| le 2 avril | |
Today is Stéphanie's birthday. We threw her party last night; the plan was to take her to a fancy Italian dinner, head back for a little drinky-drinky at her place, and then catch the last metro towards town to continue the festivities at the Prairie des Filtres. The first parts went well, but the wind along the Garonne made it quite miserable at the Prairie. We stuck it out anyway until the bottles started running empty, then ambled across town to hang out at Franck and Hugue's apartment until the wee hours.
 Candles led Stéph from her front door to the living room where everyone waited to surprise her.
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| le 13 avril - 2 mai : THE EPIC JOURNEY | |
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I left Toulouse on the thirteenth and the misadventures were quick to find me - my first train got stopped by some errant horses on the tracks, causing me to miss my connecting train and sending me on a rather hilarious, rather ennuyeux goose chase that landed me in Barcelona four or five hours late. Along the way, however, I made friends with an awesome lady named Elena, saw some gorgeous French Mediterranean coastline, and shared my last train with lots of chatty old Catalan people toting their plaid-printed market caddies. When we got to Barcelona I met up with my mom! I said "au revoir" to Elena and finally Mom and I got on our train to Reus, where we planned to stay with our friend Carmina and her boyfriend Marc.
Marc picked us up in Reus and drove us to their house. We turned onto their street and Mom said, "Now, what are these buildings? Industrial?" Marc's answer: "No, this is where we live." Good thing Marc has a sense of humor! At dinner he told us about how he had seen something on TV about how the meat that is served at Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't actually chicken, but some other strange animal, probably an alien. Carmina and Marc are awesome. Carmina took us around Tarragona and Reus, to meet her family and to see their houses. She and Marc prepared some traditional cuisine for us as well as taking us out for tapas, and then on Sunday we all went to her family's country house for a big wood-fire paella. That was great - we ate and then just sat and talked for hours with her family about Catalan history, people in general, families, everything. I felt so welcomed with them. And then we left for Barcelona! We stayed in a rickety little hostel right in the middle of everything, spending all day out wandering... it was great. The buildings there are gorgeous, the people are friendly, and there's so much to see. We managed to cover tons of ground, but we still didn't see everything we had hoped, and places like the Sagrada Familia and Parco Guëll merit a lot more time than we had to spend. From Barcelona we flew to Vicenza to stay with our neighbors from home, the Goldens. They folded us right up into the family for the few days we were there; they put us up in a room with a 360° rooftop view of the town, took us to taste wine and showed us the little church, nestled in a hill with vineyards and villas, where their daughter was married. It was great to be speaking English, surrounded by people I know, able to relax and be with my mother in a different way than I had before.  The view from the 'balcony' at our hostel in Barcelona : The Wax Museum.
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