Barcelona

Eating a great meal in first class at 190 mph on the train is the way to travel. USA trains are so 1800's. We think Hi-speed is 70 mph. I think almost every train in Europe does at least 120 mph-150 mph, even the "slow" inter city trains. They are so smooth and quiet..... AND no damn horns.

We are on our way to Barcelona, our last stop before heading home Saturday. I'm ready to leave. A little tired of having to go through one of the girls to order something, or to ask a question. But even they have a problem with the Spanish here in the Catalonia region.
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Thursday, October 1

Nice hotel again.

This time breakfast is included which is nice for a couple of reasons. First, I don't have to wait for the girls. I can get up, shower and head down for my coffee while they're planning what to wear. That also means we don't have to waste time looking for a place. Breakfast here isn't like in the US. A croissant and coffee isn't breakfast! So having yogurt, eggs, toast, cereal, etc. in the hotel really makes it so easy. I only had an hour until the girls came down to join me. By then I was heading back to the room.

Since I still have a bit of a cold I went back to take a nap while they went shopping. As I said earlier, I'm not inviting Alice again. After a couple of hours they came back to get me and we walked to the harbor. It was pretty and lots of interesting folk. Some in Predator costumes, Angel costumes. You know, the ones that look like statutes and don't move, then they do and you jump.

Then we all came back to rest for a couple of hours and the girls went back out shopping. See what I mean !  No more Alice! Then I get a text to meet them for dinner, which I do, and they promised to take me to a bakery. Well our dinner took a little longer than planned so the bakery is closed when we get there and it starts to rain. Alice starts screaming she's going to get a sore throat and melt and starts to run the 8 blocks back to the hotel. Damn it! They promised me a dessert and I'm going to get a dessert. Besides I had on my Berlin hat and wind breaker. I wasn't going to melt.

On the way to their bakery I saw a bakery of my own and I said I'm going in there. They reluctantly followed (I didn't invite them) and I had my coffee con lecce and a Carmel whipped cream rollup. Yummy. By then it was really raining and everyone was standing under canopies or using their umbrellas. And people selling t-shirts on the street corners were now selling umbrellas at twice the price as earlier. The girls had run ahead and apparently a young women found me irresistible and offered to come home with me. I think it was the hat. I thanked her and told her my wife and girl friend were just up ahead..... maybe later? I guess she had another appointment as she begged off. Just some poor little girl trying to stay dry.
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Friday, Oct. 2

We had a nice breakfast again and then we took the metro to the Gaudi, Sagrada Familia Cathedral, more like GAUDY. By the time we got there about noon tickets were gone (YAY) so we had a Starbucks across the street. This Gaudi thing, whatever it is, is not a Cathedral.

It is a successful attempt at extreme excessiveness! You can see by the pictures of pineapples and Star Wars Storm Troopers that this isn't a structure in the praise of God unless it's built by the Church of Scientology. Then we walked for an hour trying to find the Gaudi "houses". We found some houses with turrets that had colorful tiles. Maybe that was them. I was unimpressed..... And my feet hurt. We found the metro and got back to our hotel. Actually we got to the restaurant on the square next to our hotel.

Thirty years ago Belinda and I worked with an organization called Educational Foundation for Foreign Study (EFFS, now EF). This was an organization that sent high school students from around the world to live with host families in the States, some in Salem. One of those kids from Spain was having some problems and the Salem EFFS representative wouldn't do a thing so, speaking Spanish as she does, Belinda stepped in and, long story short, we became the EFFS reps for three years. We became friends with one of the Spanish students by the name of Elias and contacted him when we knew we were coming to Barcelona. He met us for drinks Friday night outside our hotel and it was wonderful catching up on work and family. It was especially nice hearing that he wants his daughter to spend a year away like he did because" it was the best thing " he ever did. Of course, it was. Belinda took care of all those kids. They were so lucky to have her. During our third year was when we met our Thomas from Berlin. And the rest is history. I guess this wasn't a long story short.

We walked around a bit after Elias left in a vain attempt to get rid of our Euros. Of course Alice was more successful than we were. We ended up giving most of our change to a nun at the church next to our hotel and went to bed early. We had a taxi picking us up at 7am.

At 3 am my cell rings and its a recorded message from American Airlines saying our 10 am departure has been delayed until 10:50 am. Really! I need to know that at 3 am!? What's the worse that could happen? We get there three hours early instead of two! Shit! I couldn't go back to sleep as about that time one hellish thunder and lightning storm hit. Now you how I love to fly in good weather. And in the back of my mind is the effing hurricane coming up the East coast. Double shit! Even Belinda thought it was the worst storm she'd seen. We had another windowless room but did have a skylight and the lightning really lit up the room and the thunder was deafening.

Well needless to say we got to the airport with time to spare and the storm had subsided so that was good. We split up with Alice as she was on United and we were on AA. So we check in our luggage after a lot of security questions about who's luggage, where have we been, yada yada, yada. We go through security and are sitting at McDonald's eating an egg mcmuffin when I get a text from Alice. Apparently security won't let her check in because she can't show receipts or tickets showing how she got to Barcelona. All that is in her luggage so she has to open her luggage and dig through until she finds a credit card receipt as they won't take a cash receipt as it has no name on it. She finally gets through and joins us for a last breakfast together. After eating we head our separate ways, she flying to Newark, us to JFK.