Day 10

Monday August 6

6:30am GMT - woke up and finished last packing up, went down and checked out of hotel - he got a cab for us in less than 5 minutes - impressive, but makes sense as they wait out in the square on special taxi lanes.

7:15am GMT - taxi got us to the airport in 15 min or less, total was 8.75 euros, so now we really know the guy on our arrival way overcharged us. Oh well. Sat in a little café right inside the airport so amanda could get breakfast (I ate my very delicious cake roll thing from the pastelaria yesterday).

7:45am GMT - we find out where our flight is checking in and go there and I realize I don't have my little bag with all my ceramic goodies. So I ran back to the café and thankfully they were still sitting on the table *phew*. Checked in and went through security with no problems.

10:30am GMT - flight took off a little late - probably because it was a ghetto thing where they took us from the gate to the plane via a bus and then we had to walk up stairs - AGAIN, in a BIG CITY!!!?! Anyway… I actually dozed on and off most of the flight which was less than 2 hours. So that should mess up my sleeping tonight just fine, especially considering we also lost an hour and that always messes up my sleeping in itself. So there was NO security at the Barcelona airport. Maybe it was because we were flying in between EU countries but no passport control at all…so no Spain stamp in my passport :( Thought it was very weird, though.

2:00pmish CET - arrived in Barcelona and got luggage with no problems. Soooooo humid here oy. Luckily not too hot. Got the aerobus for 3.90 euros right outside the airport. We realized later we could've saved a bit of money had we bought a return ticket, but oh well. Got off at the Universitat stop and took a few min orienting ourselves to find the right way to go to get to our hotel. It is very nice. The room is small but reminds me a bit of an American room. Much nicer than the last one. The location is good, maybe a 5 min walk from the main touristy streets but on a pretty quiet side street so that is nice. The wireless exists but I cannot connect to it. Can't figure out what the problem is. And there are like zero outlets in the room - the only one I can find is in the bathroom, so that is interesting.

4:30pm CET - we realized we had never eaten lunch so we went out for a little stroll and found a couple convenience stores at the corner and also found a full-blown supermarket where I found some delicious little tomatoes, some plums, some grapes, some salami to eat for "lunch," and olives in a box. Yes, olives in a box (see pictures). They are tasty. I also bought some bottled water. There's a fridge in our room with minibar stuff in it at outrageous prices but it seems to not really cool anything down much. I guess in the morning I can ask if there is a way to make it colder. But a fridge that doesn't cool anything does sort of defeat the purpose. On our little walk we also found plenty of tasty looking pastry shops with plenty of stuff for breakfast in the mornings.

6:00pm CET - came back to the room and ate our very late lunch and relaxed for a bit. The hotel only gets Spanish stations. I can see that CNN international exists, but it doesn't come in clearly enough to watch. Geez. Everyone seems to speak a little english here, so it is surprising that there's no english channels.

7:00pm CET - decided to take a stroll to one of the main streets a few minutes away called Rambla de Catalunya. I had read about a lot of restaurants there so we figured we could check it out and at the same time find a place for a light dinner since we were tired and had eaten our "lunch" not all that long ago. Walked up and down it and looked at all the menus - most of the places are tapas but some had other stuff.

7:45pm CET - finally decided on one of the tapas places I had read about in some guide books and other places - Ciudad Condal - right on the corner. We were early by Barcelona standards so had no trouble getting a seat. The first guy who waited on us spoke English well enough but didn't give us an english menu - so like 15 min later another guy walks by and sees me with my phrasebook and he is like "do you want an english menu?" and we are like DUH and he is all "no need to spend 30 minutes looking at it" LOL he was funny. Anyway we had a couple of small plates like the spicy potatoes etc. It wasn't a huge meal but since we hadn't eaten that long ago and were tired it was plenty. I think my meal cost 8 euros or less haha.

9:30pm CET - made it back to the hotel where the wireless still, duh, doesn't work. The computer on the 1st floor is fine but the keyboard is Spanish and so things are in different places and it's annoying. Maybe tomorrow morning I'll ask whoever is there at the desk about the wireless and maybe they will have a better answer than the people tonight. It is weird because it is picking up the signal fine but then won't connect. They gave me a "username" and "password" and it's supposed to be like my school's wireless where you just open the browser and get a portal screen to type the name and password in but it won't even get that far to be able to connect to that page. So I dunno. Pain :( The hotel is nice but I guess if the wireless and fridge don't work and the TV has no English channels it's a bit of a pain LOL. But ah well it seems clean and comfortable enough so the rest won't matter ;)