A few notes, additions and corrections...

John's writing sure is entertaining to read. For those of you who don't quite understand everything Johnny boy posted, I'll do my best to fill you in.

The last time we posted a long blog we had just arrived back from Nerja, and had met back up with Amy in Platja d'Aro. Our original plan was to hang with Amygirl for the weekend, then take off monday for Croatia, or possibly France. After doing a little research, we realized that in order to use the train to get there from Barcelona, it would take about four transfers and almost two full days of travel. We weren't too excited about that, and in addition, John was pretty wiped out from the traveling (i.e. walking, sightseeing, dancing every night, and getting almost zero sleep). I had to do a little digging into what John wanted to do for the following week(getting information out of John can be like trying to squeeze water out of a rock). Sample dialouge:

"Hey John, what do you want to do this week?"
"Uhhh, what?"
"Hey John, what do you feel like doing this week? Do you want to travel somewhere?"
"Uhhh, I don't know."
"Talk to me brother. What do you want to do?"
"Uhhh, what?"

Eventually we decided that we want to take it easy in Platja d'Aro. We played a lot of volleyball with people from all over Europe, took a windsurfing lesson, layed out at the beach, and ate a lot of food. John also perfected the afternoon nap. (He is taking his second afternoon nap of the day as I am writing this) I of course spent a lot of time with Amy.

After the week on the beach, Amy said goodbye to her family, and the three of us headed off to San Sebatian. John mentioned that we picked up a third traveler, but we decided that the name Los Dos Bros should stick. Amy didn't mind. Right from day one, Amy did not bring us good luck. It certainly was not all her fault, but her family took a long time to say goodbye, and we ended up leaving a couple hours after we wanted to. When we arrived at the train station in Barcelona with all of luggage (I was drenched in sweat at this point because I was carrying two big suitcases and a backpack), we discovered that the workers for the train we had meant to catch were on strike. The lady explained to us that there was indeed a train leaving for San Sebastian in an hour, and there was plenty of seats available, but there was no way for us to purchase our tickets. We would need to catch a train to the other train station on the other end of Barcelona, buy our ticket there, and then catch the same train back to the original train station to catch the train. This was obviously impossible to do in only an hour, and that was the last train to San Sebastian for the day. We decided we would head back to the bus station (with all of Amy's bags) and try to catch an eight hour bus to San Sebastian instead. We missed the last bus there too and were suddenly out of options. We called the hostel in San Sebatian to let them now we would not be staying there Sunday night, and began to look for a hostel in Barcelona to spend the night. This is where it gets fun. We caught another metro back to the city center where we began looking for internet to reserve a hostel for the night. When we finally found a bar with WiFi, we discoverd that it was nearly impossible to find an available hostel.... (to be continued)

sorry we haven´t posted in a while: for one it is deffinately going to be hard to compete with that last series of posts (pretty exciting stuff right), and dos we are running out of travel juice.

But we should probably fill you in a little bit. lets see were did we leave off- playa de aro´
so since then we picked third bros/sister/fiance´ (not sure that thats how you spell that but whatever: onward we go) we left playa de aro´--- which by the way, isn´t in spain- this is according to some of its inhabbitants who straightened me out and told me that i was actually in catallunia. They also told me that i look like i´m from california and that i must love Katie Perry. which is pretty steriotypical- however, not very far off from the truth. lets face it- its hard not to like Katie Perry ;), and Oregon is muy cerca de California.

alrighty then, so we took off for san sebatian- another beach city in northern spain but this one is touching the atlantic instead of the med sea. First thought is, oh sweet that means waves we can go surfing- wrong, after being here for three days we have not surfed yet... this is due to the fact that the waves are kinda sucky and when they are actually ok they are way to many people surfing- hundreds of people trying to catch the same wave... not to mention that every single surf board has been rented out. so i´m think surfing is a no go. anyways we have just be play lots of beach volleyball and chill out out the beach, and tonight we are going out on a friend of our ausy flatmait named Johnny´s boat to watch the fireworks over they water... should be sick.

later

A Few Photos

On a knee...

