Barcelona Day 1

July 24, 2010

Overnight flights are always weird – since you never go to bed, it feels like the day never actually ended.

I had actually managed to piece together about 3 hours of sleep on the flight, which is some kind of record. I was more awake than I had anticipated I would be at this point.

We retrieved our luggage, managed to find a bank machine and withdraw some Euros, and then found the taxi line. I’m very proud that I was able to remember enough Spanish to communicate to the cabbie where we needed to go. On the way to the hotel, we watched the scenery go by – the mountains in the distance, and this really weird looking building. It was wider at the top than it was at the bottom, and the windows were not spaced in any kind of regular fashion. Didn’t get a photo of that, unfortunately.

Got to the hotel, and we were able to check in immediately, even though it was only 11:00 a.m.

It’s always fun figuring out the in’s and out’s of hotel rooms in foreign countries. First issue – could NOT figure out how to keep the lights on. So we figured we could just call down to the front desk. Couldn’t figure out how to do that from the selection of various buttons on the phone. So Andy just went downstairs to the front desk. Turns out there’s a box on the wall right as you walk into the room, and we have to insert our room key into a slot in the box in order for the lights in the room to stay on. Otherwise, they time out. Very clever way to make sure the lights aren’t left on all day once you’ve left the room.

This little adventure wiped out whatever energy we had left – we crashed for 2 hours. When I got up, I decided to take a shower. In the huge bathroom, I saw a showerhead in the bathtub, which seemed perfectly normal, except there was no shower curtain. Maybe it’s set up that the water won’t spray onto the floor? Nope, discovered that was not the case. As I was trying really hard not to create an ocean in the bathroom, I noticed an actual shower stall on the other side of the room. Oh, duh.

Onward to the next challenge – charging up various electronic devices. I had charged up my iPhone using the adapter I had bought a few weeks ago. And then I realize that the same adapter wouldn’t work for my macbook or Andy’s laptop – those plugs have 3 prongs, and my adapter only has 2. Arg.

Good news! Andy had read in the hotel info book (that’s his job, reading the hotel info book) that we could get a loaner adapter. Progress at last!

We went downstairs and had lunch in the hotel restaurant – we ordered a la carte, since the buffet selection contained mostly seafood (mussels, shrimp, etc) that we don’t eat. I had a “salt cod”, which was excellent. A good start to our Barcelona experience.

It was now 3:00 p.m. and off we went to start a full day of touring. We started by walking to La Rambla, the famous Barcelona shopping boulevard. It was a hike just getting to the beginning of La Rambla. One of the things I really like about Barcelona are the randomly placed benches just about everywhere, which made it easy to take a break.

The weather was absolutely perfect - maybe 85 degrees, zero percent humidity, and not a cloud in the sky. A major contrast to the weather we left behind in Maryland.

At every break, it was fun to people-watch. Barcelona is over-run with tourists from all over the world, which made me think of all the “what to do when you’re traveling” advice I had read on-line before we left – all about trying to dress like the locals dress so you don’t stick out as much and therefore less of a target for pick-pockets. Well, I didn’t notice the locals dressing much different from Washingtonians or New Yorkers. Plus some of the obvious tourists (camera cases, maps a-flutter) seemed to be people from other parts of Spain! And then there were the flocks of foreign teenagers everywhere, in addition to the Indians in their saris, and the Muslim ladies with their various means of covering themselves. So much for “blending in”.

Did I mention people watching? Just a couple of blocks away from the start of La Rambla, I noticed this one guy, who apparently didn’t want to bother with clothes at all. Yep. Start naked, he was walking up the street. He stood at a traffic cross walk, like he was going to cross the street, but then he turned and came back past us. People were noticing now - some people were laughing, others took pictures. I opted not to.

Suddenly he was back and once again stood at the cross walk. He was carrying what looked like a bag of groceries – which meant he had just been in a store! Wonder how the cashier got through that transaction.

Andy pointed out that Naked Guy had no tan lines. He must do this a lot! Except he was wearing a watch and sandals, so he probably has tan lines on his left wrist and his feet.

Naked Guy eventually disappeared – he must have crossed the street and kept on going.

With that highlight in mind we started our trek down La Rambla by taking photos of the huge monument of Christopher Columbus, pointing out to sea. We noted that Chris had lots of clothes on.

La Rambla seemed to have sections – first was the artisan section. I bought my first elephant of the trip from one such booth. There were performance artists – some looked like they might actually do something for a donation (like the flamenco dancers), but most of them were just posing and they were happy to let you take your photo with them for the donation. There was a guy dressed up like The Joker, a man and a woman dressed as angels – and one guy, all in white tails, sitting on a toilet. This seemed to go along with the Naked Guy theme.

There was a flower section with cut flowers for sale, followed by the food section, which included a huge market for meats, fruits and vegetables. The last section included small mammals – stalls selling tiny baby bunnies and one selling guinea pigs.

La Rambla finally came to an end. We decided to head towards Casa Botllo (pronounced – “bye-YOH”), which was a house designed by Spanish architect Gaudi almost 100 years ago. It was truly amazing –very few straight lines anywhere in the house – all curves, all natural lighting, most concepts taken from nature. We bought an audio tour; it took us about 90 minutes to go through the whole thing, including climbing all 10 flights of stairs to the roof. It was well the climb – I took the lift back down.

We had dinner at a “pisceria” – fish restaurant. We stumbled through our dinner selections – an interesting combination of bad Spanish and bad English, but it worked out fine. We shared seabass, which was excellent. A couple of times we saw a flock of teenage girls who randomly stopped and sang to people – either at the outdoor cafes or people sitting in their cars, didn’t seem to matter.

We like Barcelona.

Tomorrow – the Picasso Museum!