Viaje A Barcelona

After going through my first semester of lawschool, it seems like our trip to Spain this summer happened ages ago. Nonetheless, we wanted to share a little bit about how much fun we had in one of the coolest places on earth!
Last june, with the help of Papa Perk, and the motivation of my best friend C.J. Rogers getting married, Whit and I made the trip to Barcelona, Spain. I don't have the time or energy to dictate all our adventures so I try to hit the highlights.
After a 18 hour flight (definitely not a highlight) we arrived in Barcelona. It was the middle of the day on a Sunday and the first thing that tripped us out was the fact that we couldn't understand or read a thing! For those of you who aren't up on your cultural history, not everyone in Spain speaks the uno, dos, tres, kind of spanish that we are used to here in Mesa thanks to our immigrant friends. Barcelona is part of the state of Catalunya where they speak Catalan (which is as close to french as it is spanish) and that made things interesting. We found our way nonetheless and arrived at our hotel. Of course, the amatuer world travelors that we are we took a nap and woke up at 9pm rip roaring and ready to go. Lucky for us, Barcelona is a city of the night and our jacked up time schedule never really caused us much grief. We spent the next few days touring the city, which houses some of the coolest architectural achievements you will ever lay eyes on (as well as the most disgusting urine scented subways).
Whitney was on the border of vomitting nearly the entire trip thanks to some shellfish cuisine and lack of personal hygiene of the natives, but we made our rounds regardless. On Friday my buddy CJ and his beautiful fiancee Diana got married legally in Barcelona and that night we had a wedding ceremony and dinner reception. It was a blast, Whitney got her dance on, and those of you who know me know that I did not. We had fun and partied hard until about two in the morning. Then we all trekked back to CJ's apartment and me, whit, CJ's family, Diana's family, and CJ and Diana got prepared to catch our 6am flight to Frankfurt, Germany!
You may be wondering why Germany, well the Madrid Temple just so happened to be closed and we were not made aware of this until after everyone had purchased their tickets, so instead of cancel, they decided to take it to the nearest open temple -Frankfurt. So a herd of about twelve of us made our way to Verona Airport (on no sleep) and flew to Frankfurt. When we arrived at the airport we were made aware of the fact that Frankfurt has two airports one of which is next to the temple and one of which is an hour away. Yes, we were at the one an hour away. We rented a car and thanks to divine guidance in the form of a GPS system we made our way to the temple. That afternoon Diana recieved her endowments. All the workers were German and spoke little Spanish or English, and there were members of our party who spoke no English and some who spoke no Spanish and no one who spoke German. It was interesting to say the least. After the session we went to the sealing room and CJ and Diana were sealed by a nice old German who spoke no English or Spanish. very cool. I have to admit tired as we all were the spirit was strong. After the temple we all went out and ate Klausch (probably the best food I ate the whole trip) in an authentic little German diner, and then we crashed for the night.
The next morning as I was searching for my itinerary for the flight back to spain I happened to glance at our itinerary for the flight back to Phoenix and noticed it had a mistake. It said we left from Madrid not Barce. I was sure something was mixed up and I brought it to Whit's attention to clear things up (she had made the arrangements). When her face went pale I knew we had a problem. There was nothing I could do in Germany but when we finally arrived back at CJ's apartment I double checked our booking and sure enough - departing from Madrid. Once again for those of you not up on your Geography booking a flight out of Madrid as opposed to Barce is like flying out of LA instead of Phoenix. So we had to scramble, and luckily we were able to buy some of the last remaining tickets for an overnight train that next night that would get us to Madrid in just enough time to catch our flight. After that was secured, we spent our last day touring a castle/monastery/church named Tibi Dabo which might have been the highlight of the trip, and then we loaded up on our train and headed to Madrid. I won't elaborate so as not to turn this blog into an online book, but I now understand the plight of the sardine. Whit managed to sleep like a rock and the short of it is we made it to Madrid and 16 hours later made it home with some memories that will last a lifetime. If you get a chance, our recommendation is go to Spain.