Exhausted in Barcelona

Congratulations! You were nominated for Pinnacle Club! 

This is the news I received a couple of months ago.  Pinnacle Club is an annual reward event that my company sponsors, providing an (almost) all-expense paid trip to an exotic locale for a few dozen company employees.

This year’s trip is Barcelona!  As a company sponsored event, most of the logistics, and many of the activities were pre-arranged.  As a result, unlike most of my trips that I’ve blogged about, I did not perform the scores of hours of pre-planning.  I did not have an hour by hour itinerary with maps and references printed out in a binder.  I boarded the plane not knowing what I was going to be doing for most the next 5 days.  I did have a Lonely Planet guide to Barcelona, but even that had only been purchased 2 days before.   While I do like having a default outline of activities to use as a guide or a fallback, there is also something very liberating about having a vacation that’s fairly unplanned and spontaneous.  Especially when it is one in an urban location with no car.

This trip began with a very long day of travel.  In the few days leading up to the trip, we had done a mini-vacation with our kids to Memphis.  When we returned, Aimee’s family came down from West Virginia to watch the kids.  Needless to say, a lot was going on.  As a result the night before our first flight I very quickly checked our flight time and thought it was 10:00am.  The next morning we got up, Aimee helped get the boys out the door for school, we through our bags together and were ready earlier than expected, so we jumped in the car.  As we were driving to the airport, I also realized, the flight didn’t take off at 10:00, it took off at 10:50.  We arrived at the airport at about 8:15, were given TSA PreCheck, slid right through security, and were at the gate by 8:25…with quite a bit of time to spare, wondering why we got up so early.

Some Starbucks got us through, and we sat and waited while one by one half a dozen or so of my local co-workers showed up with their significant others. Our first flight was to New York’s JFK airport, where we had to wait another 3 hours for our flight to Barcelona.  Here I found a few more familiar faces as well as met a few more coworkers that I didn’t know. 

This flight left at 5:50pm, and was to land just over 6 hours later at 6:00am Barcelona time.  Needless to say, we would not be getting a good nights’ rest before our first day in Barcelona.  After trying to get as much rest as we could, we arrived the next morning, exited the plan, got our luggage, and found a fairly large group of people next to someone holding a sign with our company’s name on it.  While the group was still assembling, Aimee and I ordered some coffee to get us kick started for the day.  I ordered mine con leche, and she had hers black, which came more as an espresso and a latte (which did bring me back to some cultural learnings from high school Spanish where I think I did learn that to be the case.)

Two large shuttle busses then transported us to the HotelArts Barcelona hotel, where we received a

Large Bathroom at Hotel Room

“goodie bag”, checked in, and were given the FABULOUS news that the rooms were ready now, and we didn’t have to wait until 3:00pm to check in.  We took full advantage of this, and headed up to the room to shower and unpack before heading out for a breakfast.  The room was a large modernly decorated room, with a very large bathroom, which included a large bath tub on one side, a shower, with multiple jets on the other, a separate toilet room, and a two-sink vanity.  This was my first experience in a shower with both an overhead showerhead as well as body sprayers down the wall.  I highly recommend it. 

Hotel Room

While Aimee was getting ready, I flipped the TV on and was amused to see in Spain: a show televised from Dubai, which appeared to be a telenovela taped in Spanish, was dubbed over in English, and had Arabic subtitles.  Interesting cross-multiple culture marketing…  Suddenly, while we were getting ready there were two large crash, or explosion sounds that, from our 3^rd floor window, seemed to come from nearby just outside our hotel.  A few birds started from the sound and flew away, but looking out the window to see the reactions on the street, we didn’t see anyone that seemed particularly alarmed.  Given yesterday’s attack in London, it did make us a bit apprehensive.

