Spain Day 2 Barcelona July 15, 2015

Waking up on a plane after an overnight flight is not one of my favorite things to do. It always seems like I just finally settle into sleep, and that's when they turn on the overhead lights and start serving "breakfast".

As we flew over northern Spain, I looked over my husband's shoulder at the countryside. What I saw really surprised me. It was much more mountainous than I imagined. Oh, I knew the Pyrenees were between France and Spain, but hadn't really thought that mountains extended so much into the country. They were much closer to Barcelona than I had thought, as well. I'm going to have to start looking at topographical maps as well as road maps, when planning trips.

We landed at 7:09 local time at Barcelona's bright, modern airport. Going through immigration was the usual deal, with the usual unsmiling European immigration officer. (Honestly, in all the many times I've gone to Europe, not one immigration officer has smiled.) We waited a bit for our luggage, but by 8 am, we were at the Sixt car rental desk.

We'd prepared for this rental. My husband and I had searched on line and found rentalcars.com to have the best prices. We'd contacted AAA for help, but all they'd found was a van and we knew that would be a gas guzzler. My husband took luggage to our VW dealership to test space for the luggage for 4 adults. The Passat fit the bill and we signed up for a Passat or similar car through Sixt and paid for the bulk of the rental at home. We knew, we'd have to pay extra to have our younger daughter as my back-up driver and that would be paid for in Spain.

Why were we to be the drivers? My husband had a cornea transplant on June 25 and he isn't even driving long distances in Florida. Our older daughter uses the Metro in Washington, D.C. and rarely drives. That left me and the daughter who, until she recently moved, had been fighting I4 traffic to her job at Disney every day.

At the Sixt desk, the clerk asked if we were taking all that, pointing at our luggage. A truly dumb question. Yes, and we'd tested it on a Passat in America. After signing away my life, we were sent off to the car area. It took a bit of work to find the office at the end of the garage. National, the only other rental company we saw, had all the spaces near the terminal.

Now, the fun truly began. We were shown our car, a Jaguar. That was an exciting prospect! I began taking pictures of every aspect of the car, as I'd learned to do from the travel column in the paper, in order to protect us from future damage claims. While I did this, they tried to get the luggage in the car. While the Jaguar may be as big as a Passat in the cabin, it is not in the trunk. So, back into the office to ask for another car. They had to search, but eventually they found an Audi  Wagon.

At first, they said it was an upgrade, but that it would be free. Then, he talked to the woman out in the terminal, who claimed we hadn't had all the luggage with us there. Seriously? Where could it have been? Finally, we had to sign to pay more. As I took pictures of this car, I began to see scratches. Lots of them. The guy, who turned out to be German, told me that Spanish drivers were crazy and that I would have to be very careful around them. (This caused me great worry for the rest of the time we had the car.) He gave me quite a print-out of all the scratches that they'd already documented. He set up the GPS for English, although it spoke Spanish to us for the rest of the trip.

At 9:05, we were finally packed up, having had to put a backpack or two in the back seat. The odometer read 17262 and we plugged in Sarah, our GPS from home, for which we'd bought Southern European maps. Over the next week, we were glad to have her and her voice. We could look at her and the car's GPS and be sure of where we were going.

The next hour was very stressful for me. (My daughter is not used to driving in large cities and left that to me throughout the trip.) First, we had trouble figuring out how to get out of the garage. It was not clearly marked, and what made it worse was all of the scrape marks along the walls of the exit ramps. I did not intend to add to them! Traffic was heavy and it was taking Sarah a long time to get a signal. I just kept following signs to Barcelona, which turned out to be north of the airport. By 9:30, Sarah was still not working, so  I pulled off the highway into a side street for our younger daughter to program the car's GPS with the hotel's address. Either the threat of being upstaged by the car or the time sitting in the open did the trick- Sarah began to work. 

We found the hotel, but there was nowhere to pull in to check in. I circled the block and miraculously found a ramp leading down to a garage. The floors were all painted and there were lights overhead to show empty parking spaces. We found one fairly far from other cars and yet near an escalator. I did not want anyone dinging the car. It turned out that we were in the garage for the Diagonal Mar mall across the street from the hotel, AC Barcelona, which is part of the Marriott brands and I would get points there.

Only one of our two rooms was ready, but we gladly took it. It was my room, number 2206. We had a marvelous view of the city.

I begged for a 20 minute nap and my daughters and I took advantage of the great width of a European double bed.

After changing and washing up, we felt a bit more ready to tackle what we'd planned for the day.
( Well before the trip, my younger daughter and I spent several hours mapping out what we would be doing for the days before Madrid. Then, a couple of weeks before the trip, my older daughter was visiting us and helped me get all the tickets for the pre-Madrid attractions. I'd been advised by a Spanish teacher I worked with, that we wouldn't need to do that for Madrid.)

We headed back to the car, retrieving it within the grace period for free parking. Upon the hotel clerk's recommendation, we moved it out to a lot near the beach. While the beach was just minutes away, it still was a trick figuring out how to get into the parking lot and then being able to get it into a space. These were not marked out spaces, just a bit of room in the line. The odometer now read 17297.

