Euro Road Trip Recap: Day 3 - Barcelona or Bust

We drove into Barcelona in the afternoon and decided to head to Park Güell, which is located on the hilltop and provides panorama views of the city. To get there, we walked up some pretty steep streets and took an outdoor escalator -- something I haven't encountered since being in Hong Kong.



After doing the usual tourist picture thing, we descended back down to our car and headed towards one of the hostels wikitravel recommended. However, that proved to be quite a challenge since the GPS officially crapped out on us (Viphak dropped it the night before).

An hour later, we finally found our hostel, which was located near the La Rambla, the most famous touristy street in Barcelona. In the center of the street is a tree-lined pedestrian path and off to the sides are tourist shops after tourist shops that rival those in Time Square in terms of unpleasantness and aggressiveness of the shopkeepers.

For the rest of the day, we checked out the harbor side and the Columbus Monument -- where he stands, pointing out to sea, but oddly enough, not in the direction of America.



The rest of the night concluded with us pigging out on pallela at dinner, trying to find a bar near our hostel that wasn't an Irish Pub, and ignoring shady guys on the street offering to sell us cans of low quality beer from a six pack.

We finally ended up at the Ramblas Tavern where we sucked down 4 Euro beers and watched as everyone from a sleezy old biker to a guy selling roses hit on the 2 girls sitting next to us. After surveying the competition, Viphak decided to throw his hat into the ring.

While Viphak was getting his groove on, Scott and I decided to call it a night and head back to our hostel. And sure, I know what you're thinking -- the last time we parted ways with Viphak, he almost drove off a cliff, but we thought, what's the worse that could happen?

Well apparently, getting mugged in a dark alley on the way back to the hostel at 5am in the morning is the worse that could happen. Apparently, Viphak hit it off with the girls and went to a night club after the bar and partied till the wee hours of the morning (good for him!). Then on his way back home, he was stripped of all his possessions by some street thief (not so good for him), which included his phone, broken GPS device, passport, money, credit cards, and our car keys (not so good for us).

Although, probably the most humorous series of events of the trip happened when Viphak came walking into our dormitory room at 8 in the morning and said:

I got robbed.
I was at the police for 3 hours.
I lost everything.
Oh and those 2 girls want to meet us at 8pm tonight.

and then proceeded to face plant onto his bed with his police report in one hand and still fully clothed.

And all in the name of flirting with European girls.