Last Day in Barcelona

Ugh!!! Was that the alarm? Jet lag hit me and I couldn't fall asleep. Elena had the watch in beep every hour mode and I counted 2 of them. I thought I'd be able to sleep since we walked all over the city. We walked and walked and walked. My feet were so sore! I was watching Spartacus in Spanish and after 12am, I was hoping the next battle with the Romans would be the last, but the slaves won and I had to turn off the TV.

Elena started rearranging the weight in the luggage in anticipation of carrying it back to the station. Then we headed out to go to Starbucks (we found one just a block away from La Sagrada Familia) and to go to the grocery store to buy some meat, cheese, and bread to make sandwiches for lunch. We got to Starbucks and ordered 1 tall and 1 grande coffee--they call the drip coffee by the name "cafe de la setmana" or coffee of the week. Well, it seems that the Starbucks didn't have the coffee beans for brewing drip coffee! The guy said we they were on the way and that we could only have "normal" coffee, by which he meant an exzresso drink. We let a woman behind us place her order while we mulled over the options. So we decided to get an Americano and the barista guy seemed pleased with our choice. We sat and sipped on our Americanos and marvelled that we couldn't get drip coffee at Starbucks on a Monday morning!

At last, we finished up our americanos and headed up to the grocery store (Bonpreu). It was after 9 and the store opens at 9, so imagine our surprise when the store wasn't open yet! Or maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. So we went to the hostal and got our luggage and went to check out. The hostel owner came down and we asked if we could keep our luggage there. She agreed and out we went to have one more crack at Barcelona.

Since I know Elena likes to climb slopes, I had suggested Montjuic. We walked there. Along the way both our feet started to hurt. It was the furthest point from our hotel that we had walked yet. And we were only half way to the mountain! When we almost reached the point we popped into a patisserie (forn de pa) and got some pastries. Then we went by the Coliseum and up toward the National Art Museum of Catalanya. There were escalators all the way up to the top (there are Olympics venues up there so they needed a way to get crowds up the mountain), but only took one story of escalator. The rest was foot and leg work. Fortunately, when we reached the top, Elena pulled out the pastries we bought and we scarfed them down followed by a couple of bananas we had bought 2 days earlier. Then we wandered around on the mountain gaining altitude until we reached the Castle.

At the Castle we had a neat little surprise. We saw the port of Barcelona in operation and they were discharging a COSCO vessel. That's Elena's company! It was fun to see it way down there looking like a little toy container ship. We tried to take pictures. The deck cranes blocked the view of the COSCO on the side of the ship, but we got enough that it might be possible to tell. We had a good time making work jokes.

Then we went on a teleferic which is a gondola hanging from cables, but it does a left hand turn at the half way through. Cool, eh? At the end of that we were at a funicular stop, but decided to walk down despite our painful feet. We got to the bottom and crossed El Rival, La Rambla, La Ribela, and finally made it near the Familia Sagrada where another Bonpreu was open. We got 9,85 euros of meat, cheese, bread, nuts, cookies, and water. Half of it we ate in the shade of the park right by the Sagrada Familia. It was yummy. Then we went back to the hostel to get our luggage. Slowly, slowly we progressed to the station. We managed the stairs, managed the turnstiles, managed the subway, and managed several esclators before arriving at our station. Yay!!!! We popped into a cafeteria. I guarded the luggage as Elena went to get a latte. Then Elena guarded the luggage as I went to get a beer. Elena said her coffee was really good, but it couldn't have been anywhere near as good as my beer. I was hot, tired, sweaty, fatigued, but when those first few swallows of cold beer went down my throat, all was well again. Elena looked jealous of my bliss and asked for a sip. I was afraid because I had memories of her in Greece on a hot day chugging a Mythos beer at the base of the Acropolis. I've never seen anyone chug a beer so fast. But she took only a small sip. Whew!

Then we got a couple of beers for the road and headed to platform 12 to catch our train. There was a security checkpoint. After a while, they let us down to the platform. We waited for the train. As the time for the train to come approached, it was looking like there wouldn't be enough time to get everyone on. The monitor that showed the train schedule had a little tiny red scrolling thing. I got closer to it so I could read it. It was a tiny little alert that the train would be an hour late. Damn! So we sat there for an hour more waiting for the train. When it arrived, we fought through the train to get to our car which was the furthest car from where we were. In fact our seats were the furthest seats on that car. In fact, our seats faced backwards and our knees would go right against the knees of the guys who were there. They were horrible seats. Immediately Elena thought the ticket vendor did this to us on purpose. I'm not as sure, but she's from Europe so maybe she knows something I don't.

I'm writing this as we are on the train. We'll be in Montpellier in a couple of hours. Until then, toodles!