Barcelona Arrival
Some photos are posted below, and some will be posted above.
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We left for Barcelona in good time, and caught a cab easily on the Calle Mayor. We scooted to the airport, and got out tickets without a problem. The ticket agent was kind enough to give us an exit row (for my height) and we got to the gate and started to wait.
Gates in airports are pretty much the same all over the world. When you have a lot of frequent flights (as you do between Madrid and Barcelona) you have a lot of turnover in people as you wait. You can watch them and see how they will react to the flights as they come and go. Me, I like to be one of the first ones on the plane. Especially if I have carry-on bags, and especially when the flight is full of people with big carry on bags. For short hop flights, it is not uncommon for people to carry large bags and plenty of them. I have been guilty of this myself.
The flight we were on was going to Athens via Barcelona, so it was an odd combination of international and domestic travelers. The flight to BCN was only about an hour, so we settled in and made the best of it. They gave us KitKat bars (1/2 size) and a glass of water. It was plenty.
We got to the apartment with no problems and dragged our bags into the door. The owner had mailed us the keys so they wouldn’t have to meet us there. That worked out great, except for one small problem. We read the apartment number wrong, and I tried to break into the home of a woman who started yelling at me and saying she was going to call the police. Even after I apologized, and asked her if she may know what the RIGHT apartment was, she gave no quarter. She said that she didn’t know, and didn’t care, and if I didn’t leave IMMEDIATELY, she was going to call the police. She slammed her little window next to her door (through which she has been telling us that she was going to call the police) and we re-read the instructions.
It turned out that we were in the apartment directly below hers, the keys worked fine, and we got in and unpacked. The place is nice, if spare. It is bigger than our place in Madrid, and right in the middle of a real neighborhood.
We decided to go out for lunch (it was about 2:00) and just walked down the street to the first café we could find. It was a nice little place, and we ordered a couple of beers. The waiter was pushing a potato tortilla (what we would call a frittata) real hard. Doreen got that, I and got white beans and sausage. Both meals were good hearty neighborhood meals. Nothing fancy, but very good. My beans came with mayonnaise, and I used it.
After the meal, we too a short nap and walked down the Rambla. This is a LONG LARGE street covered with people. There is a central part where folks walk (ramble) and then the stores along the street. So it is like a very wide boulevard with the central part being pedestrian and selected vendors. Some of the vendors are what you would expect (small cafes, tourist stuff) but others are just strange. Flowers and house plants, and weirder still, pets. Not just any pets, but song birds (I saw cardinals! How sad.) fowl (guinea hens and chickens) and €180 tortoises. Too strange.
The Rambla was packed with people (this was a Saturday night, after all) but we made it all the way down to the port. From there we wandered into the Gothic Quarter, slowly making our way back twisty, narrow streets that smelled of urine.
We finally made it back to our neighborhood (after stopping for a drink, me a beer, Doreen a Cava) and ate Basque food for dinner. We selected by pointing at the food behind the counter, which worked out fine.
Then we went to sleep about 1:00 AM, and slept like the dead until about 10:00 the next morning.
-------------------------------------------------
We left for Barcelona in good time, and caught a cab easily on the Calle Mayor. We scooted to the airport, and got out tickets without a problem. The ticket agent was kind enough to give us an exit row (for my height) and we got to the gate and started to wait.
Gates in airports are pretty much the same all over the world. When you have a lot of frequent flights (as you do between Madrid and Barcelona) you have a lot of turnover in people as you wait. You can watch them and see how they will react to the flights as they come and go. Me, I like to be one of the first ones on the plane. Especially if I have carry-on bags, and especially when the flight is full of people with big carry on bags. For short hop flights, it is not uncommon for people to carry large bags and plenty of them. I have been guilty of this myself.
The flight we were on was going to Athens via Barcelona, so it was an odd combination of international and domestic travelers. The flight to BCN was only about an hour, so we settled in and made the best of it. They gave us KitKat bars (1/2 size) and a glass of water. It was plenty.
We got to the apartment with no problems and dragged our bags into the door. The owner had mailed us the keys so they wouldn’t have to meet us there. That worked out great, except for one small problem. We read the apartment number wrong, and I tried to break into the home of a woman who started yelling at me and saying she was going to call the police. Even after I apologized, and asked her if she may know what the RIGHT apartment was, she gave no quarter. She said that she didn’t know, and didn’t care, and if I didn’t leave IMMEDIATELY, she was going to call the police. She slammed her little window next to her door (through which she has been telling us that she was going to call the police) and we re-read the instructions.
It turned out that we were in the apartment directly below hers, the keys worked fine, and we got in and unpacked. The place is nice, if spare. It is bigger than our place in Madrid, and right in the middle of a real neighborhood.
We decided to go out for lunch (it was about 2:00) and just walked down the street to the first café we could find. It was a nice little place, and we ordered a couple of beers. The waiter was pushing a potato tortilla (what we would call a frittata) real hard. Doreen got that, I and got white beans and sausage. Both meals were good hearty neighborhood meals. Nothing fancy, but very good. My beans came with mayonnaise, and I used it.
After the meal, we too a short nap and walked down the Rambla. This is a LONG LARGE street covered with people. There is a central part where folks walk (ramble) and then the stores along the street. So it is like a very wide boulevard with the central part being pedestrian and selected vendors. Some of the vendors are what you would expect (small cafes, tourist stuff) but others are just strange. Flowers and house plants, and weirder still, pets. Not just any pets, but song birds (I saw cardinals! How sad.) fowl (guinea hens and chickens) and €180 tortoises. Too strange.
The Rambla was packed with people (this was a Saturday night, after all) but we made it all the way down to the port. From there we wandered into the Gothic Quarter, slowly making our way back twisty, narrow streets that smelled of urine.
We finally made it back to our neighborhood (after stopping for a drink, me a beer, Doreen a Cava) and ate Basque food for dinner. We selected by pointing at the food behind the counter, which worked out fine.
Then we went to sleep about 1:00 AM, and slept like the dead until about 10:00 the next morning.
posted by Dan Piette at 2:00 PM
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