Bus Ride from Hell

Hey all,

Making this one a quick one today. From Nice we headed off to Barcelona! Very exciting. Until we got on the bus anyways. In the morning, we had to be up and out of our hotel by 7:30 as our bus left at 8:00am. But what do we know, reception is closed until 8am, and if you wake up the staff, you get a 50 euro fine – and we already had a 30 euro deposit on our keys – we didn’t wanna risk losing 80 euro. So we went up to the bus and asked if we could put our luggage on and then run down to our hotel to get our money back. All was fine of course, but just stress we didn’t need.

After getting our money and finally making it on the bus, we departed quite late, around 8:45. so we knew we were already going to be quite late. After many hours of bus travel, we were buggered and just wanted to sleep – but busses aren’t really designed for sleeping – so we tried our best. Adam got quite shitty after a while, understandably though – those buses can get very uncomfortable after about 7 hours of driving.

At around 4pm, and after many hours on the bus, I started to feel a little unwell. Within an hour, I had a blocked nose, burning sore throat, fever and aches and pains all over my body, and not enough energy to hold myself up, and on top of it all, conjunctivitis! I was not a happy camper. All I wanted was a hot shower and a nice bed. Though amongst it all, I thought I’d just mention I thought it to be very weird to hear Delta Goodrem on Spanish radio! Go Delta!

We’re driving along the Catalonia Highway in Spain, and there are many signs along the way which said 281 deaths this year on this motorway, and over 790 injuries. I heard the bus driver say to our tour guide ‘is there an accident up ahead?’ and as our tour guide could speak Spanish, he replied ‘No, there is just a risk of accidents on this motorway’. No more than 2 minutes later and no more than 10km away from the hostel, a BMW X5 decided to cut the bus off, and tried to squeeze in between a Mercedes and the bus (which had just cut us off previously and left about 7 metres between us). The Mercedes slammed on its brakes (for no apparent reason) and the poor bus driver tried to slow down at 90 km per hour with a bus load of people, and only 1 metre between him and the BMW in front, but unfortunately slammed into the back of the BMW – shattering their rear window, and rear bumper. Me and Adam saw the whole thing as we were sitting at the front of the bus – Adam had to give a statement. But all the while, I was crouching over in absolute agony – I was so sick, I was crying. And due to this accident, and being only 10 k’s from the hostel, we had to wait 2 and a half hours for the bloody police to turn up.

We arrived at 11pm in Barcelona – and didn’t even know where we were staying – had to get on the net and look it up, and still had to get to our bloody hostel too, lugging our luggage all the way there. We found it which wasn’t too far away, but I was so sick it felt like miles. We finally got in, and we took a sleeping pill each and slept like a baby. Thank you so much mum for the sleeping pills – you have no idea how much they have helped us! Adam says he wakes up like a champion! I wake up a little groggy though – not too sure why, but I get the best sleep!

Well, I’ve just woken up – 1pm. And it appears I’m spending the day in bed. I am still very sick, and every one keeps staring at me – it looks like Adam has been beating me up my eyes are so swollen. But Adam has been so great – he went out and got us some breakfast and was being so lovely. I feel much better today – but still too ill to move too much.

We will try our best to see as much of Barcelona as we can, but due to my illness, don’t expect to see a brilliant blog on it.

We’ll keep you all updated!

Love you all,
Ash and Adam in Barcelona.x