Oh, the beauty of traveling...and being a retard.

Alright, so I know I keep doing this, but I really do apologise for the severe lack of writing lately. My last week or two has been slightly stressful (ok, stressful compared to the rest of the trip, not real life), as I think I've been getting tired and just not planning things as well as I should be.....I take complete responsibility for all the things that have happened over the last few days....except I do blame a minor miscommunication between dad and I for part of it.
Anyway, before I get to the misadventures of late, I'll just say briefly that I made it to Barcelona about an hour ago (took a night HOTEL train....no wonder it cost me the entire left side of my body in addition to my rail pass!!). Oh, and it's POURINg. I mean really raining. Luckily, I made it to the hostel just in time...but it's still really hot here. Hopefully it clears up after this shower, but we'll see. Oh, and it's a great looking hostel, with free internet again, not 1 euro per ten minutes...who ARE these people who charge these exorbitant rates? But yeh, this looks like a cool city...I think I'm going to enjoy it here, no matter what the weather. It's going to be weird not being able to talk to people except in english though. I was really getting the hang of this whole 'conversational italian' thing, and I really brushed up a lot on my rapidly decaying knowledge of the italian language, so for that.....woot!!
Back to the misadventures.
I think it started one day when I forgot to charge my cell phone. Then, in a small small small town in Italy (Roccasecca), I learned that they don't like stopping at platform 1...they need to use platform 1 tronco (so THAt's what 1T means...). Anyway, found that out as I saw the teensy train I needed leaving the mystery tronco platform. Not a big deal though - another train was coming by in an hour (I'd waited for 2.5 for the first train...good thing I'm rereading the Hobbit!). Bought a phone card to use in the pay phone to call the farm house I was going to, and proceeded to leave my life sitting on top of the pay phone (in the form of my little orange notebook into which everything goes). Didn't notice till I got to my destination, another small town named Sora. Such is life.
From there, I had a rad time in the farm house and wished I could have stayed longer. I learned how to properly make gnocchi and got up stupidly early the next day to visit a shepherd and learn how to make pecorino cheese at 5am. That night was a pasta and fagioli festival in the village nearby (for those uninitiated few, that means a party for pasta and beans....woot!!). It was a lot of fun and I learned to line dance, italian style...how great is that? Unfortunately though, I hadn't figured out how I was getting to Cinque Terre the next day, cause the farm has no internet. Hm.
The next morning, I got adopted by a mother and daughter pair who were heading to Rome via car (hey, Rome is closer than Sora to Cinque Terre). We got there, and I successfully found a train to Pisa (again, the right direction, right?). It was in Rome, shortly before running for the Pisa train (yes, running back to the platform I just came from...unfortunately Roma Termini is HUGE with moving sidewalks and everything), that I realised that it was Ferragosto, the biggest holiday in the summer, so EVERYthing was closed. No internet points to figure stuff out. Got to Pisa and found a train heading to La Spezia and all 5 CT towns, so I got on. It was around this time that some of you started getting phone calls.......and after being unsure if i gave my dad the right phone number to call back, I ran out of credit on my phone...thank god he called back. I really do thank you, dad! Unfortunately, we didn't have the greatest connection, and dad is dad, and I was confused when the directions to the hostel he gave me told me that it was in La Spezia itself. I remembered getting a hostel in a village somewhere, but hey...he just read the directions from my email, right? So I get to La Spezia and follow the directions, which take me to a bus stop. I think I was supposed to catch a bus from there, but with it being Ferragosto, there were no buses. I saw a sign for the hostel, and started walking. Little did I know that it was a mountain hike to get there....anyway, I wasn't sure I was on the right road and it was getting late and dark, and I found a restaurant to ask directions....this was after walking up a road up the mountain, with no sidewalk or shoulder on it. He told me I was crazy, since it was 930pm, but that I was on the right track. Just keep going for 4 more kms, and then take a right for 1km. ugh. Walked the 4km, got picked up by a girl on her way home from work who drove me the last 1km to the hostel. I'm so grateful for nice people. Got in at 1030, after 2.5 hours on the road. blah.
From there, I forgot I had nowhere to go afterwards, so I decided to skip the south of France for now (nothing available at such short notice) and take a really expensive night train to Barcelona. Cinque Terre was beautiful and I walked a lot, but here I am...one more new country.
Hopefully my tale of woe hasn't bored you too much. I'm sure it'll get better from here on in.