Jack Johnson in Barcelona!

This past weekend, Annie and I went to Barcelona to see JACK JOHNSON in concert! wheeeeeeeeee! Since we have both been to Barcelona before (me in high school and Annie over Christmas with her parents), we decided to make a flying trip there just to see the concert, stay the night, and then come back! That kind of seems to be our thing, doesn't it? But I do regret that we didn't have a little more time to explore, because Barcelona is a beautiful city, and probably one of my favorites in Europe!

So we took the train Saturday morning to La Tour de Carol, right on the France/Spain border, hung out in the nice train station there for a little while, then continued on towards Barcelona. Total travel time: 7 hours, ouch! We ended up getting into Barcelona around 4:30, and went straight to our hostel, which was RIGHT off Las Ramblas (the big pedestrian walkway). This hostel was recommended to us by Stewart, another student in our program, and he was right, it was really good! They even serve breakfast AND dinner, and it's included in your room fee! Unfortunately, just with the time of the concert and then our train the next morning, we were unable to partake. :-( So we got our stuff settled in our nice 4-person room, then we headed out to wander on La Rambla before we had to get to the concert (doors were at 7). So we looked at all the funny street performers, including a lady in a pink fat suit and a funny cowboy man who did a cute dance. Then we got falafel for dinner and headed to the concert, which was in the old olympic basketball stadium.

(Jack's opening number...look at all the digital camera screens in the audience! they are like the new lighter for concerts)

As we're heading to the concert, we realize that every single person going there is American, or British. Jack Johnson appears to be some sort of Anchorman "NEWS CREW ASSEMBLE" type of call (he must have a magical conch shell) because I think every college student studying in Europe went to this concert. Which was fine, but Annie and I got to see some prime examples of how we try NOT to be typicalAmericans. So the concert itself was amaaaaaaaaazing. ALO and Matt Costa opened, and I really liked Matt Costa. And Jack came out and played a song with ALO, which was good and I had never heard it. And then during Jack's part, he played a bunch of old stuff, and surprisingly nothing from the new Curious George album (which is really cute and good, so I'm mad!) So fun fun concert happened, and then afterwards everyone was hanging out outside the stadium, and Annie and I randomly run into some Americans that Annie met at her hostel in Malaga that are studying in Italy! So we hung out with them for a few minutes, Annie ripped down part of Jack's face from a poster, and then we bought enormous hot dogs, which were delicious (hot dogs are not really a popular part of french cuisine, surprisngly). So we had good intentions of going out and dancing and being crazy, but we both got hit with such a wave of exhaustion that it would have been impossible. So we were lame and went back to our hostel, and then proceeded to be woken up at 6 am by a bunch of loud, drunk Americans in our hallway, and Annie yelled at them. GO ANNIE.

Then in the morning, we walked around in the beautiful sunshine, and it was nice because it was early (around 8:30 am) on a sunday, so not that many people were around, which is a real contrast to Las Ramblas usually! Then I sat on this huge lion. And then we bought the most expensive breakfast ever (but the churros and chocolate was delicioius! But I don't know if it was 22 euros delicous...) Oh well, that's Barcelona for you. Then we RAN to catch our train because we are stupid and apparently can't tell time...? But all went off okay, and we took the long trip back to Toulouse after a great weekend!