birthday present in advance to myself

I'm going to Barcelona, Spain in September. I found a great deal through the same travel company I used to go to Athens, Greece and Rio de Janiero, Brazil and just finished making the reservations with awesome customer service at Gate 1 Travel. ( http://www.gate1travel.com I don't want to sound like a gushing testimonial, but when something works well, why not say something about it?)

I've been saving all year to go somewhere. I wanted to go with Brooke SOMEWHERE. We had talked about Barcelona, but she said that it didn't really interest her. She got ecstatic about a Morrocco trip, but we'd have to do alot more saving. We talked about Montreal in October for the Lantern Festival, but she wasn't really in trip-mode and then broke up with me. We never even got around to doing an overnight to NYC like we'd always talked about.

So... I'm doing this solo. Just like to Brazil. Except this time it's Spain. And an odd part of Spain that prefers to speak Catalan, not exactly Spanish. Barcelona has all kinds of cool architecture. It's situated on the Mediterranean. It's a stylish city. The hotel looks awesome. My passport is ready and now I'm going to work work work to have amassed not only spending money, but pay my bills way up in advance.

more later...