The Nest

Hola Barcelona!

Posted Monday, June 04, 2007 6:52 PM

One of the pitfalls of a romantic vacation is sometimes reality sets in when you least expect it.

When we reached Barcelona everything started great - at first. Our bodies had no idea what time it was, and our legs were grateful to be on solid ground. After the gate insanity at Madrid - where they don't tell you until an hour before your flight where you will departing from - it was nice to be finally leaving the airport environs.

We exited the plane and picked up our bags at baggage claim (that was easy). Then we went to claim our Barcelona Cards from the tourist office (lovely little pieces of paper that would give us free rides on public transportation and discounts at attractions). We were told that we could have the cards but they just ran out of books (so basically we could have the cards, which just wouldn't have any idea where to use them).

Adam and I had planned on taking the train from the airport to our hotel - transferring somewhere in the center of Barcelona. We hadn't counted on: Construction at the airport en route to the station; The distance from the airport to the station; The train being at least a foot off the platform; Not-so-clear signage on where the best place to transfer would be; Shlepping our luggage down four flights of stairs and through two turnstiles; And Adam's need to ask three people every time he couldn't find something, when one would have been sufficient.

When we finally reached the stop for our hotel - I think Adam and I were ready to kill each other. So much for our romantic honeymoon... We exited the train and - lo and behold - a modern station complete with escalators and a large ramp that we could wheel our luggage up to get to the hotel (which was right next to the station).

Of course we collapsed the minute we reached the room - forget about unpacking... I needed to sleep. I know all the guidebooks advise you NOT to sleep and to try to get used to the time change, but it wasn't going to happen.

Three blissfill hours of sleep later, we headed to Las Ramblas for dinner where I enjoyed the most scrumptious hot chocolate I’ve ever eaten. It was more like hot pudding and I enjoyed every bite. After dinner we strolled down the street and encountered an incredibly interesting/odd mix of people (most of whom were drunk).

Prior to heading to dinner, I blew a fuse in the room (SO was not my fault), which I thought would have been fixed in our absence – it wasn’t. So we spent the first night without TV or air conditioning (it was fixed the next day). Luckily the room wasn’t very hot and I was able to use my portable DVD player.

The next day we awoke early and thought “hey, lets call down to the front desk to see what the weather is today.” They told us it would be cold, so we dressed accordingly (of course it ended up getting into the high 70s -- our staff was a bunch of morons!). Then we headed down to what turned out to be lousy breakfast (for what we paid we should have gone to McDonalds).

The next several hours were spent in the beautiful city taking the metro from place to place: Parc Labarinth (which was closed), the Arc du Triumph (yes, Barcelona has its own), the Museum of Chocolate (so amazing) Las Ramblas (for lunch and a Starbucks stop), the Epcot-like Spanish Village (where we were able to kiss underneath replicas of more than 100 Spanish towns) and back to Las Ramblas for dinner with some people I met on a cruise Web site. Adam’s amazing Spanish (and my limited Spanish) made getting around so easy.

At one point we got so used to asking questions in Spanish that a family looked at us and said “sorry, we’re from Houston, we don’t speak Spanish.”

The next morning we packed up, left our stuff in the room and headed to Las Ramblas for breakfast and found a fairly inexpensive one that included orange juice, café au lait and a croissant for 6 Euro.

We then went to the Gothic Quarter (they one part of town we hadn’t seen) in search of the old Jewish Ghetto – after running into a Hebrew-speaking tour group and a Jewish couple from France ... we finally found the synagogue: a small brown door with a number over it. That was it. They only thing even indicating it was the Jewish Ghetto was a sign in Hebrew (with the words “Libre Palestine” spray-painted on top of it – sweet huh?).

It was time to head back to the hotel … so, of course, we got lost. Apparently this is very easy to do in the narrow walkways of the Gothic Quarter. Somehow we made it to a courtyard (with an immense church) and found our way to the yellow line of the Metro, which we were able to take to the green line (our hotel).

We went to the hotel, picked up our bags and caught a cab that would take us to the ship. Adam told me not to speak in English, otherwise we would be charged more (so I tried to not talk at all) – but the guy was super-nice and figured out we were Americans, anyway. He even drove us past La Sangrada Familia (the famous unfinished church) on the way to the pier.

Our excitement grew as we got closer and closer to the pier … and then, we saw it…..the Splendour of the Seas!