All I lost today is an hour (which really wasn't my fault) and part of a toenail (not sure how or when that happened, it just started to hurt and I realized it was torn and bleeding).
Jaime and I had agreed to meet at 8:50 in order to have time to get to the train station and park before catching a 9:20 train into the city. At 8:30 I left my room and came out into the lobby to find Jaime and Adrian waiting for me. I thought they were early, but it was me who was late. Even though my phone managed to make the jump between Central time at home and British time, it failed to do so from Scotland to Spain. It was actually 9:30, and we had missed the train altogether.
Now I know why they say that August is not the best time to visit Barcelona.
It is hot and crowded everywhere you go - the parks, the streets, the stores, the tourist bus. And when people are hot and crowded, they get crabby. Kids cry and are ignored, people push and glare and make snide comments that they don't think you understand about the fact that you are a %^&* tourist. Never mind the fact that they, themselves, are tourists - or do some people in Barcelona actually take the hop-on hop-off bus to work??
Our plan was to ride the tourist bus around both of the main routes, then get off wherever we wanted to. What we actually did was take one of the routes as far as Parc Guell (where we hoped to find a cache or two) and then get off. One thing that irritates me about the Barcelona tourist bus map is that it makes it appear that certain things are on the route when, in fact, they are long walks away from the closest stop. The walk from the Parc Guell stop was a full 20 minutes, and uphill all the way.
See all of these steps?
And all of these?
We found the cache in short order, then looked around a bit at the beautiful mosaics on almost every surface. Supposedly, the mosaic which covers the back of the sinuous bench around the upper plaza is the longest continuous piece in the world. We stayed a bit, then made our way back down the stairs and then several blocks back to the bus stop, where we had to wait in line for the next bus. When we finally got on, it took some time before we could get an upstairs seat, where the breeze made it bearable (downstairs in a closed bus is not fun). When we finished riding that route, we stopped for lunch at KFC, then got back in the bus line for the other route. As we rode around, I began to notice that everything they talked about on the commentary was "the biggest in the world", or "the best", or "the tallest", or "the first" or "the fastest". Strange coincidence that Barcelona could be home to the finest example of just about anything you can name. Even the Columbus memorial was "clearly the best" of all Columbus memorials in the world, even though he is pointing in the wrong direction to find the New World.
I was surprised to see just how small the Olympic cauldron is at the top of Montjuic. Hitting it with the flaming arrow to light it and start the 1992 Games now seems like a much bigger feat than I remember it being then, though I was impressed at the time, too. The diving venue looked kind of terrifying, built into the side of the mountain. It was probably the last time that diving will be held outside because the athletes complained about the wind affecting their performance. I can believe it.
When we finished the second route, we did a bit of shopping, then hopped back on the bus to take us back to the train station to head back. We both agreed that if you are going to do both routes, it would be better to get the two-day pass so that you have time to see everything you want. We spent so much time waiting in line, and being on the bus but not being able to see because we were downstairs, and we didn't get off anywhere but Parc Guell (and to change routes).
We got back to my hotel, and I showered, then we went for dinner at Jaime's home in a quiet little town outside of Barcelona, a few miles from my hotel. Jaime said that his wife was a bit worried about the dinner because she doesn't speak English, so I had to practice my Spanish. I tried. And she tried. And with smiles and sign language, everything was fine. The uneven number of little cars in the package I gave their two boys was a problem for a minute, until Jaime told them they could each have two, and he would get one (they chose the smallest one, a little backhoe, for him). The meal was absolutely delicious - tortilla, a tuna salad, jamon and bread, a really wonderful pork dish, and a dessert that was sort of like cheesecake with a cookie crust on top and bottom. It was very nice of them to invite me, and I had a great time.
Mosaics at Parc Guell
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