Growing the 'Fro in Barcelona

Dear Barcelona,

Great job so far. You are officially in the running for "Ross's Favorite European City." You get to join Berlin & Rome as a nominee. And the nice thing is you still have at least 3 days to impress me further. Keep it coming.

Yours Truly,

Ross

And because Barcelona has been so much fun, I haven't had blogging time. This one will be short on writing, but with a lot of pictures for you to feast your eyes on.

After Rome, I did 3 days in the Naples/Pompeii/Amalfi area. Unfortunately I finally experienced multiple days of terrible weather--pouring rain almost the entire 3 days. This coincided nicely with my first cold of the trip so you can probably guess it wasn't my favorite part of the journey.

Naples didn't impress me at all. I had read they have a huge trash problem, but in recent years have cleaned up the streets a little. If that's true, I would never want to see what it was like before. It was pretty disgusting even trying to walk on the sidewalks. It was like an obstacle course of trash. Wait, obstacle course makes it sound possibly fun; it was like constantly walking through a field of land mines. Anyway, Naples is famous for its pizza, or for being the birthplace of pizza, or something like that. My dinner on night 1 didn't disappoint:

Yes, I ate it all. So cheap too...I think 5.5o euro for the pizza & beer combined. One other thing I determined on my first night in Naples: it is absolutely the scariest city to be a pedestrian crossing the street. I thought Rome would win that award, but Naples was far worse. I feared for my life every time I had to cross the road.

I took a day trip to Pompeii on my second day even though it was going to rain again. My goal was to do both the Pompeii ruins & climb Mt. Vesuvius, but with the awful weather & me getting sicker by the minute, I chose just the ruins. You can see how great the weather was, but the ruins were still a cool sight to see:

On day three, the rain cleared a little and I took a train to the Amalfi Coast. I had to catch a bus to the actual town of Amalfi from Salerno, and it was absolutely amazing. I quickly realized I would never dare drive on that coastal road. You couldn't pay me enough money to do it. It's a 2-lane road theoretically, but our bus had to stop & back up plenty of times because it couldn't fit around a corner when a car was coming the other way. There's literally no room for error. I tried my best to take some pictures while on the bus (pretty amazing minus the clouds):

Of course I got off at the wrong bus stop & had to waste 20 minutes waiting for the next bus. The Amalfi area reminded me a lot of Cinque Terre, only much bigger. I squeezed in a 2-hour hike before the rain came. It was basically just walking up hundreds of stairs to the top of some of the cliffs. After drinking a bottle of wine at dinner, I did the strangest thing on this night in Amalfi. There were some kids, maybe 11-12 years old, and they were running up a staircase in front of a church over & over. I was having a beer at a bar in the square where they were, and I watched them for a few minutes...and then I joined in. What the hell was that all about? Yes, I made friends with 2 Italian kids and they cheated their way into beating me up the stairs. Sometimes holding my sweatshirt, sometimes 1 would fall in front of me so the other could beat me. Anyway, it was the most random thing I've done so far--in my life, not just on this trip.

On Sunday I went back to Rome because I was flying to Barcelona on Monday. Since the Patriots were playing in London on Sunday night, I got the crazy idea to find a place to watch it. The hostel manager directed me to a pub where the owner was apparently a huge Steelers fan & always has games on. I found it fine, but the large woman at the front door told me to leave when I said I wanted to watch the Patriots. She was dead serious, but at least she was nice enough to direct me to another pub that did actually have the Pats and other games on. I spent the next 4 hours drinking pitchers of beer, watching the Pats win, and talking trash to fans of other teams who were at the bar.

I'm now 3 days into Barcelona and as I already noted, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. There's just so much to do during the day & night. And the one thing it has going for it over Berlin & Rome is the beach...literally a 10-minute walk from my hostel & still good beach weather. I will probably do a separate Barcelona blog when I move on from here, so for now let's just do some pictures.

View from my hostel:

The "street performers" on La Rambla (giving me ideas for what to do when I can't find a job in January):

The beach:

And La Sagrada Familia (a Church/building so amazing I would trade in all the other churches I've seen so far just for this place):

Oh, and finally, for those of you who want to view the Afro progress (and for the ladies who wanna see a half naked Ross):

Part 2: The Four P's of Rome

Hopefully you read Part 1 of my visit to Rome. If not, scroll down & read it. Now on to the 2 most exciting days of this leg of my journey...

