Day 1 Barcelona

It's been quite a while since I've written anything about traveling, so I guess I'd better do this one. Yesterday we left good ol' Solomons Island for northern Spain. Since we're old, retired, lazy and incapable of much planning, the best we could come up with was to leave on October 8 for Barcelona, spend four nights there, then spend a five or six days hanging around the Pyrenees before finishing up in the Basque towns of San Sebastian and Bilboa. We expect to return home after 16 days of doing whatever happens.

Plaza Catalunya

The trip over to Barcelona via Amsterdam was uneventful and after arriving we bus'd it from the airport to the studio apartment we rented right on the Plaza Catalunya. It's just the kind of touristy location I try to avoid. But since we don't know anything about Barcelona we decided to stay there because it's central to a lot of interesting things and convenient for transportation purposes. We arrived around noon, got the keys to the flat, dumped off the bags, and walked 5 or 6 blocks in each direction to get a feel for the neighborhood. Of course we had a little snack - a bottle of wine and 6 or 7 different tapas (or tapai?) in a little cafe down a side street just off the Plaza Catalunya. I was amazed how anyone (me) could take four years of Spanish and not remember anything except "buenos dias". Even when I said that, people would just look at me with a silly grin wondering what geezer tour bus I had just wandered off from.

With little more than a couple of hours of walking about my first impressions are that it's a lot prettier than I thought and the architecture's absolutely amazing - lots of tress and incredibly beautiful ornate buildings. The shopping too was unexpected, all the Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, and Montblanc type stores are here. It's kind of strange though because the people don't dress very fashionably - although how would I know. Surprisingly, Barcelona may have more outdoor cafes than Paris. On some streets the whole block is taken up with these little cafes serving beer, wine, and tapas. It's hard to find what we would consider a "normal" restaurant. This should prove to be one of my favorite things in Spain. On the other end of the spectrum though is the traffic - scooters, bikes, and taxis everywhere. I've noticed that people don't jaywalk very much and I think it's because the taxis are just looking for moving targets and be semi-legal about it. Overall though, Barcelona is a terrific city and I think we're going to enjoy it.