It was now 1:14  and we used the city map to head to the subway. The hotel clerk had told us that the best buy was 9,95 Euros for 10 trips and that we could share the ticket. We got off at Urquinaona and found ourselves near the Hard Rock Cafe. I collect their city guitar pins and this was a great opportunity to take care of that.

We were very hungry by now. Unsure of the restaurants around us, we spotted a Pans on La Rambla. Rick Steves, the travel writer, had done an article on eating in Spain, that I learned a lot from. This was one of his recommendations, and even though it was crowded, we went in. My husband and I got a Serrano Grand with fries and a Tortilla Grand with fries, although I'd tried to ask for the local style of potatoes. I could not pass up the special of 3 Pop Dots for 1Euro, which were like doughnut holes and delicious. We were very happy to be able to get Coke Zero, too.

We took our tray upstairs to the smallish seating area. The sandwiches were good and the Cokes helped us cope with the heat. The 88 degree temperature felt a lot worse to us. The Spanish idea of air conditioning was not very helpful either.

By 3:05, we were back out on La Rambla picking up postcards and searching for Catedral de la Seu. Our walk took us through the Barri Gotic, the Gothic Quarter, an area of narrow streets. The cathedral sits on a large plaza, which afforded good photo ops.

Tickets were 7 Euros, which feels odd, but it does keep the place open to tourists. It was cooler inside and lovely. There's a courtyard with altars in niches and a shop, where I got postcards. I was expecting the trip to the roof to be extra, but all we had to do was show our ticket. What an incredible view! And the breeze was awesome! They are working on the roof, but there is a walkway that runs part of the length of the building and we had a great 360 degree view from the Mediterranean to the mountains. We took so many pictures!

At 4:50, we were back outside and stopped at a souvenir shop for cards and a pin. (Postcards are rarely cheap in Spain.) We arrived at our next destination, Mercado di Sant Josep de la Boqueria, at 5:15. We roamed through the market marveling at all we saw. The daughters and I each got a strawberry and mango juice. It was delicious and refreshing! We weren't hungry, otherwise all the amazing food we saw might have tempted us. I ignored the fish and other weird seafood. We saw smoked hog legs hung up, with little pans attached to the hooves to catch the grease. People chose the ham they liked and the butcher sliced it right off the leg.

Fruit was beautifully arranged at various stalls and other stalls sold pastry.

Our next destination was MACBA, the city's modern art museum, whose tickets were 10 Euros each. When we arrived at 5:48, there were so many skateboarders out front! It seemed to be the local skate park. Inside, we were grateful for the cooler temperature. We roamed through the galleries, seeing some art that was to our taste and some that was really out there. Of course, that's often the case with modern art. We did like the building itself, however. On the whole, we rather like modern architecture.

After about 2 hours, we headed out in search of dinner, even though it was on the early side, by Spanish standards. However, we hadn't eaten in a while and our bodies didn't recognize Spanish time. We did stop by a bakery and picked up 3 chocolate croissants for 3 Euros and a muffin for another Euro for the next day's breakfast. We found a tapas bar (another Rick Steves' suggestion) called Bar Castells at Placa Bonsucces. We were some of the few guests at this early hour and we were seated quickly.

English menus helped us make our choices. We chose a variety of tapas plates that we would all share to taste as many things as possible. We ordered: jamon iberico (Iberian ham) for 11,80; tortilla espinacas (spinach) 3,00; ensalada de legumbres (sort of chick pea salad) 3,00; albondigas (meatballs) 4,00; queso manchego (sheep cheese) 5,50; bread for 2 with tomatoes ( a Spanish thing); 1 regular Coke and 2 Lite @ 2,60; red wine for my husband 2,50; and 2 flan @ 1,80.

We spent an hour savoring the food and relaxing. It was a terrific meal and a great introduction to Spanish food. 

Our next stop was unintended, but was a very good idea. We stopped in the Carrefour Market to pick up more breakfast items. The place was busy and had lots of signs with Spanish and English. We bought fresh fruit cups, yogurt and juice, as well as a package of various pastries.

We then headed toward the harbor to see the Columbus statue, which had been on my younger daughter's wish list. She had wanted to visit the maritime museum, but a quick look at their website showed no English translations, so we knew the museum would not be a good stop.  We enjoyed the breeze that had kicked up and took lots of pictures.

We watched trucks load onto a ferry and very briefly considered walking out toward the aquarium. The fact that it was after 9:30 killed that. 

At 9:45, we were waiting for the L3 Metro. We got off at Passeig de Gracia and took a long hike underground to the L4. At 10, we boarded the train and at 10:14, we got off at El Maresme e Forum. 

At 10:30, we were in the hotel lobby getting the room key for the daughters' room 1610 and directions for reaching Park Guell in the morning. 

The shower at the end of this incredibly long day felt wonderful, but so did knowing that we'd gone everywhere we'd planned and had forced our bodies to get onto Spanish time. It was a great first day!