Sunday was a day of great anticipation for me as I had only 2 goals for the day. One was to check out what I am calling "the world's largest flea market," and the other was my attempt to attend my first professional European soccer game. I don't know anything about European soccer, or about the team from Rome that was playing in Olympic Stadium, so I felt confident I was going to screw something up and never get to the game. But that would have to wait for the afternoon.

On Sunday morning I walked almost an hour each way to find this huge flea market, and even though I was only there for about 45 minutes, the 2 hours of walking was well worth it. Totally blown away by the size of this thing, and just the random collection of stuff everyone was selling.

Those pictures don't do it justice, but I was a little scared of the dirty looks I was getting when trying to take photos of the vendors.

I'm still trying my best not to acquire too many souvenirs or anything else because my backpacks are completely full, it already feels like I might have permanent shoulder damage, and I have roughly 2 more months of carrying all my garbage around. But there were 3 things I would have considered buying at this flea market: 1). Socks: some of mine are starting to get holes in them, and I really don't want to have only 3 pairs of socks. 2). A watch: I have the 1 watch with me that I've been wearing everywhere (since I have no phone, it's my only way to tell time), but I would buy a cheap watch that wasn't as nice so I feel less bad as I'm beating it up everyday. 3). A t-shirt or other paraphernalia of the soccer team I was going to see later, you know, so I'd fit in like a real fan.

I was unsuccessful with items 1 & 2, but as you can see, item 3 was a big success.

Yes, found a t-shirt for my new favorite soccer team, Lazio. It was being sold for 5 euro, but I worked some magic and got it for 3 euros. 40% discount! Wow, it felt good to be on the buying side of crazy discounts for the first time in 4 years.

I really appreciated the wide array of crap I could buy from 1 vendor at this flea market. For instance, I could have bought jewelry, Xbox360 audio/video cords, woman's underwear, a swiss army knife, and an Italian-dubbed version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" DVD...all from the same guy. At one point when I was looking at a table that had all this stuff, the guy tugged my arm a bit to try to convince me to buy something. I wanted to tell him, "Sir, I appreciate what you have to offer, especially at these low low prices, but if I buy all of these things, I'm gonna have to visit that next table to buy some more luggage." I didn't think he'd understand me, so I just put my iPod on and walked away.

Now it was time to head to the stadium for Lazio vs. U.C. Sampdoria (from Genoa, Italy). I put on my new t-shirt at the hostel, and then hopped on the train. Like I said, I bought the t-shirt to feel like a true fan, and I did indeed accomplish that, but here are a few reasons why it might not have been the best idea:

-multiple people on the train/bus asking me what stop we get off for the stadium (no clue, actually)

-as I was trying to find the ticket office, which was a few blocks away from the stadium, again I had people asking me the same question, where do they go for tickets

-on the bus, an old guy asked me if a certain player on Lazio was still injured ("good question, I think he either comes back this game or next," was my answer)

-what I mentioned above are just the things I was asked in English; I also had many people trying to say things, presumably about our team, in Italian. That went over well.

-when I was finally at the stadium, both before & during the game, there was lots of scripted chants for Lazio and lots of screaming about bogus calls from the refs. Of course I couldn't really play along with any of this. Felt some confused looks coming my way most of the time.

Regardless of all that, I was successful in getting a ticket--15 euros--and had pretty decent seat near one of the goals. Here are some more pictures & comments:

The stadium got only about 2/3rds full, and my section was surprisingly empty compared to other areas. Here are the enemy fans of the other team:

Even though the opposing team had a player named "Rossi" on the team, I still couldn't bring myself to root for them:

Ok, finally game time...

