Friday March 30 – Vienna to Barcelona


This will be pretty short. This was really just a travel day. Put the finishing touches on packing this morning, and I’m pretty sure I took everything I intended to. Always a little trepidation, wondering if I’ve forgotten something, especially after 3 weeks! Expensive but uneventful taxi to the airport. Unpleasant surprise about baggage allowances – since I’m flying just to Barcelona, and my return to the States is with a different carrier, they gave me only a small domestic baggage allowance. So I had to pay monstrous overweight charges, at least double the cost of my original ticket. I know, I know, there’s always something about Carlyn and luggage! At least it got to Barcelona with me.

Iberia Airlines is very cost-efficient. You can’t get so much as a drink of water on the plane without paying extra! $2 for water, $3 for a soft drink, $12 for a bad airline sandwich. I bought a water (remember, I wasn’t allowed to carry on my own), but passed on the food. My seatmates were two teenage girls, Austrian, who are going to Barcelona for a week as a sort of field trip for their Spanish class. They have classes in Latin, Spanish, English, as well as German – they have a field trip to England next month with their English class! Obviously some well-heeled girls. But very nice, and very friendly. They were so excited about their trip!

Arrived in Barcelona around 4 PM, taxi to my hotel in the Gothic quarter. The hotel looks across to the Cathedral, and it’s on a pedestrian square, so there shouldn’t be much traffic noise! My taxi driver didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Spanish let alone Catalan, so I wasn’t able to converse with him. Nice hotel, no problem with English here. My room is small but attractive, and there’s free wireless internet in the room, which is very convenient.

I had hoped for an early dinner, since I didn’t really have lunch, but I find that they don’t serve dinner here until 8 PM!!! So I got directions to a nearby market with a grocery store inside. The market is really cool! All enclosed, with vendors of every possible food, from fish and meat, to cheese, stands with nothing but olives, egg vendors (the eggs are piled in the display areas as if they were potatoes or something equally durable! I didn’t take pictures today, but I’ll be back there. I found the grocery store, and got some yogurt and bottled water (without carbonation, thank you very much!). I couldn’t find any milk. Perhaps that’s in a different store, though you’d think if they have yogurt and butter and cheese, they’d have the milk too. Maybe no one drinks it here.

Close to 8 PM I went downstairs for advice on restaurants. The concierge looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for places around 15-20 Euros for main course. He claims you can’t eat for that price (that would be $20-27) in Barcelona, which I found hard to believe. So I went off exploring, and discovered Barcelona waking up for the night – people out in droves, shopping, walking, just generally living life on the pedestrian malls. And I found a delicious light dinner – grilled chicken and aubergines (eggplant) with mushrooms, bacon and hollandaise sauce, served with a delicious crusty bread, for about 5 Euros. Wandered the outdoor shopping area a bit, though at 9 PM everything started closing down.

Walking back to my hotel, I heard music in the distance, Vivaldi’s Seasons, sounded like organ music maybe coming from the Cathedral. As I got closer I decided it was a string group, and then when I was closer yet I realized, my God, that’s an accordion playing like that! He was really amazing. I had no idea an accordion could sound like this! He had a CD of his own, and I had to buy it. It’s playing right now, a Bach organ toccata and fugue. Granted, the sound isn’t as rich as a nice pipe organ, but just the fact that the accordion can be played like this is a real revelation to me. (He probably sounded even better than his CD where I heard him, outdoors in front of the cathedral in a very small courtyard, where there were lots of stone walls off which to reverberate.)

And that was the end of my day’s adventures. I’m back in my hotel room, using what I now realize is the hotel-next-door’s wireless service – but hey, if they don’t put any restrictions on it, who am I to complain!

Love to all,

Carlyn

Last updated 12/07. Copyright 2007 by Richard C. Morenus. Questions? Send email to richard.c@morenus.org