"I <3 Roma"

Since I have two weeks off from classes, I wanted to travel outside of Paris, especially since I'd be guiding my parents around for more than all of my second week. Originally, I'd planned to go to Italy to visit Bethany and Emily, but Bethany already had plans to go to Spain, and Emily was looking into traveling to Greece. Emily offered to let me tag along to Greece, but the flights, etc. were really expensive, so that idea was nixed. I toyed with the idea of going to Rome, but was stressed about finding a flight and a hostel at the last minute. Talking it over with some AYA friends and Adena's friend Ben, Ben suddenly cocked his head and said,

--Wait, you'd be going this weekend? Not to be creepy, but... I have a private room with two beds already reserved, but it's just me, the other bed's empty...
--Abuh? Really?
--Yeah, if we split it, it'd only be about 20 euro a night...
--Really? I'll definitely have to consider that...
--...it might be nice to have company...

My goal a seeming a bit more attainable, I bought a ticket that night. I'd have a 9 hour overnight layover in the Vienna airport, but that shouldn't be too bad... also, it was the only way for less than $600 that I could catch a plane back from Rome at a reasonable time. I sent a message to Ben to ask if his hostel offer still stood. From the moment he responded, "I sent a message to the Camping Tiber people to ask..." I was suspicious of the location...

He sent me a link to the "hostel's" website. Camping Tiber is a campground that also has trailer lodging and two "dorms" which are more like regular hostel rooms, I think. Ben had reserved a "Bungalow," i.e. half of one trailer with two twin beds and a private bathroom. The only downside was that the campground is located about 30 minutes by train and 5 minutes by campground shuttle outside of Rome. Also, the last train out of Rome leaves around 10:30, but not exactly, so the last shuttle to the campground is at 11. This shouldn't have be too big of a problem, right? I'd just have to watch the time and head back early each night.

My flight to Vienna was fine, the Starbucks people didn't mind that I slept in one of their armchairs for 4 hours until I woke up around 4:15. They didn't even mind that I could barely communicate "Tall Vanilla Latte, please," an hour later in any language, German, English, or otherwise. I was surrounded by Germans, but the guy addressed me in English and I was still operating in French, but trying to read as much of my Italian phrasebook as possible, in short lost with words. My flight left Vienna at 7:30 am and I got to the airport outside Rome and somehow managed to meet up with Emily in the city by 10:30. When Emily and I met Ben, he asked, "So, what are we doing?" Emily and I didn't really have any specific plans, and but Ben had a reservation for 2 at a museum because two of his friends weren't able to go... but that would have meant leaving Emily after just meeting her... so Ben went alone. Emily and I did a general tour of the city, had some awesome pizza, went to Piazza del Popolo and the park there, the Pantheon, ate some gelato...

I had told Ben I'd like to go back to the hostel at the same time as him since he'd already been there one night, but he called to say he was going back when I was out to dinner with Emily, so I would have to find my way back alone. We ordered a liter of wine, which came in a pitcher and is a LOT of wine, I think we each had four FULL glasses or so. For dessert, we ordered the " Surprise" to be adventurous and the "mini" size to be prudent, as opposed to "media" or "monstre" (?) Our confusion dissapated when the waiter presented to us a large plate with a penis and two balls drizzled with chocolate, and a bit of whipped cream on the end for effect. Made out of a pie-crust-type pastry and filled with Nutella, it was friggen delicious, but we were glad we'd chosen "mini" because it was still a bit big for two people. In terms of getting back, I didn't think I'd have too much difficulty; I had researched the Roman transportation system pretty extensively, I thought... Emily decided it would be easiest to send me to Termini, the central station in Rome, and I could catch the metro to the train from there.

The bus ended up taking about 45 minutes to arrive, which meant I got to the station at 10:50. I knew the trains would be done for the night, but Ben had said something about buses to the campground, so I called to ask him which ones. He knew the bus numbers, but not where he had gotten on, or where he had transferred. "You know what direction to walk in when you get to the station, right?" Apparently I would be walking about a mile from the bus stop at Prima Porta to the campground, alone, at night. I frantically searched through the buses, but saw none that said to Prima Porta, or the even the numbers that Ben had taken. Also, the station was basically empty since public transportation would be shutting down for the evening. Ben called again to ask when my birthday was and what city I was born in so reception would let me in when I finally arrived.

