BARCELONA, SPAIN

We touched down at the Barcelona Airport right on time and I took the Airport Bus to the Plaça Catalunya, which is the main town square and an easy walk from my hotel. It cost €3.60, but was still a huge bargain compared to trying to get to a hotel in either NYC or Los Angeles. I hopped off the bus about 30 minutes later when we arrived in the center of town. At first sight Barcelona was not as grand as Madrid, but that could be said of nearly every city on Earth really. I got my bearings and started the walk to my hotel (where I had successfully pushed back my reservation by one night over the phone the previous day).

It was a longer walk than I expected, but I made it to the Hotel Adagio with no problems. The lobby was very professional looking and the fellow at the front desk spoke excellent English. The website I used to book this (and all my hotels) said they have satellite TV and I had not seen an English-language channel in over two weeks at this point so I was really looking forward to finally catching up on CNN International or BBC World or perhaps even Euro MTV. I would have to wait a bit longer. The room was very nice despite the very small single bed, and they TV had about 12 channels, some snowy and some clear, but all in Spanish. If that was a satellite they were really getting ripped off.

At that point I wasn’t totally certain of my next stop. This is a wonderfully liberating feeling, but only for the time until you decide. If I really wanted to I could have stayed in Barcelona for 2 or 3 weeks (like I did in Buenos Aires), but at this point I was sure I wanted to finally make my way out of Spain and head for France, more than likely. I toyed with the idea of flying to Amsterdam or some other far flung location, but the weather was cold enough in Spain and it was ridiculous any further north. I knew I had to stick to my vague plan to hug the coast of the Mediterranean and head in the direction of Italy. My original idea was to go directly to Nice, France, but that was almost all the way to Italy and I actually really like the parts of France I have visited previously. The first order of business was to figure out where I was going next.

I went to some bookstores in Barcelona and was pleasantly surprised by the fact that all of them actually stayed open all afternoon instead of closing for the Siesta. Barcelona was very non-Spanish in that respect. The stores also had a decent supply of English-language travel books, but after searching through all I could find, I never did obtain a copy of Rick Steves Italy that I wanted. I read in some of them about France though and it turns out that Nice is the largest and cheapest of the towns in its area. It was obvious that my best bet would be to go directly to Nice and make day trips to Cannes and Monaco and skip St. Tropez and Marseilles altogether. St. Tropez is evidently very expensive and Marseilles too was far from the other cities on my list. I read that Nice is the definite Riviera headquarters for the budget traveler.

I stopped in to the travel agency at the El Corte Ingles branch that dominates the town square just as the Madrid one does there. The English-speaking fellow there told me they don’t handle train tickets and that I would have to go to the train station. I walked up to the nearest of the city’s three train stations and was told that there are two ways to get to Nice from there. One is a morning train with a change along the way and it costs €87. Ouch! The other is a night train that leaves at 19:20 with a change to a long-distance train at 23:00 arriving in Nice at 7:40 a.m. That one is around €70 even including the €15 fee for a couchette (dorm bed) during the second portion. I’m not a fan of night trains, even with couchettes since the only time I have done it it was a completely miserable experience going from Munich to Prague.

Luckily I had a few days to figure out what I wanted to do. I went to an Internet place and searched for flights since it turned out that Barcelona and Nice are further apart than I had realized. It wasn’t surprising to discover the flights were all over €200 and involved a connection. Barcelona is Spain’s second largest city and Nice is France’s third largest, but that doesn’t mean there are direct flights. I then knew I had to pick a train, but which one? The day train is more expensive, but it allows you to see the Mediterranean Coast along the way, which was part of the idea of going this route. On the other hand the night train is cheaper and even though it’s never going to be a great night’s sleep, it does save a night at a hotel so it’s really MUCH cheaper.

I was planning on staying in Barcelona for 3 days, but I was considering staying a bit longer. It wasn’t that I was so attached to the place, but it was that I was still quite burned out from going from place to place so quickly. It had been 10 weeks since I had left the U.S. and over 3 months since I left my apartment in NYC and with the exception of the one week apartment I had to get in Rio I was having to move to the rhythm of the maid service and bus, train, and airline schedules every single day for months at that point. I dreamed of just getting a cheap and simple place for a week somewhere and cooking my own food and catching up on all my writing and web work, but I also knew that Spain wasn’t the place for that, and besides it was unusually cold so it seemed like that might be better for a better climate. Perhaps Italy might be a place to stop for a week in one place just to recharge the travel batteries.

