Barcelona by Bus and Bike

The windows of Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona

John...on his 12th birthday, in the jaws of the beast....


Bike riding in Barcelona

Barcelona tour bus....


We had a great rental apartment in Barcelona, just near the Church of the Sailors….after the dump we stayed in in Athens, it was pure bliss! If we went out of the door and walked for five minutes (right, then right, then left), we were on the waterfront at the port where the aquarium, the Imax, and the “rich folks” boats were moored. If we went out of the door in any other direction we were lost in the pedestrian streets of the “old town”. I am sure we could have spent much longer than a week there and never walked the same way twice…I know we were never lost the same way twice, and we were lost a lot of the time! One day we came out of the subway across the street from our usual stop and could not find our way home until Nelson got out his compass (yes, he has a compass on his watch!) and lead us to the sea shore. From there we knew our way. (Another great feature of this apartment is access to clothes washing and DRYING machines…for FREE…we have not been so clean since we left Creston!)

The first day we were there was John’s birthday, and he got to plan the activities for the day. I could not do much because of my ankle, so the boys went out on their own. They went to the aquarium and walked underwater with the sharks, then went to the Imax and watched sharks in 3D. Quite a day for killer fish!

I promised John the supper of his choice, so it was pasta with parmesan cheese and olive oild (no sauce). We needed to buy the groceries and I was a bit stir crazy from spending the whole day in the apartment (though I must say watching Spanish TV for six hours was a good immersion point for language learning) so Nelson and I went out to get supplies. When we got to the corner of our street we discovered a wine festival in progress! For five euro each we bought a glass (literally, a rather nice wine glass) and then we walked (in my case limped) along the street from table to table sampling the new wines of 2009 and the tapas (snacks) on offer. It was VERY fun, the streets were packed with people enjoying the night out, and I decided that Spain is my favorite country in the whole world! We were very slow (in John’s opinion) to get home with the pasta, but he had a good supper. He and Nelson also had fun going back out into the crowd to get waffles with ice cream and chocolate --- our Barcelonan substitute for birthday cake!

The services of the “hop-on, hop-off” tourist bus really helped me to enjoy Barcelona. I was not doing any hopping, but I did ride the bus in every direction, and even though I could not get off to explore every where I wanted to, I got at bird’s eye view from the top deck of the bus. John and Nelson did some bike riding without me.

One place I was determined not to miss was the “underwater” house designed by Antonio Gaudi. I went….and it was extraordinary. There are few straight lines, the colours and shapes combine to create the effect of being under, or in, the sea. I have seen TV shows and read books about Gaudi’s work, and I was not sure if it would live up to the advance publicity. It did. I want to go back and explore more when I can spend more time soaking it in. We all went to see the Sagrada Familia Church, which is another of his buildings and it’s equally impressive, but not as intimate as the house I saw. The church is spectacular and all, but the house….well, I could imagine living there and that made it “real” to me.

There’s a long story about how we didn’t bother to get, or ran out of time to get, our international driver’s permits before we left Canada. We weren’t too worried because in France and Italy no one ever asked for them. When we were in Greece, though, we discovered that it is an essential piece of documentation, and without it one cannot rent a car (or should not rent a car) in the European Union. The International Driver’s Permit is a piece of paper issued by BCAA that translates a valid driver’s license into many languages. The ironic thing is that it does not translate it into Greek! Anyway….we decided that one of us (that would be Nelson) better have an IDP before we rented a car in Spain. All our plans for Spain are hinged on having a car while we are here.

While we were in Turkey we found a place to print the on-line application for an IDP and Nelson filled it out, then a few days later we found a place to photo copy his driver’s licence to send along with it, and then a few days after that we found a place to buy an envelope and a stamp. We left the envelope in a shop with the man who sold us the stamp and he promised that it would be on the way Surrey, BC as soon as possible. All this was all much much more complicated than I can explain in one paragraph of typing. I suppose that if we were travelling "business class" it would not be so challenging, but we are travelling budget style, and it appears that budget style travellers do not often demand these services. Or, and this is equally likely, we just don't know how to ask for these services!

Two weeks later, while we were in Barcelona, we had an email from BCAA saying they had processed the application and would courier the IDP to Barcelona, but we had to have a business address….oh, the fuss and bother. Eventually Nelson found a car rental place that would rent us a car as long a the driver’s license (that would be Nelson again) was in a roman alphabet. So, with some trepidation, we rented the car and had the IDP sent from Surrey by rapid mail, but not courier, to our place in Puerto de Mazarron. The license arrived the day after we got here, and the story of how Nelson eventually got it is definitely material for another post.