I tried to ask a man in uniform passing by for help, "Mi scusi, parla inglese?" He looked miffed and replied in short, "No," and continued on. I burst into tears because I had no idea how to get back on my own without the metro and was scared out of my mind. At that moment, a girl came up behind me, "Do you need help?" She looked worried, too. I tried to respond but only managed to nod. She asked where I was going, but she'd never heard of Prima Porta and it wasn't even on my map, this damn station is so far away. She stayed with me while her boyfriend went to ask someone for directions for me. They told me to take the bus to Mancini and showed me which one it was, but I was still unsure how that would get me to Prima Porta, but I had no choice and they seemed relatively sure this was the right bus. I thanked them and got on the bus still crying and angry at Ben for not being more helpful, or waiting for me or something.

When I got to Mancini, I immediately found a bus to Prima Porta and thanked God (when in Rome for Easter weekend...) for sending that girl to help me. Navigating from Prima Porta was another thing. The buses don't announce each stop, and it wasn't until the LED sign at the front of the bus switched from PRIMA PORTA to DEPOSITO that I realized that the driver and I were the only ones on the bus. I ran up to the front and asked, "Mi scusi, Dov'e Via Tibernia?" He asked something in Italian I couldn't understand, and I asked if he spoke English. No soap, then I realized what he'd asked. "Camping Tiber? SI! Camping Tiber!" He mimed that he'd show me the way and I could walk. He pulled out of the bus depot, turned and went up the street a ways, then stopped and opened the door. He motioned toward me and moved his arms straight ahead like an air traffic controlman. "Via Tibernia." Gratzie, gratzie! I got off and started walking. At first it was fine, I passed a few restaurants... Then civilization petered out and I was walking alone passed run down houses, an old factory, across the road from what looked like woods, I could hear dogs barking and howling in the distance... This final leg of my trip took about half an hour, but I finally saw the main entrance at the end of a dirt road and almost started crying again.

I went up to the reception desk and explained who I was, he gave me a map of the campground and circled which "Bungalow" we were staying in, then circled the restaurant to say Ben might be waiting for me there. I passed the restaurant on my way to the bungalow, but saw no sign of my "travel buddy" so I just went to the trailer. I knocked, but no answer. I tried to call Ben, no answer. Back to the restaurant. Not there. Back to the trailer. Knock, no answer. Call, no answer. Back to the restaurant... At 12:30 I finally texted him, "Where are you?" No response. I walked back to reception, "Non e la." The guy looked confused, something in Italian like, "You didn't see him in the restaurant?" "No... Do you have another key?" He pulled a large ring of keys out of a drawer in the desk and found an empty keychain that he wrote "105" on and handed to me. I made my final trip back to the trailer, unlocked the door and stepped inside. Someone stirred in the darkness and I could just make out Ben's silhouette sitting up from the bed closest to the door:

--Jen?
WTF.
"Ya."
"Welcome." He stretched out his arms to present the room to me and laid back down to sleep.
I could have punched him in his face.

But I was too tired and fell asleep instead. The next day he left early, he had a ticket to attend the St Peter's mass, but said I could text him around 1 to see if it was over yet so we could meet up. I suggested he call me when he was done, since I'd have no way of knowing... He agreed that made more sense and warned me that there was no hot water in the shower. I was already cold because there was shit for insulation in this place, but Ben had told me the day before it was cold at night, so it wasn't a surprise. I tried to take a shower regardless, but it was way too fricken cold. I ended up standing in the shower in my towel and holding the showerhead so that just my hair got wet. This half worked, mostly because I could turn the water off to vigorously rub my head to try and warm it back up between shampooings. On the bright side, I realized we had a small heater right between our beds, and it worked pretty well if you aimed it at yourself, I couldn't believe Ben found this thing right in the middle of the room... In any case, I left with wet, half frozen hair and went to meet Emily at the Pantheon. Two of her roomates came, and we saw the mass there together which was cool, despite the cold breeze coming from the hole in the Pantheon's dome. I felt worse for Emily and her friends because they had actually dressed up for the service, so they were in skirts and flats, whereas I had two layers of shirts under my sweater and coat, though my wet hair didn't help anything.

