Not sure if it is 3 a.m. or 9 a.m. Local clocks are saying 9 a.m., but where we come from it is 3 a.m.
As follow to yesterday’s blog, three of us watched “OZ the Great and Powerful,” while Nathan watched “Rise of the Guardians” and played on his 3DS. They had chicken, pasta or salad for dinner — We all got chicken. Then we slept or not for about 4 hours. Now it is breakfast time, 40 minutes to landing. If we are factoring the time differences in correctly, we expect to be in Barcelona a little before 10 a.m. local time. That is only 90 minutes later than scheduled. Not sure how long it will take to get through customs and to the apartment.
They served breakfast of banana, orange juice and a very generic egg muffin thing. I thought it was tasteless, Betsy thought the muffin very spicy. The kids didn’t eat the muffin. They also offered coffee, tea or water.
5 p.m. — Just got back from a day of pedestrian touring the downtown Ramblas and waterfront.
We took a taxi from the airport to the apartment. Got in about noon by the time we got through customs. Taxi cost EUR 34.50. Then walked around the block looking at cafes and restaurants with mom and dad before having lunch.
We ordered separate, orders of two people and four people, but the check came for all six of us on 1 check. so we split it per person at EUR 25 for the four of us.
After lunch Mom and Dad showed us the nearest subway station, and we saw them go down into before heading off on foot to the Rambla.
The streets in Barcelona aren’t north/south or east/west, and many of them are diagonal off the grid as well, which makes keeping a sense of direction challenging. The key thing for us where we are staying is to know whether they run toward or parallel to the waterfront. The streets have a lot of bike lanes, and a lot of motorcyclists as well.
We found our way to the Rambla using the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. It has several lanes, and two whole pedestrian parkways down the centers of it until you reach the Placa da Catalunya at the top of the Rambla. The Rambla is a pedestrian friendly park walk that goes through several blocks down to the Mirador de Colom, where Christopher Columbus landed upon returning from the Americas.
There is a large pillar at the Mirador de Colom, with a statue of Columbus on the top, set in the middle of a great traffic circle on the waterfront.
After reaching the statue, we went out via the boardwalk to this shopping mall on the waterfront beyond the marina. Got a nice view of the city and the sea from the top (second) floor.
We picked up bottled water for the way back, and even stopped for some very small, but very good, ice cream cones, on the way back up the Rambla.
7 p.m. — After some showers went back out and looked over the local supermarket. Didn’t find anything we wanted to pick up for breakfast. Followed that with a loop at a sidewalk sandwich shop — 4 sandwiches and 4 cans of soda for 3 EUR per person. I had to break a EUR50 note, that took most of his change to pay.
Sidewalk eateries seem to be the thing in Barcelona. Don’t eat inside if you can eat outside. Mom and dad mentioned that many places don’t start service dinner food until 8 p.m. — before that it is just time to mingle, socialize, and have drinks. Things open up later, and go later, than we are used to in our American context.
At The Rainbow 