I've had a great stay, and I've learned so much. This isn't the end of the blog yet though, I still have a week before I leave Europe, and I have a few places left to visit. We'll arrive in Barcelona, spend a day exploring, then drop off most of our stuff and head to Paris via train. We don't return from Paris until Tuesday (because we found a really cheap RyanAir flight), so we'll have more than enough time to see the city, and maybe even a few other places as well. We'll see how that goes.

Well guys, it's been fun. Stay tuned for a few more updates before this is done for good.