Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
What a day...or is it DAYS?! Note to self...Never ever fly to Europe on a flight that leaves early in the morning, has a layover in NY and then arrives the following morning at your destination - we are all too old for this! We arrived in Barcelona at 9:15 am (the day AFTER we had departed SF!) not quite ready to hit the ground running as none of us had been able to sleep much on either flight. However I must say our flights were on time, and our seats were great (I'm a huge fan of the extra legroom in Economy Plus!). The only downsides of our flights were one crabby flight attendant and the fact that every flight attendant managed to spill on Lenore's compression sleeve she wears for flying! She was like a magnet for spillage!
We have rented an apartment in Barcelona for two nights before our cruise takes off...sadly we arrived at 9am and couldn't check into the apartment until 3pm. I'd arranged to drop our luggage at the weird little rental car office where we were to get the apt keys. Once that was done we headed off on foot to check out the nearby Picasso museum. The museum was fabulous! It's located in the El Born district which reminded us all of Venice...a neighborhood of quaint winding pedestrian-only streets that suddenly open onto little plazas (or "placas"). This museum covers Picasso's career from art student of age 13 thought the time period when he lived in a Barcelona. It was cool to see the changes/developments in his painting style...we all really enjoyed our time in this small un-crowded museum. We stopped for refueling of espresso and then found a fun tapas bar. These tapas bars are a trip......counters full of platters of a huge selection of yummy items, each with a big toothpick in it. You just help yourself, sit at your table and enjoy, help yourself to more and when you are ready to leave, the waiter counts the picks that you have discarded into the little metal cup on your table ... 1.65€ per pick!! Fun and delicious! We wandered around this charming little neighborhood and stumbled upon the lovely old gothic church ... Santa Maria Del Mar. Then we hiked down to the harbor. Suddenly we were all so tired and drained from the humid weather that we headed back to the office in the hope that we could get into our apartment a bit early. No such luck. We were told we had to wait half an hour more. At this point I was really questioning my decision to stay in an apartment over a hotel (and I know R, L & G were questioning it too!). We killed those last 30 minutes at the nearby market where we got some lovely cheese (manchego and local goat cheese) some Serrano ham, a melon and 2 bottles of wine. Finally time to be led to our apartment by the adorable young Spanish señorita, Karoline. As it turns out, our apartment is located 1/2 block from the lovely Santa Maria Del Mar that we had seen earlier! We dragged our 6 suitcases, 2 bulging totebags, and 3 bags of food through those winding little streets that just a few hours earlier had seemed so quaint...now they just seemed damn annoying!! OMG, now we have to lug these suitcases up narrow twisting stairs to the third floor (2nd floor if you are counting like a European...they don't count the ground floor as #1 - our #2 is their #1!! We made it though and nobody keeled over with a heart attack or threw their back out, which was a small miracle! We took showers, changed out of the clothes we had been wearing for 2 days, Ron took a nap and Gary and I headed out to find milk for our morning coffee. We grabbed a few more tapas to go and headed back to the apartment. Lenore had put all the food out on plates. And we spent the evening relaxing in our apartment, noshing on local Spanish delicacies and sipping lovely Spanish wine, reading guidebooks and planning tomorrow's activities! Bedtime could not come quickly enough for these 4 weary travelers!! Adios....
- comments