Barcelona

August 20th. The flight from Istanbul to Spain was uneventful. I saw people watching X-Men on the plane with Hugh Jackman speaking Spanish. Who knew!!!

My arrival in Barcelona was not as smooth as my arrival in Turkey. The lady in the "information" booth at the airport did not know which bus went to my hotel so she sent me on the bus to a central location. We passed hundreds and hundreds of taxis waiting so they could go pick up passengers at the airport. At Placa de Cataluna I lugged my very heavy suitcase downstairs to the tourist area. The lady at the "information" booth there told me I needed to take the metro closer to my hotel so I lugged my very heavy suitcase up stairs to find the metro. I then lugged my very heavy suitcase downstairs and got on the L-1 as instructed. After about 10 stops I figured out I should be going the other way, so I got off and got back on the train going the right way. At Plaza de Espanya stop I got off the train and lugged my very heavy suitcase up the stairs. I then walked around for about 30 minutes looking for my hotel. After asking directions a couple of times, I finally found Vincci Arena on a side street. Later that evening I had chicken palella at a little restaurant on a side street. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Spain and eating Spanish food; how cool is that?

The next morning I took the 46 bus (2 blocks from my hotel) directly to the airport to pick up Leorit. The whole trip took about 20 minutes. We passed hundreds of taxis waiting to pick up passengers leaving the airport. We rested most of that day (Friday), got our toes polished and walked around a little. The next day (Saturday) we took the hop on, hop off tour bus -- all three, red, blue and green -- and saw a lot of Barcelona. At Subway for lunch we met a really nice family from Toronto and luckily I did not accidentally leave my credit card there. Thank you to the proprietor.

After the tour we went to the Internet cafe and then leisurely took the 46 to the airport to pick up Bo. At the airport we saw hundreds and hundreds of taxis waiting to pick up passengers. We walked into airport at the exact time Bo's plane was scheduled to arrive. We asked one lady where to find Ryan Air and she told us they did not fly to that airport. The airport where Bo was arriving was over 100 kilometers away. Leorit and I did a Keystone Cop routine, running around, in and out, back and forth, trying to figure out what to do. We decided to take a cab to the other airport. We went outside and for the life of us could not find one single taxi to pick us up. We saw one pass, but when we tried to stop him, he said he couldn't take us because we were at terminal A; he could only pick up passengers at Terminal B. We finally kidnapped one cab who, for A LOT of Euros took us to the other airport just outside of Barcelona. Luckily we were able to send a text to Bo telling him we would be late, so at least he wasn't stranded without hope.

70 minutes later we were hugging Bo. It was so good to see him.