Barcelona – 8-Feb-20 to 10-Feb-20

We drove down to Portsmouth to catch to 1 PM bus to Logan Airport. We then took a 4 PM plane to Newark and then walked a few miles in the terminal to catch our plane to Barcelona. Huge thermal with randomly numbered gates. Good thing there was lots of time between planes!

We arrived in Barcelona around 7 AM Sunday and were greeted by my checked luggage arriving, but Susan’s apparently being left behind in either Boston or Newark. We came to our beautiful HomeAway apartment eventually and relaxed after having not slept much on the plane. The day was spent relaxing around the apartment, and running laundry, since Susan’s clothes were taking the slow boat route. We took a taxi around 8 to go to the Viniteria del Coll restaurant for dinner. It took a bit to find it, since the taxi left us off a little ways away and the buildings in Barri Gotic are too close together for GPS on the phone to work. A nice waiter ran out of the place to find us. The food (tapas, of course) was very good as was the Mencia wine from Ribiera Sacre (region near the Camino where we were 7 years ago). We then came back to the apartment and collapsed.

At 7:30 in the morning today, Monday, a phone call interrupted our sleep to inform us the good news that Susan’s suitcase was in Barcelona and on the way to our place. A big relief since the Warsaw Convention only allows up to $640 for a lost bag, which would have covered the luggage, but not a lot of its contents.

Anyway, there is a bakery downstairs and we had coffee, tea, oranges, and bakery goodies for breakfast and then headed out to walk to the main pedestrian walkway, La Rambla.  Since it was over 60 degrees and a great day for walking it was pleasant and crowded.  We stopped along the way for a fresh orange juice and walked down to the Columbus monument.