Where is the airport?!!

Barcelona street people.
Glass blowers production line

Mall cop...lots of the police wear scarves like this...they look like bank robbers!

Gaudi house glass...couldn't resist just one more try to capture the mood

We could not have timed our departure from the Costa Calida better. Mum, Dad and I arrived at the airport just in time to check into our “cheapo-air” flight to Barcelona. We arrived at the departure gate just in time to board and we settled down on the plane just in time to take off. In Barcelona it is cheaper to rent a one bedroom apartment than a hotel room. We booked with “Barcelona Bedrooms” again and found ourselves in two one bedroom apartments above the company office. Vanessa and her husband greeted us like friends returning for a family visit and encouraged me to keep speaking Spanish.

After Nelson arrived and parked the car (always a chaotic experience) at a nearby private garage (30 euros a day, exactly half the cost of the daily rental for a one room apartment!) Mum and Dad and I jumped onto the same “hop-on, hop-off” tourist bus that I rode when we were in Barcelona in November and I could not walk. We held on to our top deck seats for half the trip but had to give in to the icy Barcelona wind and move downstairs after a while. This is not the tropics!

Sunday came and what a shame…..(a Stomping Tom Conners lyric reference there, if you can name the song I will send you a keychain) we had to return the car to the rental agency. I don’t think Nelson thought it was a shame at all, really. He had his first lunch-time beer since he assumed chauffeuring responsibilities and we relaxed in a taxi on the way back to the city. I have had some great conversations with taxi drivers. I learned that during Franco times if four or five people gathered to talk on the street, the police would come and ask them what they were doing. If those same four or five people were speaking Catalan (as apposed to Castilian) the police would arrest them and ask the questions later. During those years the language stayed alive in homes and private lives. Now it’s the official language of the province of Cataluna and it is the language children are schooled in, there are TV channels and newspapers, books, etc. I learned that some people think the Royal Family is not worth the money it costs the people to support them and their busy work. I learned that the rich people are buried at the bottom of the cemetery on the hill and the poor folks are up at the top. I also learned that the FC Barcelona shirts sold in the tourist shops on La Rambla are cheap imitations and if I want to get FBC souvenirs I should go to the official store.

We visited the Batllo House designed by Antonio Gaudi, which is a famous landmark in Barcelona and a fascinating place to see. It’s like walking underwater….I think I raved about it in my November Barcelona blog post. I wanted Mum and Dad to go there, because it is the kind of place that must be experienced to be understood. We also visited the “Poble Espanol” which is a relic from the World’s Fair held in Barcelona in the early 1900s. On the grounds are a life-sized reproductions of typical Spanish architecture from all over Spain. So, even though we did not make it to Basque country, we have seen how it looks. Inside the buildings are workshops where artisans are demonstrating crafts such as glassblowing, (People who have watched the glass blowers at Crawford Bay, imagine this: seven glass blowers and two assistants working in a kind of synchronized ballet producing 70 to 75 glasses an hour!), ceramics, guitar making, embroidery and weaving. Mum and I fell for the woman who does the embroidery and had a long chat with her about how it’s a dying art because no one, not even her own daughters or grand-daughters, has the patience to learn to do it well. We left with cushion covers, designed and embroidered by her. I am not sure where I will put a small white pillow with finely worked blue flowers on it, but it will be a good souvenir of the trip.

Relaxing in a taxi was NOT what we did when we left Barcelona, and I do not remember my conversation with the driver fondly. I did not realize that Ryan Air flights do not depart from the Barcelona airport, but from an airport in a town called Girona, which is 100 km away. We figured it out at 2:30 p.m. Our flight left at 6:00. Whoo Haa. It was grab a cab for five, race the luggage along the pedestrian street out to the taxi, and hit the highway rolling. Well, not really rolling I thought that the driver understood we had to catch a flight and we did not have much time. He never broke 110 K an hour, even in the 120 K zones. He missed the exit to the airport and took us into the middle of Girona. Then he turned to look at me. “Where do you need to go?” “Where is the AIRPORT?” “Oh, do you need to go to the airport?” “Duhhh”. Of course we made it in the end, and we even managed to sneak the guitar onto the flight in spite of the fact that it exceeds the Ryan Air carry on rules. After we passed through the passport control Mum, Dad and I took an elevator down to the walk-way to the plane while Nelson and John came down the steps. We found ourselves behind a glass wall, looking out at Nelson and John as they went through the door to the plane. It took a few frantic moments to figure out that we could slide open part of the glass wall and walk out, we were not trapped there forever like monkeys in the zoo. When we were finally on board and bucked in, the glass of wine I bought from the not-so-friendly airline steward sure tasted good!