I’m sure the people of Catalunya and Barcelona are kind, generous, friendly, welcoming folks, but based on the first six eyeballs I stared into today you couldn’t prove it by me. OK, so I turned the wrong way down a three-lane one-way street in downtown Barcelona. Turning around in that predicament is something you don’t want to try at home. But I did it and we completed the last kilometer for our 2,530 km trip without further incident. We’ll except for pulling half way up on the sidewalk while Judy went in to find that the Sixt return garage was a block down on the other side of the street.
So our faithful VW is back where it belongs, in perfect condition. Oh, except for the several grains of 14thcentury fortress I embedded in the rear bumper in Belmonte that day. But we had, contrary to my inclination, paid the extra bucks for complete coverage.
Would you believe Uber isn’t operating in Barcelona? The taxi drivers went on strike in February, blocking a major portion of downtown. The strike was settled when the city imposed a 15-minute wait on all Uber and Cabity pickups. Cabity found a way around the rule and is back in business. I was all ready to download their app and use it but right outside the rental return was a taxi stand so we took the easy, 6 Euro route to our hotel.
After checking in we rambled down Las Ramblas, the main pedestrian thoroughfare that leads from our hotel to the Colon (Christopher Columbus) monument at water’s edge. It took about half an hour and, once there we discovered a skyline boat ride. So we signed up and used the wait time to go for, you guessed it, an ice cream bar. The tour was OK but pretty far from shore and with no commentary. But the day was once again beautiful, and we enjoyed the ride.
I keep flashing back on my time with Mom, 50 years ago or so. Today, at the waterfront, I saw a building that made me think of the restaurant where I had my first paella with her. It probably wasn’t the same building, but it evoked the memory. I also recall how she walked me ‘til I dropped from one end of Barcelona to the other. I really got annoyed: “Aren’t you ever going to stop and rest, Mom?” It was a standing joke of ours for many years. Of course, 50 years ago she would have been 47 and I 21. And just tonight as I was typing this, I got a message from Facebook reminding me that I’ve been Facebook friends with Lilian Libby Rick for exactly 10 years.
The desk guy got us a reservation at a nearby Catalonian restaurant for 8:30 so we won’t go hungry. We’re getting stingy of both time and money so we’re eating breakfast and lunch out of our brown bags. You want to pay 17 euros for a hotel breakfast of hours-old scrambled eggs? Us neither.
And yesterday? The day without cameras and computers and blog postings? It went well and was quite pleasant. We did splurge on the hotel breakfast and tended to some traveling laundry and generally getting our act together for the last week of the trip. This was a scheduled “catch your breath” day before the challenge was thrown down.
By 11:30, though, we were on our way across the river in front of our hotel and hiked up a trail that lead to Llanos de la Larri, which turned out to be a beautiful alpine meadow bowl between two mountain peaks. We found lots of alpine flowers and a half-dozen horses munching on the grass. The trail itself followed a cascading stream of mountain melt. We had periodic overlooks of the crashing water.
The hike took about 4 hours for us, maybe 2.5 miles and 1,000 feet of vertical gain. That includes a side trip up another trail that was supposed to lead to another cascade point. We decided that in the interest of time and energy we’d turn back before finding the cascade. On the way we ran into two hiker groups who asked, in broken English and French, “Which way to the parador.” That led us to believe that they had come up the French side of the mountain and were being met at the Parador. In fact, from where we turned around, the French border was only one or two kilometers further up the mountain.
Of course, we didn’t take any pictures, so you’ll have to guess what we saw from the pictures we took in front of the parador this morning.
OK, yes, we cheated. But Judy didn’t shoot any video and I didn’t shoot any still pictures. I did the video and Judy the stills. But not many. Just a few to remind us of what we experienced. I’ll include some of the stills in tonight’s post and Judy will put up a video sometime soon, I’m sure.
The real benefit from our challenge day was the extra time we had that afternoon. The hike was strenuous for old geezers like us and the afternoon nap felt good. Instead of typing, we went out on the patio and had a beer and coke and nibbled on a few olives. Then we went back to the room and had a couple of hits on the port wine bottle with dark chocolate. We went for dinner at 8:00 and were in bed by 11, a good hour earlier than our average.
I’ll add what Judy wrote about the day off:
I did find it interesting. We went hiking which is a good thing to do except the scenery was so beautiful as we were climbing up a mountain and along a river bed and beautiful waterfalls. I kept wanting to capture the scenery on video so I could remember it all. I also discovered that for me I do not think I miss a lot when I am hiking with my camera. I seem to be even more aware because I see something through my video lens, zoom in on it and see more. I also take a picture I had seen while doing the video. Another thing about being in nature with my video camera is that I am keener on the sounds and want to record them. By the end of the day I was a little sad as I thought about the possible pictures we could have for the wall of waterfalls, mountains, a rainbow at the waterfall.
The good parts were that I did not feel the pressure to get back to give Jon time to write the blog and I enjoyed time to sit out on the porch, have a drink and enjoy looking at the scenery. I do love Jon’s blog, but this particular day seemed like it was a good day to take a break and have a day off. On trips it might be a good idea to pick a day to skip a blog and just take less pictures and thinking about if this is a really important scene that needs to be to captured. I would only want to take one day off because I suspect we both get great pleasure out of recording our adventure and isn’t that what it is all about. Thank you, Rebecca, for encouraging us to try something different and I think we can incorporate some of it into our next trip.
Oh, we did take a selfie at a waterfall that all self-respecting tourist would do. We also did two videos because we had to capture what we were seeing, any tourist would!
Bottom line: thanks, Rebecca!
Tomorrow’s a busy day. We go on a Sagrada Familia tour at 9 AM and a walking tour at 3 PM. Barcelona’s a big, bustling, exciting and challenging place. A big change from the Parador at Bielsa where the cow bells competed with the roar of the stream and cascading waterfalls.
*** 10:00 PM ***
A pan of paella and a pitcher of sangria and we’re back in the hotel ready for bed. The paella lived up to my recollections.