I really wanted some protein to eat that first night so I went to a large supermarket to buy some makings for a meaty sandwich, but even that didn't work. The Champion Supermarket on the famous Las Ramblas Street carries every beverage under the sun, but no condiments and only two kinds of sandwich meat. I was shocked when even a large store like this carried only small packages of sliced ham and small packages of Chorizo (spicy salami). I bought some cheese and water and left. I then went to a small store across the street from my hotel, which also was more than half full of wine and beverages, and thankfully they had packages of liver pate. I bought one, but had to go down the block to buy a baguette from a bakery and then went up to my room for the evening for a liverwurst sandwich feast and some much needed relaxation.

That must sound strange to think of someone on a very long vacation needing relaxation. I am actually working 5-10 hours per week on my paid writing jobs and also keeping this journal and working on my Website, but that isn’t the exhausting part. No one loves to travel more than I do, but at this point it has become a bit of a blur. You can literally fly around the world in about two days, but it doesn't mean you see anything aside from probably two or three airport lounges between flights. It’s the same thing with a trip like this. There seems to be a finite amount of culture and sights that I can absorb in a given period of time. To compound that, going short distances between destinations usually means subtle differences between places, further blurring the picture. Up to this point I have had the trip of a lifetime, but I feel that I need to actually completely stop in a place with no stimulation for at least a few days to reset the camera in my head so things begin to seem fresh again. Unfortunately, Barcelona wasn’t that place. It’s a fun city with a lot to see and my lack of Spanish skills would make it tough to “live” there, even for a week.

I looked back fondly on my time in that apartment in Rio de Janeiro. Having one place for a whole week with a kitchen and no maid service was such a nice feeling. I have nothing against maid service mind you, but that is their job and they want to get through the day. That means you often get a knock on the door in the mid-morning and have to communicate with them approximately when you’ll be leaving for a while so they can clean the room. Even in cities where English is common, or even in America for that matter, maids rarely speak any English at all. I am always quite sympathetic to their jobs so I always feel like I should get out of their way early in the day so they can do their job. The problem is that after months of this in a row it would be very nice to just sit and listen to music all day or read or watch TV or whatever.

The next day I began to explore Barcelona. It was even more obvious that this is by far the least Spanish city I have visited in Spain. They actually don’t even consider themselves Spanish, but rather Catalunyan. They have their own bizarre language that liberally uses the letter X, but it sounds like “sh”. Everyone also speaks fluent Spanish, but as time went on I discovered that, especially in the tourist area of the Gothic Quarter, nearly everyone speaks decent English. This further confirms my theory that the degree to which you speak English is directly related to how useless your own language is outside your borders. Spanish speakers have options beyond whatever country they live in so they sadly don’t usually bother with English, but people in Denmark, for example, know Danish is worthless outside of Scandinavia so they all learn and speak flawless English.

The main tourist attractions in Barcelona are Las Ramblas itself (the main tourist street that leads to the port and a huge Christopher Columbus statue) and the Modernisme (Modernist) architecture style with the prime example being the cathedral/construction site called Sagrida Familia (Sacred Family). My hotel was just about a 30-second walk from Las Ramblas so I had already gotten a good look at that, so my first real destination would be some Modernist architecture. I strolled up Las Ramblas and went north of the main square to an area called The Block of Discord. This is a block of buildings that supposedly compete with each other with their attention-getting styles. There are a few very wild buildings on one block, but that’s about it. One of them charges about €8 to go inside as the interior is supposed to be just as unusual as the outside, but that sounded to expensive for something I had never heard of. The main architect of this modernist movement is named Goudi and he designed and worked in the famous cathedral until a streetcar killed him out front. I decided to see that place later in my trip.

