Going to Barcelona!

5:00 a.m. came awfully early this morning. And of course, when you’re overtired from days of being a tourist, but excited about going to a new place, you don’t sleep very well.  Neither of us did, so it made for a little extra effort to get moving.  But once moving, we did fine.

Our taxi to Victoria was smooth.  The driver was an interesting fellow who emigrated to the UK from Grenada just a couple of months before the Grenada war in 1983.  It’s always kind of interesting to talk with people about where they came from; we learn things that way.  We also asked his opinion about the upcoming referendum in the UK about exiting from the European Union.  There is quite a bitter battle going on in the UK to remain or leave.  “Brexit” is the term used for Britain departing from the EU.  It will be interesting to see what happens.  This is quite similar to our visit in Scotland two years ago just a couple of months before their referendum on whether to leave the UK.

At Victoria, we got our Gatwick Express tickets.  We don’t have much luck with ticket kiosks and that wasn’t different this morning.  But there are helpful staff around to assist.  It is so amazing how efficient the transportation system is in the UK.  In America, we can’t seem to get a high speed rail between cities like New York and Boston.  Here in the UK, the trains move huge masses of people quickly and easily.  It took less than 30 minutes for the express to whisk us out to Gatwick.  I will say, however, it would be much easier for two getting older ladies like us to not have so much luggage to get in and out of the train.  And, at Gatwick, we had to transfer from the South Terminal to the North Terminal, up escalators, and with as much luggage as we have, that is fraught with danger.  Christine had a minor fight with an escalator that didn’t let her foot land flat on the step.  I’ll just say, the escalator won.

We also had more bad luck with the kiosk check-in.  The darn thing let us check in, but wouldn’t print our luggage tags for Barcelona.  And then that led us to more difficulty with the ticket agent about our luggage.  Apparently, British Airways is one of the most strict about the size of carry on bags.  We both had two, and neither would pass the restrictions.  I guess we looked sad and confused enough that she took pity on us because we were able to check a second bag at no charge (that’s about a $160 gift to us from BA!).  So we quickly moved stuff around to get our one carry on within the size guidelines, which means we smushed them down until they fit.

We arrived at Gatwick quite early, so we had time to sit and relax and watch the comings and goings.  People are so much fun to watch.  I also spent time uploading photos to the PC so I would be ready to add the museum photos to the blog.  Managing the image library for the blog is not an easy process.  It’s not as simple as just copying photos to WordPress.  But I’m learning some tricks and it gets easier each time I do it.

Our gate was finally listed just 40 minutes prior to our departure.  Of course, our gate was the very last one in the very long North Terminal.  We took off and walked for about 15 minutes to reach our gate.  But all was well and the boarded and took off to Barcelona.

Flight time was just 90 minutes.  I didn’t get to sit by a window, sadly, or else I would have been snapping pictures like crazy.  At one point, we were flying over beautiful snow capped mountains which I assumed were the Pyrenees.  And approaching Barcelona was beautiful flying along the coast of the Mediterranean.

We had no problems disembarking or getting through immigration.  No line at all, and the customs was a breeze through the “nothing to declare” gate.  We got a taxi and drove about 20 minutes to our hotel.  Our room wasn’t ready yet, so we strolled along the Avenida Diagonal, the main drag in front of the hotel.  The sunshine was great to feel and the temperature was about 60.  I haven’t yet mastered Celsius, so I use a conversion app to know what the temp is.

We found a little tapas restaurant next door to the hotel, Piscolabis.  Clearly we’re in a tourist area because they had English menus, thank goodness.  What was also good was that in addition to English, they had pictures of all the various tapas selections. So, we had a really nice lunch of several tapas, all very yummy.  We walked back to the hotel and got into our room.  Christine is sleeping and I’m blogging.  Coming from London to Barcelona we lost an hour.  This weekend, the clocks are set forward an hour, so we’ll lose another hour.  Today in Barcelona, we’re 5 hours ahead of our time at home.

We’ll settle in for a good sleep tonight and wake up refreshed for our adventure in Barcelona.