Yay! Its my birthday....i turned 47! Mom and Dad called to wish me @ 6am. I had told them to call early cos we had to leave at 7am for the airport. We went down for breakfast at 6.30am and were surprised to see the door to the restaurant was closed, but the light was on and we could see a guy puttering around in the back kitchen. So R pushed the door and went in and asked him if b'fast was ready and he said it started only at 7am. Again, just like room numbers, we had gotten all the start times mixed up. But nice guy Mamoon, knew we were leaving for the airport - cos he was the one who woke us up at 5am for our wake up call - and brought out some cereal, some OJ, milk and toast. Finished in 10 mins and headed to the front desk to check out - it was Mamoon again! Looks like he was wake up man, cook, receptionist...all rolled in one. We found out he was from Morocco and chatted about our Tangier trip. He kept talking and delaying our departure. All the while I could hear some hissing and sputtering from the next room and was wondering what it was. Suddenly he darted into the room, I realized it was the kitchen. In all his enthusiasm and talking, he had boiled the milk over!!!! FINALLY he got us all checked out and told us our taxi had arrived. Guess who our doorman and luggage handler was - yup, Mamoon again! Got to the airport well ahead of time.
We had a great flight to Barcelona. It left early and arrived 15 mins early, tho the last few minutes had been very turbulent! Baggage arrived immediately and we took the metro to Barcelona Sants station. From our metro map it looked like the hotel was quite a distance from the station, so we took a cab and got there at 11.30am! Usual procedure - we dumped our stuff and went looking for lunch. Had pizza and a great mediterranean salad at Pizzeria Genova! Came back and napped till 2.30pm.
We wanted to go to La Rambla, a famous marketplace as well as Barri Gotic, the oldest part of the city, so decided if we left at 3.30, we could walk to Sants, take the metro and do it all in one shot, and come back only after dinner. That was the plan anyway, so we would not have to come back after seeing one, and then walk to the metro station again. So we left as planned, walked to Sants, it was about a 15-20 minute walk, much further away than our other hotels had been from the metro. On the way we stopped at an Internet cafe and sent off some e mails. We had to buy our train tickets to Madrid on the 11th, so when we arrived at Sants, we went to the ticket counter. We didn't have to wait as long as we did at Madrid station, but when we finally got to the counter - shocker!!! The one way train ticket on second class per person was 102 euros...thats about $160 dollars!!!!! We sort of mulled it over while the ticket agent drummed her fingers...and then decided to go back to the Internet cafe and check out airfares. So back again we went to the same place. I quickly got onto Expedia and we found fares for $75 one way! Yippee...but wait....we didn't have our credit cards to buy it there, so back to the hotel we went!!!
As soon as we got there, I signed onto the Internet for a 15 minute session, got onto Expedia while R hurried to the room to get the c card. Soon after he came and while processing our request, it asked for passport info. So R ran up again, only by then it was almost timed out, so when i asked at the front desk for a 15 minute extension, they said i had to sign out of this one and sign on again!!!!! Unbelievable!!!! So it timed out. By then R got back and we started all over again! After a heart thumping, nerve racking 15 minutes we were all done! $160 for both as agaist $320 by train! feeling mighty thrilled, we had some coffee and back we walked to Sants. Of course by now it was way past 5pm, so all we did was go to La Rambla marketplace.
La Rambla was a fascinating place. It is a long stretch of road, actually a paved road inbetween 2 roads full of shops...souveniers, flowers, knick knacks, seed shops, birds and small pets, food items and street magicians and performers. See the pic of the guy with wind blown hair and his skewed tie in the slideshow....he actually stood like that for 15 minutes...the tie is sort of glued to stay like that! We walked along the stretch north of the metro station we had gotten off at. The best thing was that we FINALLY got Padron pepper seeds. Padron peppers are these small peppers about 2 inches long, a cross between bell peppers and chile peppers and mild tasting with a tiny kick - see pic above. They are served broiled or fried in olive oil with sea salt and a favorite vegetarian tapas with drinks. Ever since we tasted them at the Meson De La Guitarra in Madrid, we have been on the lookout for these seeds to plant back home (sshhhhh...don't tell the customs guys)!!!! Then we went to Mercat De La Boqueria, a farmers market and oohed and aahed over all the fresh produce and interesting fruits including Cherimoyas (custard apple) and something called Pitahayas. A few more purchases including a st. steel coffee percolator and some gifts for others, a quick bite of padron peppers, or better known as Pimientos de Padron, we headed to a local bar called Los Tarantos for a 8.30pm flamenco show. Really Madrid is the place for flamenco, but we never made it, so R had promised me a show for my birthday! On our way, we were handed a flyer for a Spanish classical music guitar performance by a duo at the Basilica close by starting at 9pm. Hmmmm.....it sounded really good and R's eyes were glistening with excitement and we could always see the flamenco show the next day, so thats what we did. We had time, so on Gautam's insistence that I MUST have these, we stopped at a chocolateria and R had choc ice cream and I had chocolate con churros - again see pic. Then we headed to the Basilica. It was an amazing concert.....the lighting in the Basilica, the stained glass windows, the architecture all combined with some amazing classical music...fantastic! We were not allowed to take pics even tho the guy next to us did! We took the metro back late and this is when we had our second encounter with pickpockets!!!
When we got to our metro station - Sants - we were at the end of the train and so among the last to leave it. 2 guys had boarded 2 stations ago and were sitting across us. Both R and I felt (even tho we didn't say anything at that time to each other) that they were a bit shady! They got off at our station and sort of kept lingering ahead as if to try and get behind us. They stopped to ask directions from people, they stopped to look at poster maps...they tried everything to try and get behind us. And every time they stopped, we did too and pretended like we too were lost. Finally we got to an escalator. One of the guys ran up and came down immediately on the other side and succeeded in getting behind us. The other guy was still in front of us as we were heading up the esc. As we reached the top to get off, he dropped his cigarette case and bent down to get it, forcing us to have to wait and so the guy behind came up close to R and groped his pockets. But by now, R who was FULLY convinced they were crooks, not only had both his hands in his pockets, he kicked the guy ahead who was bent down in the butt. They scooted down the esc. on the other side once they knew we were on to them!!! I forgot to mention that R had bought a new wallet in Granada and had stuffed his old wallet with used metro tickets (with words like idiot, jerk, moron written on them) hoping someone would steal it. But he did admit that the temptation to kick the guy overcame the urge to let them pick his old wallet! So that was that! Came back to the room and kept talking about the b-----y pickpockets!
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