After the mass we went to get lunch since there was no word from Ben, and ended up running into another Bard girl! She came up while we were eating pizza on the steps of some monument, and said, "Jenn? Do you remember me?" Holy crap, it's Rebecca! "I'm Rebecca..." "Yeah! Omg, how are you?" She's apparently studying in Barcelona and was in Rome for the weekend (like me!) and recognized me and Emily as she was passing by. We shared our respective stories about study abroad, university strikes (Paris is not alone, although the Barcelona one sounded much smaller in scale), trying to find housing around Bard but not on-campus, tried to take a picture together to commemorate the occasion of our meeting...and then, since there was still no word from Ben, we wished Rebecca safe travels and headed to the Castle of San Angelo, the castle that King... Paul? inhabited during his reign. Emily explained the process of fresco painting to me as we walked through room after room of painted walls and we got a nice view of the city from the roof of the castle. On our way back down, two guys approached us, alternately speaking Italian, then French, then some English: "Que bella, tu aimes?" and then "Ciao, you want to take photo?" as he pretended to pose with Emily so I would take their picture.

Our last stop before dinner (still no Ben, I figured he'd met up with his friends) was the ruins of a huge Roman bathhouse from back in the day. We tried to get a student discount on the entrance fee, but the guy wasn't having it. "What country are you from? The discount is only for European Union citizens." Lame. All of Rome is that way, apparently. France has those discounts too, but also for anyone under age 25 regardless of citizenship. The 6 euro was worth it anyway because the place was MASSIVE and all around pretty cool. The place had to be at least 100 feet tall, and all the walls were made up of thin bricks and about 3 feet thick. From the arched passages above, you could tell the original building had several storeys, but none have survived, just doorways leading to open air.

When I finally heard from Ben, it was to say that he wanted to head back early again, so I'd be traveling alone back to the bungalow again. I actually ended up going back earlier than I'd planned because Emily and I were both exhausted. I found the train without any problems and was about 2/3 of the way to Prima Porta when Ben walked up to me from the far side of the car. I asked how his day had gone, he said it was fine, he'd tried to call me but for some reason his call wouldn't go through. "Oh, weird... but I got your text tonight." "...Yeah. I guess I could have tried texting earlier, huh?" On the shuttle to the campground two guys he'd met the first night came over to say Hi, a guy from Finland and one from Mexico who'd run into a crazy woman from Pennsylvania in the Forum trying to give private guided tours of the area, talking to herself and walls as she searched for takers who weren't 1)Ignorant, 2) Tourists (in the forum?? the Romans don't really hang out there, or speak English...) or 3) American, and therefore ignorant tourists, she'd said. Then they asked where we were staying, how's the bungalow? Fine, Ben said, just no hot water and cold at night. "But there's a space heater," I pointed out. "Yeah, Tomaz agreed, "that works pretty well." "Yeah, it does, but I decided it was a little too bright for me to be able to sleep," Ben argued. So he DID know about it... and would rather freeze than have light in the room.

Given how pleasant the ride back had been, it was only fitting that something go wrong when we got back to the trailer. "Um..." Ben started, looking from the door to the wall next to his bed, "We have an ant problem." It was true, there were about 50 ants lining the wall from the door to the corner of the room, and even a few stragglers among Ben's sheets. He killed most of them with a flip flop using a squish and smear technique on the floor, and I followed him with a soapy wad of toilet paper to try and wash away their scent so no more would follow their path. We tried to block off the hole in the wall that they were going to as well, and saw that we weren't the first to try, there was already a wad jammed in the corner from former travellers. Blocking the door was a bigger problem since there as about a 1 inch gap between the door and the frame. Awesome. Once the ant army on the floor, we attacked Ben's sheets. He gave his blankets a brief once over and put them on my bed while we checked his sheets. We found about three and carried the sheets outside to shake them out. We had remade his bed, slid it away from the wall into the middle of the room, and turned off the lights when he decided to check if the wall was still ant-free. They were already coming back.

Morning #2 "in Rome," still no hot water, even though Ben asked them about it the day before. Emily had work to do, so we'd agreed to meet in the afternoon, I'd have the morning to visit the Colosseum and the Forum on my own. Ben had already seen the Colosseum, but hadn't seen the Forum yet (Although the 12 euro ticket he'd bought for the Colosseum was good for both if you go the same day...) so when he asked if I wanted to get breakfast at the campground's restaurant I figured I could wait a little longer to head into the city if it meant I'd have company at the Forum. Once we had arrived in Rome about an hour later, Ben went to... somewhere else and I continued to the Colosseum and the Forum solo.

