Ciao from Rome! Presently laying in Liza's bed, feeling a familar way: exhausted. We were up at 3 am this morning (yes you read that right; we were awake before most of you went to bed) to catch our flight from Barcelona to Rome. This is sad and disgusting for many reasons, but the main being that it also marked the end of the line for EOB's trip. We said a sad goodbye at the airport, then decided to get on her bus to Termini, so got bonus time and a bonus goodbye. I'll miss my bestie mucho, especially since now I'm 100% responsible for all picture taking (Liza prefers being in pictures to taking them).
The last day in Spain had been a wild card from the get go. We never booked a place to stay, thinking that perhaps we wouldn't even go to bed, and though we tossed some ideas around for activities, we never came to a decision. On Tuesday, I left Liza and EOB to do some planning while I took a siesta. What follows could have been a complete disaster, but instead turned into the happiest of accidents. They looked up some cava vineyards/tasting rooms in Penedes, just southwest of Barcelona. Someone (COUGH EOB) then looked up directions to the wrong town, sending us to Casteldefels along the coast. We arrived there (an astronomically smoother trip than the one taken to Costa Brava) and had a snack and a beer at a shack on the beach (called Taint...ahem), at which point our mistake was discovered. BUT, the water was so awesome and the town so adorable (it's Barcelona's Arlington, but with fewer flip flops, khaki shorts and douche bags), that we should go find a vineyard where we were supposed to have gone (only 30 minutes away), and come back at night for a swim and to sleep. Best. Idea. Ever.
We ended up only making one cava vineyard, and it in fact wasn't a vineyard, just a factory where they explained the process. The name? Freixenet. You may have heard of it -- it's the Barefoot of Cava. Still it was super cute (a car shaped like a cork! a scooter shaped like a cork! a train ride!), we got a free glass, and we took a picture of some vines. Done and done.
Back in Casteldefels, we found an opening at a hotel where they gave us an apt for the same rate, we had a last swim in the Medi (where the water was MUCH warmer than in CDP on the CB), a last meal, and our last bottle of cava, which we drank on the terrace of our apt. As we drank it, we choreographed dance moves to our Pitbull/Ne-Yo sign, while Spaniards walked by and acted appalled. IT WAS AWESOME.
Though we all agree Spain was freaking awesome, driving into Rome this morning got me more excited than anything in Barcelona did. It's funny that I've been to Rome twice since March 2009, and Austin only three times in that same period. By the end of our time in Spain, my extremely rusty Spanish had started to get much better, and now, switching to Italian, I feel like an alien again. Liza is off at work, so I'm left to my own devices to explore for a few hours to make Roma my home-a
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