Day 7: Barcelona, Spain and Carcassonne, France (Thursday, August 14th)

Well, our plan this morning was to be ready for the day and down at breakfast by 8:30 so when I woke up at 8:20 and we were all dead asleep I knew that wasn't going to happen! We were only a few minutes late so we didn't waste too much time and after such an early start the day before we definitely needed the rest. Breakfast was provided by the hostel and wasn't too terrible. I'll say this: Our hostel was decent enough but I'm glad we were only there one night. I'm ready to move on!

Update on the "drunken bed thiefs", as my mom called them: It actually wasn't a big deal at all! Maybe because they didn't come back to the room until 6:00am this morning? I vaguely heard them talking but they didn't make a huge fuss about it and they were still sleeping by the time we left. Thank goodness! I kinda sensed a fight coming on!

We checked out of our hostel at 10 o'clock and took a taxi to pick up our rental car, which we will have for the rest of our trip. It will be so nice having the car! We'll be driving quite a bit but our car for the next ten days only cost us right around $300. Such a steal! Here she is!

Logan describes her as "a happy car that's smiling at us!"

We definitely couldn't visit Barcelona without going to the beach so that was our next stop! 

I'm typically a wuss when it comes to actually swimming in the water (I prefer to just lay on the beach) but the water was quite warm so we all got in and swam for a bit. 

By the time we finished at the beach it was time to get on the road and head to Marseille so we made a quick pitstop at the nicest McDonald's I've ever seen! I sent a bunch of pictures of it to my brother, who works for McDonald's Corp, and he loved hearing about it. One funny fact: They call the drive thru the McAuto. We should totally do that in the states!

**Funny Story**: As we were driving we came across several tolls where you pick a ticket up at one toll and then put it in the machine at the next toll and depending on how far you drove that's how much you have to pay. We had driven pretty far on one of the tickets so the total was €14.20 which is $18.98 but for some reason the machine wouldn't accept any of Tom's credit cards or take cash and on top of that, the toll people didn't speak any English. A big line started to form behind us but we didn't know what to do and after a couple minutes the guy behind us ran up to our car and we expected some sort of reprimand because he was pretty heated but he just shoved his card in and said: "Go!" Haha...thanks, Frenchman! We're guessing he had no clue how much it cost otherwise he wouldn't have paid that much. Oh well! We've decided we'll try to pay it forward somehow this trip. 

Marseille is about 5 hours from Barcelona but Tom had heard about a neat little city in France called Carcassonne that's halfway there so we decided to make a quick stop and I'm so glad we did! It actually wasn't as quick as we thought because we were in love with this place!

At first we thought you could just walk around the wall but inside that castle is an actual little town! The castle is called the Château Comtal and it's one of the neatest things I've ever seen. 

Thanks for the photo bomb, Tom!

We may or may not have spent like $15 on this candy and we don't regret it one bit! It was delicious!

The little town in this castle was filled with sweet shops, gift shops, restaurants, and quaint little streets like this one. 

Views from the outside:

And here are some pictures from our walk back through the main city, Carcassonne. The streets and shops were so quaint, I loved it. 

As we were walking back to our car we ran in to two sister missionaries and had a fun chat with them. One of the sisters was from Finland and the other was from Sweden but they spoke perfect English and when we told them we're from Salt Lake they were so excited! I love that the church makes the world so small!

By the time we left Carcassonne it was around 8:30 and we still hadn't had dinner so we found a little pizza shop that took a ton of our time because they spoke no English so by the time we started heading for Marseille it was around 9:30 and we still had three hours to go. Luckily the pizza was yummy!

Also on our way to Marseille was a Roman colosseum Tom heard was worth seeing so we stopped off in a TINY city called Arles to check it out. I'm pretty sure Arles has the world's smallest streets! It's a good thing we have a really small car otherwise we never would have made it out of there. Logan is convinced he could have touched each building that lined the streets at the same time. Fortunately we got a quick view of the Arles Arena, which was actually pretty neat, and then we found our way out and headed, once again, toward Marseille. 

We're still on the road so I'm going to have to update about our hostel in Marseille in tomorrow's post because we won't get there until after 1am and I'm already exhausted. We were supposed to spend tomorrow seeing Nice but we'll have to split it up and see Marseille and Nice tomorrow. Despite making it to our destination much later than we anticipated, I loved today! Going to the beach and seeing that cute little town were both so much fun! Here's to tomorrow!

Weather Today:

Perfect weather followed us wherever we were today! The weather in Barcelona was great for the beach and it was nice and cool as we walked through Carcassonne. We have had great luck with the weather so far!

Tomorrow: Marseille & Nice, France

I'm excited to see more of France tomorrow! From what I've heard and seen it's such a cute/romantic country. We'll see tomorrow!