Mainly in the Plains, I Was Told

A Soggy Weekend in Barcelona

One of the exciting things about living in Europe is the potential to visit all the different countries/cultures with relative ease. The US is huge, it requires real effort and long distances to get to another country. And yeah, there’s lots of cultural variety within our own country, but Austin is smack-dab in the middle of the nation’s second largest state, so getting to a border takes a full day of driving in any direction.

It was with great delight that we dropped the doggies at the sitter and headed off to Barcelona to meet up with our friends Janet and David. We didn’t do our usual (over-) planning for this trip. Ordinarily, we’d have booked reservations at fantastic restaurants, and purchased tickets to the museums and architectural sites we wanted to visit. That didn’t happen this time. David’s attendance was in question right up to the last minute because their home in Asheville was damaged during hurricane Helene. Janet was already in Spain walking the Camino de Santiago, so David was in Asheville dealing with the flooding and lack of electricity/water/cell service all on his own. It was the heroics of emergency responders, FEMA, and personal grit that allowed him to join us at all.

The French are objectively better at croissants, there’s not nearly enough butter in the Spanish version and too much chocolate.

We arrived in Spain with a hotel reservation in Las Ramblas and a train ticket home, but otherwise we had nothing booked. The forecast was for heavy rain during our entire visit. The weather was clear when we arrived at the Barcelona Sants train station, so Carolyn and I decided to walk the two miles to our hotel. It felt great to move after sitting on the train for three hours. We arrived at the hotel around 5:00, and got quickly settled into our room before meeting David and Janet in the lobby bar for drinks and laughs ahead of dinner. Dinner was unremarkable except for the company, which was fabulous! (I’ll take an okay meal and fantastic conversation over the opposite any day.)

David was really trying to tempt me to buy another guitar. I resisted.

Saturday was our only full day in Barcelona, after a slow start with coffee and pastry from a local cafe, we did a moderately wet hike to the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. Of course, it was sold out and there were huge lines of people waiting for standby entrance. Even walking the basilica’s perimeter is breathtaking. It was fascinating to see the new work being completed adjacent to work from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Barcelona with my Main Number 1.

We decided to walk to a slightly less prominent Gaudí attraction, the Parc Güell - nobody will want to go to the garden in the driving rain, right? Nope. It was sold out with long lines, and unlike the Sagrada Familia, it had very little curb appeal. At this point in the day, my watch showed I had about 14K steps, I was tired, and I was wet (with rain from the knees down and with sweat from the knees up). We caught a taxi back to the hotel and retired to our separate rooms to dry off and rest a bit before dinner.

Detail at Sagrada Familia

The rain eased up and we were able to enjoy a Saturday night strolling around Las Ramblas and talking. We mused about maybe getting up early to try and go to Sunday morning mass at Sagrada Familia so we could see the interior. Ultimately we were tired and it felt crass to intrude on a church service so we could game the system and gawk at the architecture. We opted for another semi-wet walk through Barcelona to enjoy brunch at the wonderful Egg Lab restaurant.

Waiting for a table at Egg Lab with Janet.

This wasn’t the immersive cultural trip that we hoped for, but it was still a fantastic trip. We got to see old friends, it was fun to hear Spanish, we saw fantastic architecture and for whatever reason I (Roberto) slept like a dead man in our hotel room (chalk it up to a magic bed and a cold room). But here’s what’s really great: it’s a three hour train ride away! We can go back easily, we get from our apartment door to the train station in 15 minutes, there are no visa/passport issues, and it’s not crazily expensive. We will go back and we’ll have reservations.

Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time),

Carolyn & Roberto