Walking back down Las Ramblas I began to see what all the fuss was about. Even though it was still fairly cold the “human statues” that I had read about were out in force. These guys wear elaborate costumes and have gotten good at standing still, although it’s always obvious they are real people. They put a steel bucket in front of themselves so they can hear when someone has dropped coins in and they go into motion. Some just change poses and others go into a whole physical routine. There are also booths selling birds and other small pets as well as some other unusual shops. The unique thing about it as far as I could see is that it’s a wide strip in the center of the street and the lanes of traffic are the outsides. The shop owners get far less foot-traffic than they normally would, but I guess it has always been this way. It’s nice to have a wide area to walk so you can dodge slow moving people more easily.

My main look at the city would come with an afternoon bike tour. I had gone on one in Buenos Aires and could not have been happier with it. For this one we were to meet at the Columbus Statue at the bottom of Las Ramblas at 12:30 p.m. I got there a bit early and found a guy standing next to a beach cruiser bike who was obviously the tour guide. I asked him, to confirm, and it turned out he was the guide and also an American from Irvine, California no less, although he was part Spanish and part Japanese in heritage. It was strange speaking to someone with the exact same accent as me for the first time in so long. Before long a group of about 8 of us had gathered there, about half American and half British.

He gave a short talk then we walked the few hundred meters to their shop to get fitted with bikes. I was pleased when I found they had high quality Schwinn Beach Cruisers with 3-speeds and adjustable and comfortable seats. Soon we were underway winding through the pedestrian streets in the shopping and cathedral district. Every few minutes Ivan (the guide) would stop and give a talk about what we were looking at. It was a similarly great experience as my other bike tour, especially when compared to the traditional bus tours I have taken. The group was fun and Ivan’s prediction came true as the group had sort of bonded as we went. I talked a lot while riding with a friendly English girl who looked a lot like Keira Knightly and was on the tour with her mother. Another pair of English guys were also very friendly and I was able to talk in great detail about my fondness for British pop culture and music.

We went through parks and an Arch of Triumph that I didn’t even know was in the city. We got a long look at the outside of the Sagrida Familia Church while Ivan and another American guy who worked with him watched the bikes. Barcelona is definitely a city where a bus tour will miss most of the charm of the tiny streets that wind through the old city. The tour finally made its way to a restaurant near the beach where we all ordered our own lunch and a few of us had a beer. It was another positive twist as we were all able to really chat with the people in the group we hadn’t spoken with. Just after that we rode back to the company’s office and put the bikes away, but many of us had already discussed meeting up that evening for a pub crawl that had been advertised at a popular nearby bar.

A few hours later I went to meet the group at a fountain near my hotel and I was the first one there. It was very cold, but I had high hopes that the others would show up. Within about 5 minutes our group had swelled to 8 or so people as everyone but the Keira Knightly pair had shown up and also a few people they had met the night before at a restaurant. We went to the pub-crawl bar nearby and paid the €13 to join. That entitled each of us to one free drink at each of 4 bars we would visit and also cheap drinks while there. The choice at the first bar was a small draft beer or a similar sized cup of sangria. They made the sangria while we watched and it consisted of several giant juice boxes of cheap fruit juice (or fruit drink actually) and several boxes of the table wine that I had become so fond of. In other words, it was made for pennies a glass, but it was probably pretty decent. I chose the beer and had a few more.

Within an hour the bar was packed with mostly Brits, but some Americans too. I asked one of the English guys from the bike tour what he thought of the Spanish women and he told me he was gay. Evidently they were a couple. I changed the question and asked what he thought of the Spanish blokes and he said he thought they were above average. I urged him to go to Scandinavia and he thought it sounded like a good idea, but his partner evidently likes the dark Mediterranean men.

A loud and brash young English guy who was the organizer of the pub crawl screamed to get everyone’s attention and made a short speech about how we should all be quiet as we go from place to place since some residents have thrown metal and liquid at the groups when they make too much noise. We then set out and the entire bar was in tow, probably around 50 people. The same guy who made the announcement, or at least his close friends then started screaming their heads off and making as much commotion as possible. I don’t know what it is about English tourists, but they seem to be by far the most obnoxious people after a pint or two.

