Arrival

BaBarcelona

This trip snuck up on us and almost succeeded in surprising us entirely.  Two weeks of lots to do, Abbey at the Cape and me in Oneonta, and suddenly our E. A. Poe readings, which I produced and directed, and Abbey's various classes, show applications and pottery projects, were done – it was Saturday morning, and before we knew it we were on our way to Randall and Lily's.  Which is to say that we have given very little thought to the trip, and here we are in the airport waiting to take off.

Great time with Randall and Lily and Gwen.  Then somehow it was embarkation day noon, and we piled into our car, with Randall driving, and got dropped off at Logan Airport in Boston (thanks again!).  We'll leave our car in their driveway, so they'll have two cars for three weeks, and our car won't just sit in a parking lot (like last time) and drain the battery.

I have said before, that the time before a trip – actually, before we actually get going on our exploration of the new landscape – are divided into three phases.  Phase 1:  the week or two before embarkation day, is the “I really don't want to go on this trip” phase, because it's so complicated and there are so many disastrous consequences for not being perfectly organized.  Let's stay home.  I just can't cope with the pressure.

Phase 2 is generally from the point I wake up on embarkation day until we arrive in the terminal.  This is the “I'm sure I've forgotten something and the trip is ruined” phase.  I have found myself actually gritting my teeth at times.  The worst moment is when we close the car's back liftgate and drive out of the driveway.  The die is cast. [UPDATE:  Neither of us forgot anything]

Phase 3, from arriving at the terminal until arriving at our hotel or ship many time-zones away, is the “I'm never traveling again” phase.  Flying is miserable.  Jet lag is miserable.  Let's just stay home.  End of rant.

Anyway, here we are (in Logan Airport with the Boston skyline stretched out in front of us), with an almost three-hour wait for our flight, because the trip through security was a breeze, for the first time ever.  No guarantee we'll have the same luck in Barcelona.  Phase 4 – “OK, all that responsibility and threat of consequences is behind us, we can focus on where we are” - is still a long way away.

By the way, I'd really like to know why any flight we take is always boarding at the gate which is at the very end of the terminal – the last gate in line.  Every single time, unless it's the second-to last gate but the way the terminal is designed, it's just as far a walk as the last gate.  No exceptions.  It cannot be a coincidence.  There are people who live on an alternate Earth whose gates are always right where you exit the security checkpoint.*

When I said the trip snuck up on us, I wasn't kidding.  We have not spent any time going through our itinerary – at all, actually, since we first booked the trip.  So:  from memory:  Three days in Barcelona, then on a Viking ocean cruiser to Marseilles, Sardinia [nope - Corsical], Rome, Malta, Tunis, Strait of Gibraltar, Casablanca, Cadiz, Strait of Gibraltar again, Malaga, and back to Barcelona.  Then a high-speed train to Madrid, two days there, and then home.  Stay tuned!

And here we are in the Grand Central Hotel in downtown Barcelona, ready to sleep off some jet lag. 

I'm glad we're here.  At times, I didn't think we'd make it.

Flying is the most brutal, most barbaric method of travel; it's one of the few truly horrific experiences that people freely engage in.  Airplanes, and their enablers – airports – are designed to maximize profits and minimize any sense of the human being as anything of value other than a source of revenue.  The flight from Boston to Montreal was fine, but from the moment we stepped off the plane in Montreal to the moment we left the airport in Barcelona, it was a nightmare.  In all these millennia that we've been sentient, one would think we could have thought up some alternative methods of moving people which weren't demeaning or debilitating.

OK.  Enough of that.  We're in the center of Barcelona (thus the name of the hotel).  We added the three-day pre-extension to our tour, in Barcelona, and also the two-day post-extension in Madrid, after the ship returns to Barcelona.  Tomorrow we'll be going to Montserrat (pretty sure we saw these mountains in the distance when driving in from the airport), among other places, and Thursday (Happy Thanksgiving!) to La Sagrada Familia, which is an experience I've been looking forward to.  On embarkation morning, we'll get a tour of the old section of Barcelona (where our hotel is) before heading to the ship.

