Barcelona

Beach in Barcelona

I booked a rental in Valencia and as it turns out, the night train trip direct to Valencia was full.  As I previously mentioned, I had to figure out how to work with the state run rail website, Renfe.com.  Anyway... it was too late for that because the night train was full.  I don't know if you have ever ridden on a train in the daytime with four kids, two under 7, it ain't fun.  So we had to look for alternative means of travel.

There was this really cheap flight in from Paris to Barcelona, a day before we were supposed to depart.  I figured that would make my French landlord happy.  He seemed cool with it either which way, but I could tell deep inside he had plans of stretching out (no pun intended) in his loft again, maybe with a nice lady, bottle of wine.

Au Revoir, France

So we took a cab to the airport which I arranged the night earlier through a service called Taxi G7, they arranged a taxi to the airport via a handy iphone app.  It was expensive, but taking the bus to the center of town and the special bus to the airport, for all six of us, would have cost more, and been more time consuming and aggravating.  So I managed to save a few Euros and ride in the comfort of a nicely appointed cab to the airport.

We arrived looking for the budget carrier, Easyjet.  They weren't hard to find at all.  The terminals are set up pretty cool.  No sweat.  No hassles about baggage.  I know I will have to lighten my load for the next trip though.  We zipped through the airport the plane came in and we zipped on to Barcelona with no problems.

When we got there, our landlady was not present.  This was a cause for concern, as my French prepaid sim would not make calls in Spain.  Plus, we were wondering if we really got the address right.  No sweat, the address was wrong, but the right address was only two blocks away.  Well, a little sweating, who wants to be waiting outside with four sweating little ones wondering if they are in the right place.

Barcelona garden, or what we call a courtyard in the states

So I run in the little tabac to buy a sim card.  A tabac is a little tobacco store slash whatever else they might sell.  This guy sold sim cards.  He was cool enough not only to call and have it activated but to work with me through my Spanish which had atrophied from twenty years of no use to si, no, yo quiero, and muchos gracias.  Okay maybe a few more words, but clearly not enough to activate a sim card. On my way out of the store the landlady was walking up, right as I was leaving her a message. She apologized for getting off from work late, traffic, yada, yada.

On the way to the city center

Fine cup of Spanish Coffee

The city itself was more metropolitan than I expected.  Big, modern, fast moving.  Well, one good thing, we were near the ocean.  You know how we love the beach.  As it turns out, our place was two blocks from the beach, so I got to stick my toes in the Mediterranean, at least for a few minutes.  There was also a huge mall nearby where they had both inexpensive clothes and modern electronics.  There was also a supermarket and tons of restaurants.We were beat so we put off seeing what I wanted to see the most, Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudi's great unfinished work, it will have to wait until we return. We walked around our neighborhood, went to the mall, acclimatizing to Spain and prepared for our onward rail journey to Valencia.