Barb and Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 3

To Tel Aviv and Back

Day 4:

It is now our third day in Barcelona and Barb still doesn’t have her luggage. The thrill of “winging it” has pretty much worn off now and Barb’s morale continues to decline on an hourly basis. What she believed would be a minor inconvenience becomes more and more inconvenient. We spent much of the morning shopping for necessary replacements but there are several problems.

The first major obstacle is that buying replacement summer clothes is very difficult when 99% of the items in stores are sweaters and other such warm weather items. The other big issue is that Barb has been wearing the same pair of shoes since we got here. In order for Barb to replace even one of the 15 other pairs of shoes in her missing suitcase, it may well take every hour of the rest of the 17 days left on the trip. We decide to call the airline to find out where things are. In order for us to do this, we have to call Madrid and we don’t want to make a long distance call from the hotel so this requires us to buy a phone card. We get the phone card and manage to figure out how to use this with the Spanish operator and then speak to the company who deals with lost luggage as Air Canada apparently doesn’t do this themselves. After speaking with the woman for about 20 minutes, we are told that Barb’s suitcase is in Tel Aviv. The woman assures us that the suitcase would be delivered that evening. Given the situation, we are somewhat sceptical of a delivery that evening.

One of the positive experiences that we have had so far in Spain has been the fact that it has been much cheaper than we have previously experienced in Europe. We estimate that it is about 25% cheaper than France in general from what we paid just last year.

We spent most of the day today touring the buildings in Barcelona which were designed by the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Now to be honest, I have never heard of Gaudi before coming here so I won’t expect that this is something that is very common knowledge but his buildings are truly unique in their design and are scarcely done justice with mere words. His most famous work (and perhaps the most famous building in Spain if you go by the covers of the guide books for Spain) is the gothic Sagrada Familia church.

We decide to go to the Sagrada Familia church early and try to “beat the crowds”. Unfortunately, our definition of early ended up being about 11:00 and when we got out of the subway station, there were at least 25 tour buses out front. The outside of the church appeared to be a construction zone as the unfinished construction that began about 90 years ago seems to have undergone a resurgence to try and compete the work that Gaudi started.
Scattered around the outside of the church were dozens of tour groups which typically comprised of a tour leader (usually holding some kind of sign in the air) and about 50 mostly retiree-type people in tow. Barb and I had long ago agreed that we much preferred to make our own tours and set our own schedule as opposed to the more formal types of guided tours. However, to each his own.

When we returned to the hotel that evening, we anxiously asked if we had received delivery of the suitcase and were disappointed to find out that it did not arrive.

Day 5:

Our hotel reservation in Barcelona included the cost of breakfast in the dining room which we sampled the third day that we were here (we missed the first breakfast as we slept in too late). After giving this a chance, we decided that we would be eating breakfast outside from now on as dry buns and pre-packaged muffins were not what we came to Europe for. We found a local café and some coffee and croissants as this seemed to sustain us well when we were in France year. The breakfast was quite good but the French still reign supreme (in our estimation) for making top quality croissants.

Today was pouring rain and we decided to go to the Picasso museum and spend the afternoon there. Since our trip to France, we have made a habit of visiting museums when travelling to Europe and my only disappointment is that we never did this when we were in London, Berlin and Rome years before.

I can’t categorize myself as a huge art connoisseur but there’s something very real about visiting art galleries when you’re spending day after day looking at (often) touristy local sites. Also, it’s not every day that we’re going to be able to see the works of the great masters that are available in the major European cities so why not spend the time we figure?

We ended the day with a perfect Paella meal accompanied with more excellent Spanish red wine (vino tinto, por favor!). As has been our routine, we went for a walk after dinner and made it back to the hotel by about midnight. The perfect evening was completed by the sight of Barb’s suitcase waiting for us in the lobby.

Day 6:

We had no real agenda today so we walked around a bit and mostly just relaxed. Tomorrow we leave Barcelona and head fly to Madrid for about 6 days. The Madrid stay is expected to be a highlight of the trip as we have made arrangements to buy tickets for a Real Madrid football match next Sunday (I won’t dare call it a *soccer* match as I understand that this is a criminal offence in most of Europe). Our only hope is that our luggage makes it there with us.

Until next time …

Baden and Barb

Continue on to Barb & Baden’s Excellent Spanish Adventure – Part 4