Hotel Room Hallway

We successfully avoided getting sucked into taking an extensive nap by the beckoning bed before us, knowing that the more we powered through the day the quicker we’d adapt for the rest of the weekend. Instead we got ourselves put together and set out to see a few sites.  As we left the hotel, the private concierge for our group suggested we exit in one direction from the hotel, as there was a group doing some demonstration of sorts in the other.  When we looked, there was a large group of people in a crowd in front of the hotel holding flags and banners and such. In the other direction where heavily armed military or police.  We wondered if this was at all related to the noises we heard earlier.  A quick review of recent local news stories indicated it may be related to a separatist group that wants Catalonian independence from Spain.

Beach on the Mediterranean Sea outside our Hotel

Though we were very curious about everything going on, our hunger overtook us, and we headed out on foot towards a restaurant called “Milk” in the gothic quarter.  This was supposed to be a good spot that served “brunch” until 4:30pm. 

The area around our hotel was explained to us to be more of a business district.  We meandered

around the Barcelona Zoo, and made our way into the gothic quarter.  Once we reached this section of the city, there was definitely a very different feel.  The buildings were all roughly the same height—about 5 stories.  They were all very old, and their seamless walls created a labyrinth of corridors in what seemed to be random angles in multiple directions.  While there were some streets that had 2 lane roads, many of them where just wide enough for a one lane, one way road, with small sidewalks on either side, and many of them were not wide enough for cars, and only allowed pedestrians. 

 

It did strike us that there was quite a bit of graffiti in every part that we walked through.  Much more than what is typical in the US.  As we wandered the streets of the gothic quarter, with Google Maps guiding us, we passed hundreds of tiny storefronts, selling souvenirs, clothing, produce, and more than anything: food.  The amount of restaurants, pastry shops, ice cream shops and cafes was incredible. 

When we finally made it to Milk, we noticed it was packed, and there were a couple people standing outside.  Right next to it however, was The Benedict, which was an English styled breakfast pub. We did consider the fact that The Benedict being much emptier than its neighbor may be a sign of the quality of the food, however we were hungry and tired and decided we’d chance it.

Breakfast at "The Benedict"

We sat at a tiny table shoved all the way in the corner of the front window and side wall, with only two chairs, allowing us to people watch as people walked down the narrow 8 foot wide “street” outside. Our brunch was tasty, and did the trick.  After almost falling asleep at the table a few times, we finished our meals, got up and continued walking to La Rambla.

La Rambla is a very busy, long tree-lined walkway that breaks up the historic concrete jungle of the gothic quarter.  Along this mile long strip are vendors of all sorts of things, as well as brick and mortar storefronts.  While it made for a nice walk, our guide book warned us that anything bought here can be found cheaper elsewhere.  Additionally, it was much more crowded than the small streets we were wandering earlier.  We quickly walked through the whole area, but then continued on to other areas to explore.

Placa de Catalunya (north of La Rambla)

Narrow "street" in Gothic Quarter

Catedral de Barcelona

Given our level of exhaustion, we then began heading back towards the hotel, stopping at a few sites along the way.  The first of which was the Catedral de Barcelona.  This was a beautiful old gothic structure.  While we  were admiring it from the outside, we again heard an explosion, this time from the street about 100 feet away from us.  We immediately turned and saw smoke in the street, but no damage, and no clear cause of the noise.  People around us did stop and look in that direction, but the people closest to the smoke didn’t seem to show any significant level of alarm.  We found this strange and slightly unnerving.

After looking at the cathedral, and browsing the antiques market outside of it, we ventured to the Picasso Museum, walked through it, stopped at an ice cream vendor on the beach for a snack, and headed back to the hotel walking along the beach of the Mediterranean Sea.  Unfortunately, at this early point in spring the weather is primarily in the 50s-60s and too cold to truly enjoy the beautiful beachfront.  

We took a quick nap, before attending a mandatory awards dinner with all of my coworkers that were also awarded the trip, and then enjoyed several drinks while hanging out with several of my coworkers before heading back to finally turn in for the night around midnight. 

Our first day had wrapped up.  It seemed like an incredibly long day, but we accomplished seeing a decent amount of the city, had a little bit of food, and got a chance to relax with some of the people that I share the daily grind with each and every day.  Even without any planning, our first day seems to have got off to a good start.

Pinnacle Club Awards Ceremony