Barcelona

Wednesday, we had something like 17 hours of travel going through Philadelphia enroute to Barcelona. During our long layover, I did a lot of walking to unkink myself. We arrived in the really lovely ultramodern Barcelona airport at the scheduled time. First thing of note I saw after getting off the plane (before immigration): the bathrooms didn't have doors, so I saw a bunch of guys standing at urinals. Cannot be unseen.

They had free luggage carts, so all was forgiven. We managed to find our way to the Aerobus, where we had an interesting conversation about Barcelona with a South African expat living as a writer in Barcelona. We got onto the metro without issue, but we had a bit of trouble finding our hotel (Hesperia Ramblas), which was a block off of Las Ramblas.

Our hotel room was ready at 11 am, which was magical as we were tired. We slept until 6pm, which would be a fatal mistake in many cities. Not Barcelona, though! We walked out and found a place that served paella. Yay for places that have gluten-free cuisine without my having to explain!

Las Ramblas is interesting. There's the section with the people who pose as statues, the place where flowers are sold, the fish-and-bird (for pets) section, the public artists who do commissions -- all kinds of different segments. All throughout, there's people with odd noisemakers chirping and chittering away. Very odd. After dinner, we walked down to the port's edge where the ferries for the Baleric Islands depart. We're not going to Mallorca or Minorca this trip, though.

This morning, we walked to Plaça Cataluña where we picked up the tour bus for a Gaudi tour, seeing a park he'd built as well as Sagrada Familia. Apparently, the interior has just recently come out from under scaffolding, so I'm glad I waited. It was finally consecrated as a church last November after about 130 years. Naturally, this is when my Leica M8's battery died, so I'm glad I had the backup film camera with me as my other Leica batteries were also in need of recharging.

Then back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and catch a taxi to the cruise port, where the Norwegian Jade was sitting along with two other ships: a Costa ship and one I think was Cunard.