At halftime, the score was 1-1, with my boys scoring late in the half to tie it up:

And unfortunately, because it's soccer, that is the way the game would end, 1-1 tie. But at least I had a hearty halftime lunch:

Since I used to be a wanna-be sports journalist, I feel compelled to give quick analysis on the game. Sampdoria has a very balanced offensive attack and a great goalie. Lazio is a little more of a one-trick pony on offense with one dude who is super fast and can make the opponent look bad. But he's a prima donna for sure, and if I had to guess, I'd assume he was young & has lots to learn about playing in the big leagues. Also, all sports fans I know (including me) talk about how badly NBA players bitch to the refs about every single foul at all times... well let me say that soccer players are about 100 times worse. Of course I'm judging that on 1 game and only 2 teams, but after every single whistle from the ref, a player would freak out for about 6 minutes, or if there was a non-call when they thought there should have been, it was even worse. And typically the player who was upset would refuse to run up the field to participate for a little while.

On Monday, I had a great time seeing the Vatican Museums, St. Peter's, and a few more things that aren't really noteworthy. I was up at 7:30 to get my ass over to the Vatican because I've heard lines start forming early. Sure enough, I got there before it opened, but still had to wait in a pretty long line.

While I tried to go slowly through all of the museums leading up to the Sistine Chapel, I found myself focused mostly on getting there before it got too busy. But here are a bunch of the different artifacts/paintings on the way.

Finally time for the Sistine Chapel.

Too bad you can't take pictures inside. Some of the halls along the way to the Chapel were so amazing that I was a little worried the Chapel itself would be a letdown. It was not. It was probably the single coolest thing I've seen on this entire trip, and if I hadn't been risking further neck injury by continually looking up at the ceiling, I probably would have spent close to an hour inside. 20 minutes would have to do I guess.

After the Vatican Museums, St. Peter's square/church were next on the list. Real long line to get into the church, but it moved surprisingly quickly.

I also climbed the 551 stairs (I counted 543, but who cares) up the dome at St. Peter's, but was a little disappointed with this part. It took FOREVER to get up there because it was so crowded at the top. Over the final 250 stairs, I was able to walk up about 10 stairs, then had to stop for 3 minutes to wait for the line. Pretty obnoxious, but some decent views I guess.

Ok, now that we're through with the usual sightseeing, it's time to talk a bit about Monday night's "Steps of Rome Pub Crawl." I had no intention of doing this pub crawl as I had a "date" with 3 German girls who told me the night before they could beat me in Beer Pong. Someone convinced me to go, and my job was to convince these 3 girls to go with us. We played a couple games of Beer Pong early on (I beat them twice), and over the course of those 2 games, they went from "We're too tired to go out all night," to "Where do we sign up for the Crawl?"

Anyway, nothing crazy exciting went on, except for the fact that I met a person who knows one of my former BU roommates really well. So Anthony, if you read this, Chris from Westborough says Hi.

I'm now going to present you all with a bunch of facts I know from this night, and it's your job to develop a story on what might have actually happened. This has nothing to do with me, but instead these 2 Australian girls I met at the first bar. Here we go...

-during the 1st hour of drinking, I met 2 best friends from Australia. One was a blonde girl, one was a brunette (only relevant so I can distinguish between them since I don't know their names).

-at the 3rd bar, some of the girls on the Pub Crawl were letting guys do body shots off them. If you don't know what that means, too bad. This is neither the time nor the place to explain. The brunette Aussie girl got a body shot taken off her, and her blonde friend seemed particularly unhappy.

-as I'm leaving the 4th & final bar around 2:30AM with a person from my hostel, and we're trying at first to walk home, we see the blonde Aussie girl standing on a street corner. Her hair & clothes are covered in dirt, grass, and leaves, and she is barely coherent. I remember she is in a hostel near us, so we tell her to get in a cab with us. Just then her friend, the brunette comes around the corner and gets into the cab as well.

-the entire 10 minutes of the ride home, these 2 girls are trying to kill each other, swearing at each other, saying how badly they hate one another. The blonde girl says, and I quote, "I am never coming back to this fucking country or anywhere else with you again." She also tries to jump out of the cab while it's moving.

-We get back to our hostel, and I jump out of the cab without saying a word to anyone. My night is over, but I can't help but wonder what the hell happened between these 2 "best friends." And how did the blonde girl end up looking like she rolled around on the ground? So many questions. If you have any theories you'd like to share with me, I'm all ears.

The way I see it there were 2 morals to this story: thank God I'm not a girl, and there are plenty of good reasons to be traveling alone!