Spain pt. 1- My 300€ Nap

First off, a few notes before we jump into the bulk of Spring Break 2012

• I've decided to break up my spring break into 3-4 parts to give each city we visited the proper respect and due diligence they deserve. This will also probably make it easier for the reader to understand what was happening on an intense moment to moment basis.
• I understand that I had a lot of friends that traveled ALL OVER THE WORLD for spring break (see Morocco, Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Paris, Rome, Latvia, London, even Ireland (probably the best spring break, am I right, or am I right?), and had amazing adventures. So I'm trying not to compare my adventures to anyone else. I'm just gonna post it how I see it.
• WARNING: There is a large amount of bromance, UNC loyalty, and just plain goofiness associated with most of these stories. You will understandably be rolling your eyes, crying at our miscues, and possibly even throwing your computer against the wall (don't, it's expensive to do that, and I know expensive)...which brings us to....

Friday, March 2nd-  Ryanair Customer Service, Barçelona Arrival, and meeting the French

Night before the day I was supposed to travel, I was pretty excited, you might say. I had a 10:00 flight, and Dublin Airport is all the way on the other side of the city. This means either waking up at around 7ish to catch an international flight via Ryanair (which we'll come back to on the last day), or just waiting up all night and catching a couple of hours of sleep on the plane. As any intelligent sane rational (ok, I'm grappling here) person would do, I chose the second option.

It was around 5 AM, after skyping friends, drinking tea, and watching UNC basketball highlights that I decided on my pillow to lay down for a 2 hour nap, thinking I had beat myself up over the system long enough and I was too weak to deal with this. So. I set my alarm clock for 7 AM, set my phone right on my bed-stand, and fall quickly to sleep. All's well in Dublin, right?

OH MY GOD, HE'S AN IDIOT- Eddie Anderson, Chemistry ORHS

If you know anything about sunrise and sunset in Dublin, or in general, most of the time when you wake up around 7ish and see sunlight gently streaming around your blinds, you're not in Dublin. Therefore, when I woke up and rolled over to witness the sunlight bursting through my window without the help of my alarm clock, my thoughts were:

1. OH GOD, THE SUN HAS EXPLODED
2. Is there a spotlight outside?
3. Hmmmm, It can't be the first two optio..........uh-oh.

So apparently, I had managed to sleep through my alarm clock and wake up at around 9:35, or as we like to put it in "airport terms"- the time my gate was closing up for boarding.

I had missed my flight.

I thought briefly about making a dash for the airport, but instead, decided to give Ryanair a call to try my luck and see if there was any way I could work the system. This was the conversation as follows, exactly (I swear).

Me: Um, hello. I'm calling to try to change my flight. I know there's a change fee and I'm willing to pay
Customer Service: Ok! Sure, just give me your confirmation number
Me: (gives)
CS: Ok...Sir, you're aware that that flight just closed their gates, aren't you?
Me: Really? Nope. I had no idea.
CS: (Sigh)- Sir, you missed your flight?
Me: Oh shoot. I could've sworn...
CS: You're going to have to rebook it online sir, and the next flight out to Barcelona isn't until tomorrow. (hangs up)

After weighing my options, I realized that this was what I had been looking forward to most of the semester, and that my only option was to find any way possible to get down to Spain. After finding money I had made doing yard work when I was 8-15 in my savings account and (while crying) transferring it from savings, I ended up finding a 300€ flight that was leaving at 6 PM. After napping on and off the entire day, and beating myself up over what had happened, I finally got on the plane and arrived in...

Err, add 20 years.

After planning my broken Spanish to the bus driver for 20 minutes on the ride over, I understood his directions (PERSONAL VICTORY!) and was dropped off at the Plaza Catalunya in the city center. After walking up La Rambla (another sight to be noted for later) about 20 minutes at 9 PM, I finally arrived at world famous "The Cool Hostel" which
1. Has a misleading title
2. Is slightly hard to find

The only denoting sign

 After opening up the door, and starting the long climb up, I hear a voice shout from the top of the stairs: "Is that Noel Thompson?" This began my run up the stairs followed by an immediate embrace with my good friends...

Tar Heels #1 and #2

Jason (my former roommate) and Beth (another friend from back home) were waiting for me at the top of the stairs, where they informed my that Jason and I were "with child" and had been assigned a room with 2 older women and a 3 or 4 year old from Portugal. No worries. We dropped our stuff off, and then took off into the city to find somewhere to eat. We ended up settling with a pasta restaurant off of "La Plaza de George Orwell" (apparently he had decided to come to Spain to fight during the Spanish Civil war along with some other famous literary members, so he gotza plaza). After meeting up with our other friend Emily (Tar Heel #3), we decided to head out to get a taste of Spanish nightlife. I won't go into details, but I'll just do a before and after photo.

Sangria by the lita.

For fun at home, try switching this with the before photo!

So, things we had done in Spain- eaten super late, drank sangria, and spoken in spanish. Not bad for a first day, eh? We wandered back up La Rambla amist offers of every type of drug imaginable and vendors selling cans from 6-packs (I SAID NO TO EVERYTHING MOM), and found our way back to the hostel where we passed out after quite a day.

Preview for tomorrow's blog: