The Rain in Spain

I arrived in Barcelona late Saturday night – apparently Iberia Airlines / Royal Air Maroc is not known for it’s on-time schedule. We took off about 45 minutes late with not one word from the crew. As if that is completely normal. When I got to the hotel, Allison was very happy to see a familiar (read “American”) face. :-) She was bleery-eyed from her long trip… But we headed out at about 9:00 pm to find dinner. We ended up at a little Italian restaurant down the street from our hotel.

Sunday we were stoked to begin our bicycle tour of Barcelona. It was mid-50’s and cloudy, but perfect weather for biking. We found our way through the narrow corridors to Placa de Sant Jaume to meet with our group. There were 14 in our group – of those we met, two were from Holland and another couple from Hungary. The tour guide gave us a plethora of info on the sites – all in English. We rode around the city for four hours. About three hours into that, it started raining. Yep, the last hour we rode in the rain. Cold.

Following the tour, we stopped in a small sandwich shop for lunch to warm up and dry off. Let me just make a point to say, that I’m so very thankful that Allison knows a bit of Spanish. Six weeks entrenched in a French-speaking country has me very confused!

After lunch, we walked back toward the La Playa – the beach/shore area for some shopping (yep, still walking in the rain). Because it was Sunday afternoon, the ‘real’ stores were all closed, but there were little booths set up everywhere with cheap jewelry and gift items. Good times. At one point, while we were making our way back to the shore area, Allison was quick to ward off a would-be thief! There were two girls walking closely behind me, holding a map up (to blend in? to look innocent?) When Allison saw them, my back pack was already unzipped… and she quickly stopped me and zipped it up. Thank goodness, nothing was missing… whew!! Later, amongst the shops, a shady looking guy walked by me and quietly asked “hashish?” coincidentally, at that moment, we paused to stop and look at the map, and he thought I was stopping to accept his offer of drugs… so he was all beady-eyed and looking around, but then saw our map, and decided to keep walking. Apparently I am a magnet for crime all of a sudden… :-)

All in all, we spent a solid NINE hours walking and riding our way through Barcelona. We feel we got a good ‘overview’ of the city, and were completely exhausted by the end of the day. When we went in search of dinner, we found every stinkin’ place closed. In my research I had read that dinner time here is commonly at about 9:00 pm or later. So, we don’t know if everything was closed because it was Sunday night, or because it was only 7:00 p.m. The only place we found open was a Chinese restaurant. Is it wrong to admit how weird it was to have an Asian guy speaking in Spanish? For a moment there, we were confused as to what country we were actually in. No one there spoke English, but you know how Chinese menus often have pictures – that was a huge help.

My sister pointed out that we are complete weirdos – we are in Spain, and our meals thus far have been Italian and Chinese. :-) Well, except breakfast – our hotel had the most amazing breakfast! Yummy fruits, breads, donuts, and very strong coffee.

Next up, a fun train ride to Madrid – weather.com is calling for rain for the next two days…ugh. Crossing our fingers that they are wrong.