"I Got Here Nine Weeks Ago and Just Never Left"

After a long night of glowsticks, heavy bass and solid dance moves Sean and I had one last day in Barcelona. We were forced out of our hostel at 10 am with spliting headaches and little to no money in our pockets. We ventured into the city square looking for the Picasso Museum and realized that once again we had no clue where we were. Running on only a few hours of sleep and a half bottle of water we decide we needed to rest and regroup. So we made our first attempt of the trip to find a place in public to "rest." We found some shade in a small little park and with all of our lugage on hand and we made ourselves some "beds." Now im not sure what the official bylaws are when it comes to being homeless but im pretty sure Sean and I were doing a pretty decent job at it. With backpacks as pillows and jackets as blankets we slept for a few hours and woke up refreshed and ready for our train to San Sebastian.

Now Sean and I both knew very little about this particualr stop, all we knew was that is was on the northwest coast of Spain and that apparently the surfing was pretty good. The only reason we were even going was beacuse a friend of mine, Alexis, had raved about how great of a place it was. We arrived at the train station and realized that this town may be the smallest of all the place we had been. There was no metro system, only 20 people at the train station, and very few big buildings. We quickly found our hostel, Olgas Place, which as the name says is owned and run by a Russian woman named Olga. She was blond, tall, and looked as if she had just finished a tall glass of Russian vodka. She showed us our room speaking in broken English with a think Russian accent and we were both immediatly huge fans of her.

Typically our hostels have been down a dark alley and have rooms with no windows, or sometimes if your lucky a view of a brick building. Not at Olgas Place, we did not just have windows we had a huge outdoor deck conected to our room. I opened the door to our deck to see a huge beach no more then a block from us and about 50 people in the water surfing. Now Sean is your typical surfing hater, he didnt want to try because there were too many people in the water and because the water was too cold, he had an endless supply of excuess. So I was forced to leave him at the hostel and go searching for a place to rent a board. I quickly found a nice little surf shop and grabed a board. I got to spend the rest of the day catching waves, chatting with people in the water, and getting some good sun. The water was pretty warm and the waves were only about waist high, but they were breaking nicley. The beach was a little cove with big cliffs of rock on one end and an inlet on the other. The majority of the people in the water were local and you could tell, they all spoke spanish and could absolutly rip on these small little waves. It was so strange surfing in a foreign contry, surrounded by people speaking a differet language, but all having such a great time out in the water, it was really special. I spent the better part of 5 hours having a blast in the water and could have stayed till sun down but wanted to see what Sean was up to.

After my full day of surfing I came back to our hostel to find Sean ready to go searching for some dinner. We asked the guy working the front counter of our hostel for a good and cheap place to eat, without hesitation he told us to go get the pallela from a little place called San Fransico. We got to the resturant and it seemed a bit more like a locals bar then a resturant seeing as there was no one eatting and only three people in the place. We were greated by the owner, he sat us down at a table outside, gave us no menu and two empty glasses. Sean and I were both a bit puzzeled, but we sat patiently wondering what was going on. The guy comes back with a full pitcher of beer and asks if we want pallela. We both nod and he runs off. We sat drinking our beers expecting the owner to come back out in 30 seconds with a plate of some old pallea that had been sitting around all day waiting to either be served or thrown out. But then 20 minutes go by and we start smelling something delicious coming out of the bar. The owner comes out with two empty plates and a fresh skilit of the most amazing spread of seafood and rice I had ever seen. Sean and I both immediately took turns serving oursleves the biggest plates of pallela we could imagine. The towering plates of rice, musscels, clams, conch, calamari, fish, and shrimp were quickly devowered. We were both in a sever food coma when the owner comes out with another fresh pithcer of beer, one that I am positive neither one of us ordered. We finished the other pitcher and were just looking to get our check, but at this resturant the customer has no say, its up to the owner when you can leave. This was no joke we went to ask for it and he told us he would let us leave when he was ready to lets us go. It has now been close to two hours and we were ready to get back to our hostel, but of course the meal is not over yet. This guy comes out now with a big bottle of some green stuff and three shot glasses. He serves the two of a shot and pours himself one. Sean and I take down the sweet liquor with the onwer like champs and we talk with him for a bit about how unbelievable the food was. At this point I am wondering if we will ever get out of this place, but the owner finally tells us it is time to pay. We were expeting the bill to be a serious dent to our budgets but the owner must have liked us because the total was only 30 euros. It has to be my personal favorite meal of the trip so far.

We got bak to our hostel equiped with a six pack of 9% beers and another bottle of 1 euro white wine. Olgas place was already rocking when we got back, there must have been 20 kids from all over drinking on the front porch and in the comon room. We walked in and were quickly thrown into some drinking game that I am pretty sure was created that night. It was a mixture of Australians, Canadians, South Africans, and Americans, all looking to have a great time. One of the Americans in partiualr was looking to have a good night and was making sure everyone knew about it. He was the quintessential highschool hero. After every drink he would finish he would scream something along hte lines of, thats number 5 for me or something like Im getting so wasted tonight. Sean and I had to hold our breath to prevent from uncontrolable laughter, the kid was kiling us.

The next character from San Sebastian could be one of our favorite people from the whole trip. As we are all drinking and sharing stories in the common room in comes a big dark Australian guy named Terik. Terik was the same guy that recomended San Fransico and the pallela to us so we knew that he was legit. We got to talking with him and he said that he would be off desk duty in 20 minutes and he would shows us the good spots to go out. Just as he promised right at 11 he was ready to show us a good time. Now all 20 slightly inebriated tourist from all over the world are following our main man Terki. He leads us to a great little bar with good music and the best drink specials weve had since we got to Europe. For one euro we were getting massive glasses of san gria or beer. Sean and I opted for the san gria and were throwing them back like water. We got to talking to Terki and he was telling us about how he eneded up in San Sebastian. We have learned over the trip that no one in the world travels like the Aussies do and Terki was no diferent. He came to San Sebastian three months ago to do some surfing with his friends. Apparently he missed his train that his friends got on and instead of buying a new ticket or changing his reservation he decied that he liked the place so why not just stay. So now three months later he is working the front desk of a hostel that he lives in, surfing when the waves are good, and of course being a party liaison for the tourists, what a life.

After a few too many san grias Sean and I found ourselves on the dance floor throwing down moves like we were auditioning for the next You Got Served movie. Everything we had we were putting down, and I would like to think that we were the best dancers there. By we I mean Sean, he was starting dance offs with anyone that would take him on and everyone was loving it. The night ended with me searching out some late night food, only to find that nothing was open so I was forced to purchase some chips from a vending machine. I thought they were just your typical Lays potato chips, not in Europe. I opened the bag and stuffed some chips in my mouth and quickly learned that these were not plain chips, they were Ham flavored. It was one of the strangest things I have had so far on the trip, litterally it feels like a regular potato chip, but them bam you have got four slices of deli style ham in your mouth. Sean tried one and immeditaly spit them all over our porch, I guess our taste buds just couldnt hanlde the ham.

I woke up the next morining feeling a little rough due to the san grias but it was nothing a little morning surf couldnt fix. So I went down the block and got a couple more hours of surfing in before we had to check out of our hostel. Olga was sad to see us leave so soon, she gave us some authentic Olgas Place t shirts and told us to come back next year. We did not want to leave our little paradise, but we had to go, in two days we would be meeting Bernard in his real hometown, Paris.