Plans went wrong as we couldnt work out the six or so days between Melanie's house (we stopped there after judy's) and dusseldorf. At the last minute (Specifically, 4:00 yesterday morning) we decided to turn our travels towards nice, france, and buy our time out there. Things were moving at a fairly smothe rate until we realized that after hitting lyon, we were moving at 184km/h in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION... instead of moving towards Marseille (in the south of france) we were moving towards PARIS... yes, I said Paris. Unfortunately, John and I have not had much luck in this area (being all of france)... but hopefully our luck is about to change. Tomorrow, we head back to barcelona, and take in some more of the culture. Surprisingly, the french have been extremely helpful and polite (unlike common misconceptions back in the states) and know that we are overtly american. To some, they think its cute. We have been staying in a small 2 star hotel in the city center which we thought was a sketchy part of town, but its actually pretty nice out here... Although unfortunately there is not much to say about the area. John and I both feel that Nice is a place to go once you have an established job, but until then... its not exactly somewhere two hostellers should try and stay at as it is very expensive... Anyway. Thats all for now. We leave for barcelona at around 8:30 if we cannot find a place to hold us over for friday to saturday night...

Cliff