Last year, in Prague, there was a large portion of a floor of the hotel we were at which was given over to Viking staff to organize, guide, and answer questions.  Here at the Grand Central Hotel in Barcelona, there is one lady at a desk in a nice little room off the lobby.  Abbey went down and got our itinerary for the three days, and asked her some questions, including restaurant recommendations.  Apparently her answer was something like, “There are a lot of restaurants around; just go out the door and turn right.”

ABBEY here. I agree that the trip snuck up on us, which was kind of nice. The worst part of that phase for me was having to pack for the trip while at the Cape though some items of clothes and meds were in Oneonta, which necessitated having to repack everything there in half a day. Also, I added to my schedule a nice visit the day before with Pam, Heidi, Adi, and their dog Julian, the later 3 also visiting Pam. This was Thursday. I drove back to Oneonta on Friday to get a haircut, to perform my part of the Poe reading, and afterwards, a nice visit with Whitsun and his friend Sean over milkshakes at Stewarts (a family tradition!)(The milkshakes, after a performance - not necessarily Stewarts – Ed.) Saturday, I squeezed in a half hour zoom interview for a prospective business class, repacked everything (see above), and joined Gary for the trip to R, L, & G's. You see, the trip really did feel like an after thought!

We took a long nap and just before sunset set off for dinner.  Recommendations at the hotel desk were specific, close by and indicated on a map we could take with us, which is the way to do it.

I'm not sure how much of Barcelona is like the district we are in, but where we were this evening was magical.  It is an extremely beautiful and vibrant city (again, the part we were in).  Five, or six story buildings rising up from the street, designed and decorated in mostly neo-classical architecture which somehow seems functional and confident.  Each different, but working together as a whole.  Below, on the street, people using the city.  We walked to the nearest restaurant, serving tapas.  The menu, which was available in English, provided a whole lot of variety, which meant Abbey was in heaven – a little taste of this, a little taste of that.  We chose four – including a huge bucket of mussels in an olive oil sauce which tasted somehow like butter.

Sitting in the restaurant (“tapas bar?”) we were facing a large window outside on the street, a busy side street.  Lots of people hurrying or strolling or skateboarding by, many of them dressed very fashionably, many not.  The street was stone – bigger than cobblestones, and flat; it was a side street but, as I said, very busy.  I was once again impressed by how the Europeans somehow have learned how to get cars to cooperate with pedestrians on all but the busiest main streets.  People were walking all over the street and sidewalks, as if it were a pedestrian mall, but then a car or municipal van would come along and make its way down the street without disturbing the flow of people.  No horns, no shouting, no conflicts at all – just another night walking somewhere.  This is what you get when you don't put cars first.

On the way back to the hotel, we saw a narrow side street, lit by little lights strung back and forth above, down the length of the street.  Light from shops provided more illumination.  There was a sign at our end of the – alley? - saying “Street Art.”  That's all we needed.  We wandered down this alley, turned at the end, wandered some more, stopped to admire the very interesting art on walls all over the place.  Many of the shops were fascinating; artistic in their own way.  The buildings on each side – the 'alleys' were maybe fifteen feet wide – went up five or six stories, fading to dark before you could see their tops.  

We wanted to stay and wander forever, but getting lost in a foreign city on our first day there was not on our list.  We backtracked and found ourselves on the main street again.  Still active and lively, lit up by shops and outdoor dining areas and a park diagonally across the street from the hotel – a park bounded on the far side by a cathedral and an ancient wall which, as we shall see in the subsequent days, is the subject of much historic speculation.  More to come on that one.

Back in the (somewhat small) hotel room.  There's just one chair, so I'm writing in it and Abbey is trying to sit on the bed and use her phone (wi-fi only; we spend our trips on airplane mode) to keep herself awake.  As soon as I finish this sentence we'll switch..

* - UPDATE:  When changing planes in Montreal, our gate was right on the other side of security (you have to go through security to change planes in Montreal).  Sweet!  Later, quite accidentally, we discovered the gate had been changed, and we rushed off to... the farthest gate there was.

Barcelona at Night