Monday, May 11, 2009

Viva la Barcelona!


The trip was relatively smooth. The planes were on time. I met a nice middle-aged woman heading to Ireland. She told me her son wanted to be an architect, but not until he'd already wasted $100,000 in tuition trying to be a lawyer. I have to admit that I felt for her.

I managed to get through my first day in the city without spending anything :). A girl that was on her way home gave me her expiring metro card, and about 5 or 6 trains later I was at my little apartment. When I say little, I mean it's about 8' x 12', so it's pretty cramped, but I did that on purpose. Not only is it cheap and close to the metro, but it's such a stuffy little room that all you want to do in it is sleep. So it won't tempt me to waste precious time in a nice hotel room that could be spent seeing the city.

So the above picture obviously isn't Barcelona, but it was the aha moment of my day. As the plane was taking off from Amsterdam, the pilot was nice enough to take a right turn over the city and give me a glimpse before leaving. Comparing this view of Amsterdam to a similar view of Detroit sets me back a little bit. Not so much because one is better than the other, but because two places that seem so similar from afar operate so differently. You may take a gander of Detroit on google earth and see what I'm talking about. Then search for some street level images and compare. In any case it gives me hope that Detroit can be saved.

So I hope these blogs will be interesting, if not amusing for everyone. My goal is to make a post for every day, which I think will make a pretty good little journal of the trip, as well as keep everyone up on my adventures. Stay tuned...

4 comments:

  1. Congrats again on *almost* being done with school for a while Tyson! This blog is a great idea. I look forward to following your adventures. So you all had to find your own places to stay in while in Barcelona?

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  2. As I was thinking about the similarities between Amsterdam and Detroit I realized that all of the similarities I could think of are illegal in Detroit and are not only legal in Amsterdam but economically dependent. Soon we will have socialized medicine and drugs will be legal.....then we will call ourselves New....of wait that one is taken...we will be Really New Amsterdam! Glad you made it ok. Keep the posts coming and tell Springer to post sometime as well.

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  3. Yes, we did have to find our own places to stay, which worked out pretty good for me since I like to find ways to cut costs, unfortunately most of the group still hasn't gotten it figured out, so they're staying in hotels and hostels until they get something more permanent. Hopefully everyone pulls through ok.

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