We got to the next place after a long walk and we each were given a coupon upon entering that we redeemed for a shot of something sweet. After that, a large beer was €5 or about $6.50. I was still used to the $1 beers of South America so that was the last beer I had. We mainly just stayed within our own social circle, but it was very fun. A young girl from Toronto and her mom were part of the group so we were really a mix of English speakers. It took much too long for my taste before we were on to the next place, which turned out to be just around the corner. This place was much smaller than the previous two and could comfortably hold about 25 people, but there were 50 of us. This place ONLY sold shots and there was a list of 280 different ones from which to chose on the back wall. I saw one young British guy wedged into the crowd just in front of me get his glass shot, drink it, then hold the empty glass over his head and drop it between people onto the floor where it smashed. Maybe it’s because they are supposed to be so proper in their normal lives, but when they drink English guys often become assholes.

Even before that it seemed to me the kind of place and crowd where a fight might break out so I went outside to chat with part of my group who had already settled out front in some chairs. It was cold and it seemed like we might be stuck at that place for a long time so I just said goodbye and walked back to my hotel. It was a really fun day and night, but the pub-crawl was a little disorganized and uneven. A couple of Asian girls from Florida were part of the group and just as nice as the rest of them. One of them took quite a few photos as the evening progressed and graciously offered to e-mail copies to each of us, but I later found out by e-mail that a thief grabbed her camera off her arm on her way home from the pub crawl. It’s really amazing how much petty crime there is all over.

My last day in Barcelona came and I still hadn’t seen the famous church. It worked out perfectly though since I had decided to take the night train to Nice that night at 7:20 p.m. so I had some time to kill anyway. First I went to the train station to buy my ticket and the man behind the glass seemed very distracted when my number was called. I mentioned my destination and he printed out two tickets, one for the few hours to the border, and the other for the sleeper train to Nice. He added up the two amounts and told me it was €79.80. That was more than I thought it was going to be, but I paid and got my ticket and headed to the Sagrida Familia.

There is a subway station directly underneath the cathedral so before I knew it I was in line to get in. Even during the off-season like this there was still a large crowd of tourists there. On the outside it is the strangest looking building I think I have ever seen. There are 8 huge towers erected already and another 8 even larger ones still planned. The building has been under construction for about 130 years and will supposedly be finished within 30 more, but many people are skeptical of that. One reason it is so slow is they are funding it entirely from private donations and admission fees from the tourists.

There is a chain link fence surrounding the thing that you can’t get inside of unless you pay the €8. It’s really amazing on the outside and I thought maybe I should just skip the inside, but of course I eventually decided to do it. I paid and went in then paid another €3.50 for an audio guide device like I had rented at The Alhambra. The commentary wasn’t as interesting, but it was definitely worth the money. I have a tendency to speed through some sights like that and the audio descriptions assure that I took my time and spend a good amount of time on the important things.

The thing that really surprised me was once you actually get inside the outer walls of the church it is nothing but a raw construction site on the inside. There are cranes on the outside working on the exterior, but I was shocked that they could charge €8 to get inside when it’s really just a large open area with building equipment in it and much of it was off-limits. There is a slick museum in the basement and that was impressive, but I still wasn’t sure if it was worth it.

The only other part of the attraction is an observation deck in the top of one of the towers. You can get up there in a €2 elevator or walk up some free stairs. I had a lot of energy and the line for the elevator was fairly long so I decided on the stairs. My guidebook said sometimes there is a hopeless traffic jam on the stairs, but as I bounded up the first 30 or 40 stairs there was not another person in sight. The stairs route is actually a spiral staircase that has room enough for only one person and there is another staircase for the traffic going down. As I just foreshadowed, after the first 30 or 40 steps suddenly I was stopped behind a group of people. At first I thought some cheap old woman had tried to go up the stairs, but I later found out it’s just designed and run so poorly that traffic jams are inevitable.

It was very strange to be caught in a huge line of people like that, especially since going down was just as impossible as going up. There was literally enough room for one person on each step. We would go up 5 steps and then stop for a minute, over and over. It took 30 minutes to get to the top and I finally saw why the traffic works like that. There are a couple of minor viewing points, but the main viewing point at the top is nothing more than a single file catwalk that stretches from the ‘up staircase’ tower to the ‘down staircase’ tower. Every second you spend gazing over the amazing city views is a second you are bottling up the giant trail of people behind you. The design of the church is amazing, but the design of the stairs viewing area is idiotic. Usually you get a ring either on the inside or outside of the cap of a tower, but this was not well thought out.