Wandering around the ruins for 3 hours or so, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the freedom of exploring on my own. I didn't have to react to anything or anyone, just me and my camera and the remnants of an ancient civilization... and tons of tourists, of course. I think what I liked most about being alone, though, was not feeling like I had to belong to one country or another. If you're with a group speaking French, you get labeled "French," in English, "American," but alone nobody knows where your from and just lets you be you without categorization. That's probably not entirely true, a blonde girl with a pink polkadot bag is probably not Japanese or Italian or even French... but it was nice all alone.

Emily met me at 1:30 and we wandered for a bit, past the Marcello theater up to the Piazza Navona, to the San Luigi dei Francesci church, to the Santa Maria Maggiore (soooo pretty! I was sad my camera battery had died). We were gonna try to see a movie, but didn't have time if I wanted to take the train back. Instead we got some gelato for dinner and ate on the steps of parliament, then walked up the Spanish steps and caught the tail end of the sunset over Rome. We hung out there for a while, just talking about being abroad, fitting in (or not) in foreign cities, going back to Bard... I decided to leave around 9:15 since Emily had class the next day and I'd have to get up at 6 to get a shuttle from the campground to the airport (at least the campground had a shuttle to Fiumicino airport, it had 1 redeeming quality!) so I wouldn't have to walk to Prima Porta even earlier to catch the train, a metro, and another train. I went to text Ben and realized he'd beaten me to it... by 4 hours. He'd sent me a message around 5 to say, "What are you up to this evening?" I sent an apologetic text back and said I was headed out but would wait for him at the Flaminio stop if he was ready to go, too. He replied that he was eating in the area but would meet me there. Emily and I said good-bye and I walked back up Via del Corso to the Flaminio train station.

It took me a little bit longer than I'd anticipated to get to Flaminio, but I looked for Ben when I got there and didn't see him, so I figured he was still eating. Just in case, I waited between the turnstiles and the train, and greeted him when he in. "When you said Flaminio, I thought you meant the metro stop, so I waited for you there, but you never showed up..." Shit, how is finding 1 person so difficult? I felt bad, but it wasn't quite my fault and it wasn't his fault... "I'm really sorry I only just got your text from earlier..." "It's ok..." On the train I joked about how Emily and I hadn't even eaten dinner, we'd just had ice cream, and he 1-upped me by saying he'd foregone finding an Italian restaurant and ended up eating at a nearby Burger King. Now I felt REALLY bad, but there was nothing I could really do.

The ants were back, of course, but fewer in number. I tried to pack most of my stuff that night so I wouldn't wake Ben up the next morning, but ended up having to repack anyway when I got up at 6 am. I went to catch the shuttle at 6:30, and was glad it hadn't left yet. Actually, it hadn't even arrived yet. Two other Americans would be taking the same shuttle to FCO, a boy and his girlfriend(?). Fifteen minutes later, they were getting worried about the time because their flight was at 9:00. "Is the shuttle coming?" they asked the guy at Reception. "It's COMING. Relax, it's not the guy's fault..." Tensions were high, but the cold morning air kept tempers cool, kind of. The driver rolled up at 3 minutes to 7 and we got on the bus. "Fiumicino?" "Yes, Fiumicino." It was a 45 minute drive, but felt longer as I watched the driver almost kill us time and time again. I've used the phone myself while driving, but I've never seen someone smoke and talk on the phone and drive at the same time. It was even worse when he finished his cigarette, because he decided to roll another one while we were on the highway...

Somehow we all made it there unharmed, and I said good-bye and thank you when I realized the other two were pulling out their wallets. For whatever reason, it had never occurred to me I'd have to pay for this service, crappy service though it was. "The website said 12 euro to go the the airport." We each pulled out 12 euro and offered it to the driver. He shook his head and said in English, "Two." We were confused. Two each? We tried that. Still wrong. He held up one finger and pulled out his phone to call Camping Tiber headquarters. He spoke to someone for about a minute, then passed me the phone. "Uh, hello?" "You are two together and there's a girl alone, right?" "No, I'm the girl alone, and the other two are here." "Okay, it's 50 euro per group, so you are 50 euro and they together are 50 euro." "50 euro PER GROUP?!" The guy with his girlfriend was visibly angry. The man on the other end of the line started talking again. "Yes, 50 per group. Here's what you do: You tell him you're together, then it's 60 for the three of you, so 20 each." (In retrospect, if it was 50 per group and we told him we were 1 group, that should have been 50/3, no?) I hung up and told the other two what he'd said. "No," the guy said, "It said 12 EACH online, that's all I'm paying. He tried to explain this to the driver, who caught the attention of some policemen standing nearby, they started in our direction. The American asked the driver to call again, and spoke to the guy himself. His side of the conversation went like this:

