Barcelona - Our First Stop

     Vacations take a lot of planning and the better the plan the better outcome.  My wife is the vacation planner in our household, which she takes pride in and does well.  Every couple of years we take a big vacation and this was the year.  There were 4 of us on this trip and we got together a few times prior to the trip to make reservations.

     We left on Sep 14^th and landed in Barcelona, Spain.  This is the first trip that we stayed in VRBO (vacation rental by owner), which worked out really well and allowed us to cook a few meals at home since we had a kitchen.  That was nice.

      As anyone knows when flying a long distance the 1^st day is tough because you need to stay up until the evening (local time) so you can avoid jet lag.  After arriving at our apartment and unpacking we took a walk around to familiarize ourselves with the area.  If you have read any of my past stories you know I don’t go into a lot of detail about the sites because that information is readily available (Rick Steves). 

     So as we are wandering around Barcelona, which is bustling with traffic, I look down as I am crossing an intersection and see euros laying on the ground, blowing around a little in the wind.  I say to Ann who is walking in front of me “Hey look at all the euros, pick them up”.  So as we are bending over to pick them up she says “Are we on Candid Camera”, I said “I don’t know, we aren’t doing anything wrong so lets just pick them up”.  So we are scrambling around picking up the money and luckily there is a lull in traffic so we have time.  My wife (Mimi) and Cousin (Tom) are already across the street they walked right over them without noticing anything.  As we are gathering up the euros we see a guy to the right who has picked up a few as well looking straight at us then quickly taking off.  After we had picked them up we reach the other side of the street and still there was a bike rider who stopped and picked up a few floating euros near him.  We decided to go sit on a nearby bench and wait about ½ hour to see if anyone showed up that seemed to be in a panic but there was no one.

     This was fortunate for us but disastrous for the person that lost the money.  They likely had the shock of their life when they went to pay for something and found they had no money.  It’s likely they blamed a pickpocket, since Barcelona is the pickpocket capital of the world but they would be mistaken.  First rule in travelling, ATM’s are everywhere there’s no need to carry a lot of cash.  We headed back toward our apartment but stopped at the church across the road and dropped 20 euros in to the collection basket, it seemed like the right thing to do.  In the end it turns out that we had found 360 euros  ($430). 

     As with many European countries, dinner is late 7:00 to 8:00pm and usually a small meal.  Lunch at 2:00pm is the main meal so most restaurants are not open for dinner until 7:00pm.  However we were hungry a tired and we found there were a few restaurants open at 5:00 so we decided to get something to eat.   After sitting down we noticed there was no one else there which should have told us something but we ordered pizza (that seemed safe).  Tom and I asked about getting a glass of wine and the waitress “Yes we have homemade wine, what would you like white or black”, “Huh! Black wine, hmm, I’ve never heard of that, do you mean red or rouge”, “Yes” she said “Red”.  We said "No thanks, Coke will do".  Really how much did they know about wine if they called red wine, black, it just wasn't worth the chance.  The pizzas arrived and it was less than spectacular, more like a Totino’s frozen pizza.  We then stopped at the market to get some lunch meat, breakfast items and of course wine before heading back to the apartment.

     That night we made some sandwiches opened the wine and had a nice relaxing meal then retired to the patio to enjoy the wine.  While sitting on our patio we heard English (American Accent) voices from above which were the first that we had heard.  So I went to investigate and found a party of 6 people sitting around drinking wine and laughing (wine will do that to you).  I introduced myself and was pleased to see how friendly this group was, I met  Terry & Jan (San Diego), Bernice (Mom), Richard (Minnesota), Erin (Fairfax  Virginia) and Kathy (Fairfax Virginia).  They were very inviting offering me a glass of wine, which I accepted while waving at my traveling partners below sitting on our patio.  Richard was a funny guy cracking a few jokes after finding out we were from St. Louis.  Just to let you know, Richard “I’m not a politician and I won’t be running for Mayor of Ferguson”.  We ran into Richard and his gang of cohorts the next night as well, they regaled us with stories on their trip to a French vineyard, which sounded awesome but we would soon find out ourselves as we were off to Bordeaux in a few days.  

      We booked all of our tickets for the various tours sites on line while in Barcelona which saved us hours of waiting in line.  All we did was show the confirmation email on our smart phone and went right in the entrance without any delays.  We also got a 2 day pass for the hop on & hop off bus which took us all around Barcelona, it was ideal plus it had audio describing the upcoming sites.  La Sagrata Famalia is a must see if you ever go to Barcelona.

     We had a great time and great meals including the steaks at A. Gianno’s and the seafood Paella at Escriba on the beach.  Near our apartment we found a big market, which sold fish, meat and pasta.  So one night we bought some fresh pasta, sauce and Parmesan and had a great meal at home.  The VRBO worked out well.

     We toured around Barcelona until Friday (Sep 19^th) then headed to the airport for our flight to Bordeaux.