The happy couple

Enjoying the moment...

She looks happy right? She wasn't able to talk much for a while...

A close-up of the ring...

Still celebrating...

****correction***

Apparently I miss-quoted Amy in my last post, so i guess that I have to fix it :P

instead of

"....my life"

it was actually

"..... my entire life"

-so sorry about that.. i guess that extra emphasis makes all the difference.

While I was sleeping

So nerja kinda wiped me out; a lack of sleep drove me to exesive sleep debt recovery. It was awesome- i slept for the better part of the day was disturbed a little bit during the night, but after that coasted all the way threw till the morning. Amy had this day off, and me being totally incompacitated was probably a good thing for the two love birds.

Anyways, I was doing some serious REMing when i was awoke at one in the morning to amy and jordan entering my room. both of the faces were pretty happy looking... i sorta knew what went down that night- and amy holds out here hand and says look at my hand. there was a ginormous diamond on it.. apparently she said yes. kinda smiling/joking i ask her are you sure you made the right decision.

Amy- "I have never been so sure of anything in my life"

apparently the night went well, but you guys should ask jordan and amy if you want to know the deets.

Nerja (Ner-Haaa!) and Paellas!

After the long trek into town, Nerja ended up being a pretty great little town. (Thanks Knowles for the reccomendation!) Great little beaches, fun downtown, busy night life, and the most amazing Paellas. John and I had Paellas for lunch four times in three days. Paellas are a Spanish dish normally consiting of rice fried in olive oil, filled with seafood other meats. There are a few different varieties of this dish, but in Nerja, we found a place called Ayo´s. When I say found, I actually mean followed the strong reccomendation of Rick Steeve´s Guide to Spain. Ayo´s is a cool little outdoor restaurant right on the beach. There are about a hundred tables that surround an outdoor fire pit where the cherfs fire up an open fire pit and roast mass quantities of rice, spices, chicken and vegetables in a huge, probably six foot in diameter frying pan. At the same time nearby, they are grilling up fresh giant prawns, little clams, and some kind of mediterranean baby lobsters. They present them all together on a huge serving dish, and for six Euros, you can fill your plate as many times as you want. John filled his plate about many, many, many times while we were in Nerja. :) John and I have been craving Ayo´s Paellas ever since, and have only half-jokingly been considering taking the six hour train ride there for one more go at the all-you-can-eat seafood and rice on the beach before we leave Spain.

While we weren´t at Ayo´s gorging ourselves, we spent our time lounging at the beach, walking around town and spending quality brother time together. John spent a ton of time partying with the ladies around town as well. He hung with an all-girls British folk band, Salsa danced with a pair of Italian hotties, and brought back a couple girls to our apartment roof that he did not know the names of. He went on to fall asleep in his lawn chair while they were still up on the roof. I saw the three of them go up, and only the two girls come back down at about 6 in the morning. I´m not sure what they were doing up there, but I was worried that they had killed Johnny boy and left him up there. Ha ha. I guess Nerja and I had worn him out.

The Day Spain Tried to kill Johnny

(I may have assisted)

After a long day of playing beach volleyball and walking around town in the sun, and partying all night, I was not surprised that Johnny passed out mid-talk. I woke him up an hour later, because we had signed up for a day trip to Gibralter (the UK owned pininsula at the very bottom of spain. It is famous for a giant rock, and the monkeys that live on top. I´ll have to tell you all the awful day that followed, but for the sake of the blog, I will only mention that we hiked, played with monkeys, and rode on a bus for 8 hours. It was not a great day, and John was awake for basically 48 straight hours. He took a short nap that night, and proceeded to head back out for a night on the town. He wasn´t responding to me for the next couple days. After we booked it back up north, he slept for a day and a half straight. :)

A couple of nice asses, don´t you think?

spannish time

I´m sick and freaking tired of going to places and them being closed 10 am seems like the universal time of openingization.. nothing was open. what he heck. we are sitting outside the "closed " turist information center with hours from 9-3am and 5-9pm however, since it is in fact 10 am where is everyone. siestas shouldn´t take four hours... its bull!!!!!!!!!!!