Roadtrip: Lyon to Barcelona

 

We’ve planned this trip like 2 months ago, don’t remember who’s the one initiate this trip but it came so nature. Barcelona seems to be an ideal destination for exchange students waste their fall break. We asked the only Spainish of the hall, Jose, for tour advice and he recommend to make an round tour, enter Spain from Barcelona and leave from a northern city San Sebastian, according to him, “a lot of parties.”

Then we rent a family van on 23 of October, begin our big journey.
The route is Lyon>Barcelona>Pamplona>San Sebastian>Biarritz>Bordeaux>Congac>St. Emillion>Lyon. 7 cities in 7 days, 6 nationalities, totally +2500 KM of driving.

Writing this blog is kind of difficult that English is not my mother tongue and I found that many misspelling or grammar mistake or non-logical sentences might exists. But anyhow, need to write something to keep record of these days. And of course I will try my best to finish this blog before Thursday.

“Mom” and “Dad”
Left to right,
Mathias from Germany
Kristian from Norway

Mom shot her children from front seat
Left to right,
Pascal from Germany
Ming from Taiwan
Deniz from Turkey
Dan from the US (abandoned by the family in Barcelona)
Nischint from India

The time we spent the most in Barcelona was waiting. From now on I can’t not recall what we’re waiting for, but the only thing I remember is that I am the most quick tempered person, since everyone’s so patient and try to work things out.

Bonnie was our guide, she’s the only female representative in the van, we liked her voice a lot but unfortunately never seen her face, not because that she’s a strict muslim, but she’s a GPS. In Europe, you CAN’T drive without GPS, but meanwile, you CAN’T totally depend on GPS. Bonnie did quite a good job in searching directions but she screwd us in finding parking lot in the city center of Barcelona. Thanks to her suggestion, we took 1.5 hours made lots of loops in the city but failed to find a proper parking space.

2 happy invaders*
(*not allowed to write down this issue)

Around 9 pm we finally made it to check in and met with Tomas. After a little tour of restaurant searching we found a local bar to have “dinner” at 23:00.
It’s kind of weird that I’ve heard that Spainish have “lunch” after 14:00 and dinner at 22:00 is common. I guess that’s the reason why they party a lot in the midnight, you know, you can’t just go to bed right after the meal.

  Paella

We had Paella as the welcome meal accompanied with Spainish beers. To be honest, the only thing I knew is that this one was way better than I bought in Carrefour, but not that delicate as I expected. Jose gave me a image that everyone in Spain knows to eat and you wouldn’t find a restaurant serves bad food.

It was wrong.

Then we hit the very first club in the trip. (Unfortunately, it also became the last club…)
I met 2 spainish girls next to the dance floor, they’re nice and friendly to talk.

The club we went was called Razzmatazz, one of the largest club in Barcelona, consist of 3 major dancefloors with different types of music. This is my first time to have party with so many people, and I found that the people went there are carried with specific reasons. I discussed this issue with Nora later at the other night.

 

After 4 hours of music and sweat dancing, having a kebab and go home seems to be a good idea, but the only thing they got was fries, a cup for 3E. That’s ok for us, since it took us 6 hours of driving from Lyon to here, everything’s worthy to try. “Be optimisitc!”