Death to Brian Cole

Hi everyone,

We have neared the end of our time in Barcelona! During our last week, we divided the time seeing the final sights in Barca and tanning our pale bodies in the gorgeous Spanish sun.

While in Barcelona, we walked through Barceloneta, a quaint fishing village famous for its cheap paella. That last part was a lie as we scoured the streets for paella that cost less than an arm and a leg. So no paella for us. On another day, we decided to get a bit cultured and visit the Picasso Museum. While we recognize the awesomeness of Picasso and the impact of his work on the art community, we were completely lost. Instead of quietly appreciating the genius of Picasso, we spent the time giggling and poking fun at the art. Needless to say, the security guards were not amused, and sent us many withering looks. We then spent our last day in Barcelona in the same fashion as how we began...with La Sagrada Familia. One of the most famous landmarks in Spain, La Sagrada Familia was designed and partially built by Gaudi until his death. Construction on the project still continues today. The carvings on the church were exquiste and the enormity of the church was overwhelming. We thought that was a perfect way to end our time here, but...

Right now we are supposed to be boarding our plane to go to Rome. One of the joys of traveling, however, is dealing with spontaneous changes of plan. We found someone on Craigslist who we were going to rent an apartment from. He requested that we send the security deposit for the apartment ahead of time, which we agreed to send, since we believed that everything he told us was legitimate. Unfortunately, after we sent the money we didn't hear from the renter for several days. After doing some internet research, we discovered that the renter had been running this very successful scam for a long time; he robbed us and many other travelers as well. Needless to say, we learned an extremely valuable, albeit expensive, lesson about investigating people.

As a result of this scam, we've been forced to change our plans a little bit. We will still be traveling to Rome next week for a brief tour of the Italian capital city. It's a blessing that both of us are flexible and adapt quickly! For now, we are still going to soak in Barcelona and the lovely towns of Montmelo and Monternes for a few more days. We can work on our tan, plan our revenge on the renter/asshole/robber/Brian Cole, and hang out with the people at the villa.

Hope that your lives are less robber-filled, your bank accounts fuller, and your faith in humanity more intact than ours.

We send our love!
- Alex + Kirsty = breakin' kneecaps