"Hello? We're not paying 20 euro, it says on the website 12 each to the airport, that's all we're paying. Are you kidding me? It was half an hour late! Yes, it says 12 euro online... That's to the OTHER airport? Well that's false advertising... Yes, it IS your problem!" Finally he hung up. "What do you want to do?" he asked me and his girlfriend.
"I mean... we have to pay him. We don't really have a choice, and you're going to miss your flight..." We handed over our 20 euro each and walked toward the terminal entrance. "Did you guys even have hot water in your room?"
"Not for the first three days," the girl told me.

I went to check in, but the woman at the Austrian Airlines counter said my flight had been overbooked, would I like to take a direct flight to Paris? Of course! ...when is it? There was a flight that would arrive in Paris at 12:30, but I'd have to come back at 9:45 to see if there was any room on the flight. My original flight was scheduled to leave at 10:30. I went back to the woman at 9:40 and she said, "5 more minutes." I gave her 7 and went back. She greeted me with a smile and said, "You can stay on our flight." This was disappointing, but it was also bad news since I now had less than 15 minutes to pass through security and get to my gate before my flight started boarding... I ran as soon as I had repacked my liquids and grabbed my coat from the plastic security bin, and got to gate B18 by 10:20. By 7pm, I was back "home" in Paris after just over 12 hours of travelling. Ploof!

Dos dias en Espana

So, yeah. Barcelona was awesome. I took the metro to get to the bus to get me to Beauvais to take the plane to Spain, the bus to Barcelona... and met Emily! Thank god, too, or the weekend would have sucked. I went with 7 euro of credit on my phone and got back with only 2 because it took us so long to find each other (so long being all of 3 minutes... don't call foreign cell phones in Europe if you can avoid it... or just fly normal airlines to normal airports and avoid the confusion in the first place).

But apparently the world is smaller than it seems. I ended up in a row alone for the flight to Reus, across from an American girl and a young Spanish guy she was asking, "How do you say, 'Hello?' Oh, duh, Hola. How do you say, 'Thank you?'" I met her after the flight when she turned to me and asked, "Are you taking the bus to Barcelona, too?" Half stunned, I replied slowly, "Yes." "Oh, sorry... Do you speak English?" Lol there was half a doubt in her mind that I was foreign. "Yes, I do. I think we just go out this way and the bus is right there, I'm American." Turns out, she's from West Hartford and has heard of Plainville. She was meeting up with friends, too, "They're gonna be waiting in the station with a drink for me," and would be going back to Paris the same day as me.

Emily and I went to our hostel once we'd found each other (running hug, luggage in tow). Our hostel was hilarious, we had to pay in cash but they claimed not to have any change *_*? and the whole place had sort of a... glitzy industrial feel. For example, the stairwell was cement with silver pipes running throughout, and purple glitter on the walls. We spent the first night just kind of wandering up and down the main street, turning down all of the cans of beer people were trying to sell to us. After about 3 rounds of the block, we walked toward the ocean and found a mall... and about a hundred people headed in and up to what appeared to be a night club in the mall. Uninterested, we walked around until 1 or so before going to bed.

The next morning we said, "Ok... what do we want to do?" We didn't have much to start with; Emily wanted to see the Museu de Picasso, and I wanted to get to the Sagrada Familia church. The museum was within walking distance, and we'd be inside for a bit which would allow us to wait out the rain... which never really stopped, just paused and recommenced. It wasn't too bad on the walk to the museum, it was kind of nice actually because it made all of the colors of the buildings stand out more. I always feel like Paris is rows and rows of cream colored cement and gray roofs, but Barcelona seemed full of color. Part of this impression could have been the number of plants on the street and pouring down from their ceramic pots on balconies and windows, or maybe just my hyperattention because I was outside of Paris and eager to take everything in. Whatever it was, the whole city just seemed more vivid.