It took another 15 minutes to descend since some young English guy a few people in front of me apparently had an acute fear of heights so he was clinging to the outermost part of the stairs going down at a very slow rate. As with any spiral staircase you can see all the way to the top or the bottom from the very center of the stairs, so this guy did everything he could to stay to the outside. It made me furious though, since he was causing a new traffic jam because of his phobia. If you have a fear of heights then please don’t go up the stairs at the Sagrida Familia church.

I still had a few hours before my train left so I decided to walk back to my hotel instead of taking the subway. It turned out to be over two miles, but the weather was nice so I am glad I did it. Barcelona really is a lovely city, but since I don’t speak Spanish I never really felt too ‘at home’ there. I reached my hotel to pick up my stowed luggage and I looked again at my train tickets. I noticed the first one cost €8.50 and the second one cost €60.20 including the couchette (which is pronounced koo-SHET everywhere in Europe). I was pretty sure the friggin guy overcharged me by €10! I thought more about the transaction and it seemed that this guy almost certainly did it on purpose too. I knew getting my money back was hopeless since the tickets were the only receipt I had and they showed the lower amount, but I wanted to hassle the guy if he was still there.

I took the subway a few stops to the main train station and noticed the guy was still there in his same booth. I waited in line and when my turn came I went up to him and stated my case. I knew from before that his English was poor so I expected a brush off, but he acted as if he understood and took my ticket and started to punch some buttons in his computer. I was afraid he was canceling my ticket so I told him again I was happy with the ticket, but I think I was accidentally overcharged by €10. He punched out another ticket and told me “It is not a problem” then showed me another ticket that said €76 and started explaining he was confused earlier. He said it wasn’t a problem again and to my surprise he opened the drawer and pulled out a €10 bill and handed it to me.

The weird part of that was that if it was just a complete accident there is no way he would believe or that I could prove that he overcharged me since I had no proof. His actions actually confirmed to me that this must be something he does to foreigners and on the occasions they notice he apologizes and makes good. The fact that I bought my ticket earlier in the day is the only thing that saved me. If I had been getting on the train right away I obviously would have been helpless. I felt like I had just won €10 so I decided to get a couple of beers while I waited, but the €2-each price combined with the poor service at the train station bar made me stop after one so I just quietly waited for the train.

I had a big lunch just before I went into the Sagrida Familia so I figured I would have dinner during the hour and twenty minute stopover between my first train and the second. I also decided I should try to have several drinks that would hopefully knock me out and enable me to actually sleep on the train. I got on the first train, which was a commuter train and was full of Barcelonians who were in the city during the day and heading out to their suburban homes on that Saturday evening. Slowly but surely, the train emptied out of suburbanites and it was just me and some backpacker-types who were obviously going on the same train through France that I was.

After three hours we were at the second to last station. It was in the town of Port Bou, which is the very last stop in Spain. I had a good time in Spain and was very happy I had visited, but I was really looking forward to finally being out of the Spanish-speaking world. The last stop was just over the border in France, a few minutes away. I was finally in a country where people realize that English is the lingua franca of the modern world. I planned to leave the station and go into town to find a place to have a great French dinner and a few beers or maybe even a bottle of wine. I got off the train and discovered Europe’s most desolate train station and town. The bar/restaurant at the station itself was closed so I walked toward the darkened town and the farther I got the darker it got. This was Saturday night!

I came across a Tunisian man who had lived in Washington DC who was traveling with his wife. He had the exact same idea as I did and was exactly as shocked and flabbergasted as I was. He has also traveled extensively and was amazed that a train hub would be dead and closed, on a Saturday night no less. He said the snack bar at the station said they would be reopening after my train got in (he arrived on an earlier train) so we marched back to the station. The snack bar had, in fact, opened so I ordered a pre-made sandwich and asked about beer. It was €2.50 for a small one so I ordered a bottle of red wine for €6 and sipped it between bites of my dry baguette sandwich. It was just a “table wine”, but it was not bad and certainly much cheaper than a similar amount of beer. Wine also contains less gas that might need to be expelled at night, which is nice when sleeping in a train car full of strangers.