Spain, Portugal... England!!!

Spain was beautiful. I'm not sure I've ever been to a more beautiful place. All of the food was so delicious. The people were friendly. The weather was great. I definitely have to go back to Barcelona. But maybe I should see the rest of Spain first. :-) The day I left, I wasn't really hungry. I didn't really eat anything, and I felt like it was a shame because the food was so amazing. I got done going to the Gaudi things and then I decided to head back to Las Ramblas and check out the market which I tried to go to the day before, but it was closed. It was amazing! (See album "Barthalona".) Everything was so fresh and beautiful. It all looked so delicious! I wandered deeper and deeper into the market and came upon a couple of "bars" that served food. I looked at a couple of them and decided upon one where this woman and her daughter were sharing a plate of seafood. I ordered a beer and pointed to what they were eating. The guy just laughed at me. There weren't many foreigners there--which was what appealed to me. The food came and it was an amazing grilled seafood feast: an entire fish, a razor clam, a giant prawn, a squid, mussels, clams, scallops, and lots of little octopus thingies (decidedly not squid, as they only had 8 legs). And it was all covered in some sort of delicious, Spanish, herbed oil. Plus fresh-baked bread. Mmmm. Best meal ever. EV-ER.

Then I left for Lisbon. The first night there I had this delicious dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was like some sort of tomato-y gumbo-y rice thing with shrimp and lobster. Good, but expensive. The next day I just ate at pastry shops the whole day because the only affordable food I could find other than that were fried, battered meat on stale rolls. Not appetizing. However, I did go to a killer castle on the tallest hill in Lisbon. And Europe's larest Oceanarium. Sweet. Unfortunately, I can't post the pictures because this computer has had it's USB capabilities disabled by the hostel. Nazis.

Yeah, speaking of London... YAY FOR BEING IN AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY!!! It's amazing. Also, everyone has cute British accents. Today on the metro ...tube (that just sounds funny)... I heard this like 3-year-old girl speaking with this posh British accent and it took all my effort not to laugh every time she talked. She was like the girl in Family Guy that Stewie is in love with. Hilarious stuff. Anyway, last night when I got here I came to my hostel and they gave me my room, I walk in it, and everyone in the room looks at me. I look around and realize all the beds are already taken, and that's why they were all so surprised to see me. So, I go back, tell the guy, he appologizes, gives me another room, I joke and say, "There's not going to be someone sleeping in this one, right? Haha.", he says no, and I go off to the room. Yeah, someone sleeping in that bed, too. I go back and they finally just put me in an empty room. So far I have slept in 3 different rooms for 4 different nights and never had to sleep in the same room as someone else. Yessss. Maybe I'll have some company tonight. Who knows. Today I saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, and tried to go the British Museum, but I didn't realize today wasn't Thursday, so it had already closed. Oops. I also ate some amazing Indian and Japanese food. Indian food has an amazing quality that it is exactly the same no matter where you eat it. The Japanese food in Russia is different than the Japanese food in America, which is different than the Japanese food in England. England's is probably the most authentic. And delicious. The only thing that bothers me about London is that everything is really expensive. If you think about $1 being 1 pound, everything is almost exactly the same price it would be in America. However, if you take the exchange rate into effect, you want to cry a little. No, a lot. An American girl that told me how to get to my hostel by bus, also gave me the money for the bus because I didn't have any pounds. She was like, "Here's the 2 pounds you need." I say back, "I can't take that; it's like 4 dollars." She says, "No, it's like 2 dollars--you have to stop thinking like that!" She's right. If you think about 1 pound being 1 dollar, everything is completely reasonable (for a big city). I'm just going to be crushed when I look at my bank account afterward.

**My internet time ran out at this point. I wrote this on the 19th, but I'm just posting this now that I'm back on the internet.