I was skeptical of the Picasso museum at first, just because I felt like I knew what he was about and didn't really get it, but I enjoyed the museum much more than I expected. Most surprising to me was his early work, where he was very realistic in his rendering of people, landscapes, still lifes. From what we overheard one tourguide say, Picasso started painting when he was 14 (15? Young.) and most of the realistic paintings were from that time when he was first starting out. When we went into the rooms with more abstract pieces, they tended to be in a series and it was really cool to see what features were identifyable in one rendering but not in another of the same image. Apart from the amazing artwork, we were entertained by an elderly couple (most notably the wife) who came up on both sides of us and pushed right past to examine the painting for themselves. This was funny because I'd just finished explaining about one tour guide I'd had at the Musee d'Orsay who hated the Japanese tourists because many of them would walk right in front of you to take a picture of some or another painting, and then these this couple appeared out of nowhere and pushed us out of the way. We moved on without argument and joined another group looking at a monochromatic portrait of a woman, when the elderly woman reappeared and passed in front of the group. Without stopping, she glanced at the painting, indicated it over her shoulder to her husband with her thumb, and observed, "This iss pahta th' BLOO peeriuhd," and continued on her course. Emily and I had to excuse ourselves from the room before bursting out laughing. We visited the rest of the museum without interuption, although we did hear her from across the room tell her husband, "This iss a good one," in the same manner as before. So now you know, there's at least one good one in the Museu de Picasso.

The Sagrada Familia was a less succesful excursion because 1) it cost 10 euro to get behind the gates, 2) there were already 200 people in line to get behind the gates, and 3) it was pouring. We managed to get a few pictures from the outside which was almost entirely under construction and quickly decided to cut out losses and find lunch. Looking at the map, we saw something called the History of Catalunya museum and made that our trajectory. Since we were students, we managed to get in free and wandered through the displays, ignoring the early history since that's pretty much the same everywhere - nomadic tribes, discovering fire, using the first tools - but had lost interest by the time we got to the most recent century and were just talking at that point.

I have a thing for old churches apparently, so we headed out in search of another church, Santa Maria or something like that, and found it after only 2 tries (I blame the map). This church was closed and locked, so we couldn't get in there, either. Discouraged, we agreed to investigate the "Museu de Xocolata" to see if it was what we hoped... And it was! Sort of, anyway. Entry is 3 something euro and comes with a dark chocolate bar to nibble on as you walk through the relatively small museum. The exhibits are brief explanations about chocolate production, mixed with encased chocolate sculptures of horse-drawn chariots, bull fights, and even Asterix and Obelix! They posted pictures of past sculptures, including a chocolate replica of the Sagrada Familia and the Olympic stadium and grounds from 1988 in Barcelona. Of course, there was a gift shop/cafe, so Emily and I had a chocolate milkshake (thick chocolate milk) and hot chocolate (literally. as in, a chocolate bar melted down in your mug with whipped cream... Muy delicioso!) We walked by the Arc de Triomf to see if it really existed and I think it's prettier than the French one, again because it's colorful and not just gray on gray.

Museu/iglisia-ed out, we returned to La Rambla to take an Opera tour, but at 6:30 we had missed the last tour by about 5 hours. Instead I dragged Emily into a series of souvenir shops in search of a cool mug (because I insist my souvenirs be functional). We were staring at one rack, just kind of looking them over, and a worker came over to help us. As we struggling to guess at how you'd say, "Just looking" in Catalan, the worker said in English, "Where are you from?" "America." He looked surprised. "You are the quietest blonde American girls I have EVER seen." He went on to imitate them with his Indian-accented English, "I kind of like this one?What do you think?Do you think my mom will like it?I don't know.Oh look!This one has a donkey...Why do American girls like donkeys so much?" We had no answer for him, but I bought a mug from his store. No donkeys.

Dinner was amazing, we had huge skillets of paella, sangria, and dessert at a nice little restaurant, but by the time we'd finished we were both exhausted and Emily had to leave early the next day. We were going to go to the beach in the morning, but had forgotten about the time change and didn't account for the lost hour. Luckily, she made it to her train on time and I wandered around a little bit more before meeting the American girl in line again for the bus to Reus. They'd eaten at "this amazing Asian restaurant/bar" and almost slept in past check out time the next day. She asked if I'd gone out at all and I started to say, "Yeah, we went to the Picas-- oh, like nightlife go out? No, no we didn't do that." I was half surprised we had so little in common apart from travel plans, but it was nice to have some company, even if it was half-interested company who just wanted to cut in line to make it on the bus.