No Big Deal

5/23/09, 12:10 p.m.

After my long night on Thursday and trying to figure out how I was going to survive without my wallet I decided that I was going to take it easy and go to bed early for the trip to Barcelona the next morning. During the day we walked around the city and took it pretty easy, but then around 9:45 we decided to go get some gelato near the hostel. We sat at a corner and ate our gelato, while doing some people watching. That was going to be the most exciting part of the night, but then Jonathan suggested going to a pub for one pint and then call it a night. I thought that was a good idea, so off we went.

We walked to a busy area in Madrid and found an Irish Pub. As we were entering the pub, two insanely loud Americans ran into the bar and ordered some beer. We started talking to them and sure enough one of them was from Rhode Island. He really did not have to tell me because you could tell from the moment he walked into the door. What are the chances of two people from Rhode Island meeting in a pub in Madrid? So, we hung out with them and told them that we were going to take it easy tonight, since we had such a long night the night before. They immediately started pulling out the whole you only live once card and tried to convince us to go with them to a pub-crawl. Well, their persuasion techniques were successful and off we went to see some more of Madrid’s nightlife.

The guy from Rhode Island was probably the loudest human being I have ever met, but he was quite entertaining and after every sentence he would yell, “No big deal!” No offense to all my Rhode Island family members out there, but he fit the stereotype to the tee. It was strange by the end of the night I was saying “No big deal” with a Rhode Islanders accent after everything I said.
Last night turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than the night before; we met tons of different people from all over the world and listened to their travel plans. One girl we met, had her passport, wallet, ID, and cell phone stolen while visiting Cambodia a couple of years ago. I immediately felt better about my situation and realized that this type of thing happens quite a bit in foreign countries.

We got back to the hostel around 1:45 and went to sleep. The sleep did not last very long, due to the loudest snorer in Madrid. It felt like there was an elephant sleeping in my room. As a result, I got about 2 hours of sleep and now I am on a speed train to Barcelona typing this. I am going to try to get in a little nap before we arrive so I can be ready to walk around a new city with barely any sleep. Hey! No Big Deal.

-Brendan