Barcelona, Montpellier, Carcassone, Nimes

My vacation was wonderful; a good mixture of touristy madness of seeing as much as possible in a day and then relaxing and seeing the places like true inhabitants, such as when in Barcelona I spent much of my time seeing things with her family and boyfriend. So I got a completely different perspective and it was nice to have a full week to take my time to see everything. I saw tha famous places like Park Guell with the longest bench in the world, Sagrada Famila, los casas de Gaudi, Torre Agphar, la playa, Monjuic, Montserrat, the parks; and then I had a paella lunch with Rachel's cousin, playing Bullshit (card game) with her roomies, and a Halloween dinner with Nico's friends. I learned a bit of Spanish while there, enough to say claro and bueno and to get by. But I was extremely excited to hear French again and be able to communicate, although the extreme temperature drop was not the most fun. In Montpellier I met up with Lauren, Natalie, Becca, and Christie; and it was really nice to have company. I was in such a blissfull mood after a yummu luch in a cozy wood fire restaurant along with a glass of wine, that the five layers of clothes we had to wear to keep warm barely fazed me. But our hostel wasn't that nice, having to keep pressing the timed showers like on the beach. Since Montpellier was smaller than expercted we saw the medieval city of Carcassonne and then stopped in Nimes on our way back to Saint Etienne to see the Roman arena and tower and Maison Carré. Its hard to summarize all of the things I did and saw but I have to say the vacation was better than I even expected, and I was really excited to go.