It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday … in downtown Barcelona, October 24th, and it is still a balmy 16 degrees Celcius. I am sitting next to an open double door/window to our fifth floor balcony overlooking Rambla de la Catalunya, an apparantly famous 1.2 km pedestrianized tree-lined boulevard, with the shutters mostly shut and the lights out (except for my laptop light) and I’m in my pj’s feeling blessed. I never thought that city sounds would be soothing but it seems to be a regular Saturday night here and the voices, motors, sirens, and barking dogs just seem to blend peacefully. Norbert is sleeping and I am sitting in the dark, typing.

It was a very good couple of days for travel days. We left our house at noon, our personal uber driver, our son, drove us to the airport where security lines are never usually long, and waited for our half-hour delayed Westjet flight to leave. They had come from Calgary and had hit some weather (the yucky snow). As soon as Norbert and I had taken our seats on the plane, a whole bunch of young guys boarded together. We figured out it was the University of Manitoba Bisons mens football team - I counted the rows they took - 12!! We were surrounded by about 60 of them, litterally! They were in very buoyant spirits and had fun during the flight playing poker across the rows. The entire plane knew when someone had a great hand. I actually fell asleep during that joyful noise. I had always liked listening to teenage boys and young men having good clean fun when I was teaching in high school and when my son had his friends over. I don’t necessarily want to hear exactly what they are saying and really don’t want to be a part of the conversation, but somehow I feel a lot of peace and joy in those situations. The weather gave us a bit of a bumpy ride but made it to a snow-covered Calgary just fine.

The flight to Barcelona left on time, 7 pm, and not full. The meal options gave me a dilemma. I have developped an intolerance to dairy and I don’t like spicy food and the two choices were: maccaroni and cheese and butter chicken! Good thing we ate in Calgary airport already. I chose the butter chicken and did not do too bad - it wasn’t spicy for those that like spice but at the top of my personal tolerance level.

The flight path we took really demonstrates that the earth is a sphere. We flew over the tip of Greenland! I have screenshots of the map. Norbert actually moved to a mostly empty row so we could have a little more room to try to sleep but we didn’t sleep much. We must have found a tailwind because we arrived half and hour ahead of schedule (noon Barcelona time) - So, in all, our travel time was shortened by an hour - not bad!!

Once in Barcelona, we had to navigate from the airport to our hotel. This is where months of online research pays off. There are apparently 3 airports in Barcelona and 4 ways to get to the city centre from the one we landed in. Taxis - expensive but quick and direct, Busses - cheapest but need many transfers, metro (subway) - second cheapest but also required transfers, and TRAIN - much cheaper than taxis but a little more than the rest but it got us to within a 3 minute walk to our hotel. The ride took about half and hour and our hotel room was ready early so we got in and I had a nap!

We did our usual for supper- went to a tourist friendly grocery store and ate on the terrace of our hotel. We had the place to ourselves.

Tomorrow, Norbert has booked us on a tour of the city starting early but they move their clocks back and hour tonight so I can have more time to sleep. It is now 11 pm here and the city is a little quieter, but not much.