Up at 4:30 I did my final packing and started walking to the train station, a local I know Luca, was on his way home from the bar and gave me a ride to the station in his car. At the station beside binario 3 I watched the sun rise till my train came. In Florence I discovered that there was a train strike and even though I was lucky enough to catch a train to Florence, my train to Nice had been canceled. YAY! After lots of hard work I was able to get another train to Milan with a 10 minute connection time for a train to nice. That train was 12 minutes late when it rolled into Milan but I jumped off and booked it with my 50 lb. pack to the far end of the tracks to find that amazingly my connecting train hadn’t left yet! Huffing for air I crawled my way through the masses of people filling the car passageways to my seat only to spend the next 6 hours in a sauna like environment! In Nice after checking into my hostel I rewarded myself with KFC and check this, they had a self-serv ice machine and Pepsi machine! HEAVAN! I drank myself silly on Pepsi till my teeth were numb and I had a sugar headache. Back at my hostel, I fell asleep. Up at 5am Sunday morning I caught a 6 am train to Avignon, France, then a train to Port Bou, Spain, and after a 2 hour layover a train to Barcelona. I arrived in Barcelona at about 7pm after more than 12 hours of trains. When I came up out from under ground into the city I found myself in a mass of people cheering and filling the streets. A few days before Barcelona won the Futbol league championship and the team was due to parade down the street. The street party was a blast, listening to tens of thousands sing their teams songs and chants, wearing team colors and flags, and climbing on public structures to get a good view of the parade. After the parade I checked into my hostel; that night I slept well!
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