Day 3: Got up early and ran to Park De Gaul. Got a bit of to the right and so didn't get to see the
Gaudi stuff - nice views of the Med and the city landmarks from on top of the hill. Ran back to the hostel and of course the boys weren't even up yet (sigh shake head but as Arnab said, I knew that they wouldn't be up). Went to bakery again and got chocolate and vanilla crepes. checked out of the hostel and left our luggage - took subway to the train to MontSerrat. Andy and I had espresso while we waited for the train. We played Ghost again and met a coople of girls from the states. One was from Edmund Oklahoma (wassup Neil King hometown) but alas she was much younger than us and didn't know of the infamous Neil King. In Montrisol, we decided to walk up the mountain to the monistary. Thor wore his funny stabilization shoes. We ran into a some children who were part of some sort of troop. The last little girl was very clumsy and said " ayyaiyai, hijo de dios! (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijo_de_Dios) Arnab said she must be related to me. Its true i'm pretty clumsy (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clumsy).

When talking about Taylor's favorite movies, Thor guessed that perhpas she liked Se7en. andy was all like, what? We took a long time to go up - much more than the hour and a half that the website predicted. at the monastery, we ate in the cafeteria. i had sald/fruit while the boys got sausages and beans. We shared crema de catalan and andy got ice cream. Went and checked out the Basilica - lots of different chandeliers. Cool candles and mosaic in the floor. Story of montserrat: these guys climbed the hill and found an image of the virgin Mary. They decided to build a basilica up there. They call Mary the virign of Montserrat. Catholicism in Spain is largely localized and its common to find that churches are built for the the virgin of this town or that town or area (source - book on history of spain that i bought before the trip). Montserrat is a common Catalan name for girls in the area - it cane be shortened to Montsey.

We took the train down and played ghost on the way back. I won on arrival because Andy attempted to spell arrivable. Got our stuff and barely made the train to Tarragona.Thor made the greatest decision of the trip to get a cab back to his place so that we wouldn' have to haul our luggage all the way across town. We changed shoes and went to Thor's favorite restaurant, Tagliatelli. We had an excellent house wine, a local Tempranillo. I got the salmon, spinach and mushroom pizza - it was soo good. Olive bread was good too.

Went to a local Irish pub to celebrate St. Patty's day. Met Alisha (finally Alisha enters the story) and had pint of guiness. got free Guinness hats, hung out for a while, made small talk (which arnab was struggling with because he was tired), and then walked Alisha home. Andy and Arnab stayed up playing video games while Thor and I had a heart to heart that can only truly be accomplished at 2 am. Thor fell asleep with his arms behind his head and i woke him up to tell him (it looked really uncomfortable).

and then...