Click picture to enlarge - Original hosted at Flickr

On March 21, 2002 I had the good fortune to depart for a ten day trip to France and Spain with my friend Mike Ayers, flying from Newark to Marseille and then driving with Michael de V south past Valencia. Here are some highlights from the trip.

Barcelona

How does one begin to describe Barcelona? I guess you could say it's the Spanish equivalent of New Orleans, a place unique to itself. We spent two nights at the Kabul Hostel. I don't recommend traditional hostels for anyone over 21, but we survived. The common room had Internet access and a vending machine that sold cervezas for one Euro and turned into quite a hang out for most of the evening. Everything starts late there and we had dinner at 10 and drank until 5 both nights. Our internal body clocks were still set to NYC time, so this helped.

Despite the unbelievable nightlife and energy of Barcelona, the best part of it and the whole trip really was Floquet (pronounced \FLO-key\, loudly). Floquet is the only known albino gorilla in existence and the star attraction of the Barcelona zoo. I love him so much it makes me feel funny. To understand you have to look at the pictures.