May 28th

Our main goal today was to reach Barcelona, but luckily we got to drive through the mountains and visit Andorra on the way. Andorra is easily one of my favorite cities we visited. The whole atmosphere is cool. It's a modern city and is shaped like a bowl, nestled in a skinny valley. The winding streets lead you from one high-end shop to another. Each building is stacked on top of another, it's easily to get lost. The locals speak a difficult dialect of Spanish, but seem content and welcoming. I walked around and browsed the variety of shops with Mike, Nick and Mark. They've been hunting for boat shoes for the entire trip, and they still didn't find any haha. Everything is cheap in Andorra. The economy is pretty much completely reliant on Spain, so seeing as Spain remains to be in recession, Andorra is as well. We grabbed some lunch at McDonalds and headed back out after a couple hours. Finally, in the late afternoon we arrived in Barcelona. We got our room keys and dropped our luggage then went pretty much straight to dinner at a buffet in the middle of town. Afterwards we got free time, and I decided to separate from the group and stick with a smaller division. It ended up being Cleo, Jessie, Juliet and I. We were all kind of fed up with constantly being bombarded by social interactions and drama 24/7 so we took it easy, walked through the markets, focused on the time at hand and got a feel for Barcelona. Despite it being a major city and famous for pick-pockets I felt fairly safe. People were playing soccer, lounging about and giving off a sense of comfort and relaxation. It was refreshing to say the least after Paris (everything is moving fast in Paris). We sat in the grass by the ocean and just talked most of the night before going back to the hotel for curfew.