It took me a while to get to sleep last night. Barcelona is like a stubborn two year old that refuses to go to bed. We’re on a fairly busy corner and things don’t start winding down until 2am.

When we got up this morning, we started the day with coffee and breakfast with a couple of people – a brother and sister from Mexico who were traveling together. It was nice to spend a little time getting to know them and comparing notes not only on what we were experiencing in Spain, but what life was like for each of us back home.

After breakfast, I booked a couple of touristy activities for us; the first being a 3 hour bike tour of Barcelona which we did this afternoon and another full day tour on Friday which will give us a good overview of the most popular attractions here. We spent some time wandering slowly toward the meeting spot for our bike tour and enjoying the impressive architecture that is everywhere in this city.

The bike tour was great. Over the course of the three hours, we  were able to hit  a bunch of very cool modernist art installations and architectural wonders. We also visited some Roman ruins, a couple of beautiful parks, some churches, including the still under construction Sagrada Familia. Just the outside, though. We will see the inside on Friday. Finally, we ended up at the beach and then worked our way back to the bike shop in old Barcelona.

After the tour, we went for dinner at a restaurant  called Colom,  recommended by our tour guide, Leonardo. We knew it had to be good by the lineup outside, and it really was. We shared an amazing paella and a bottle of Spanish red. Probably the best meal we have had yet in Spain.

Tomorrow, we have nothing on the books, so we will probably spend some time planning our next travel destinations. We still have four full days to explore Barcelona, though.

This morning we somewhat reluctantly cleared out of our beautiful Malaga condo and made for the train station to catch the noon train to Madrid, where we would then switch trains to Barcelona.

The train was an experience! Arriving at the station with enough time to wander a bit, we found ourselves at the McDonald’s restaurant on the second floor. It was unlike any McDonalds you will find in North America. First off, they had beer.  But not only that, they had coffee and ice cream. Together.  I’ve discovered the perfect breakfast food.

We made our way down to the main level and went through security. It was pretty relaxed compared to airport security. You had to put your bag on a conveyor belt and you got checked with a metal detector, but that was it. Once we found our platform and then our train, we boarded.

The first class car was pretty nice. There were two seats on one side together and one opposite. The seats were not particularly comfortable, but they did recline somewhat and there was lots of legroom. The train was scheduled to leave at 12 noon and it did. It was kind of surreal because it was so quiet.

Soon, we were accelerating and leaving the city behind, heading into the countryside. Before long we were whipping along at 300km/h, and it really didn’t feel like we were going that fast. That is, until we were in close quarters with the landscape or meeting another train travelling in the opposite direction. Then it became apparent we were really hauling ass.

The countryside was generally pretty arid looking with groves of what looked like olive trees being the primary vegetation. In the distance,  dry looking brown mountains. Occasionally, we would pass a small village or some ruins or make a quick stop in a sizeable town, but by and large it was a lot of dry looking countryside whipping by at incredible speed. I was spending quite a bit of time struggling with the onboard wifi trying to get some work done. I probably missed a fair amount of the scenic highlights. Carla was tring to point stuff out to me, but by the time I looked over, it was 10 miles behind us.

The first leg of our journey was over before we knew it and I scrambled to get my stuff together before we hopped off the train. As we were hoofing it from the train to the terminal building, I had a moment of panic where I thought I had left my phone on the train because it wasn’t in my front left pocket where I always kept it. I ran back in the direction we came from but I quickly realized that all of the trains looked the same and I couldn’t identify which one I had just gotten off of, much less which car,  I borrowed Carla’s phone from her and tried using the find my phone app, but the data connection was too dodgy to be of any help. I was beginning to panic a little. Then, I thought I should maybe look in my backpack, and there it was. tremendous relief. We would really be operating at a disadvantage without my phone.

We had a tight connection and boarded the next train to Barcelona shortly before it departed. This leg of the journey was definitely more mountainous. We watched the temperature drop to 18 degrees ( about 10 degrees cooler than it was in Malaga) as we crested the highest point. My ears were popping as we ascended and again as we started heading down. We passed through quite a few tunnels along the way. As we neared Barcelona, the vegetation got greener and we noticed that it was still quite cool, meaning about 2o degrees (I know.. brrr… ha  ha).

We rolled into Barcelona right on schedule and then hopped into a cab. It immediately became apparent that Barcelona is quite different from Malaga. It is much more “city like”… at least what we have seen so far. We checked into our airbnb, which is a 4 bedroom apartment that is shared with other guests. It’s on a fairly busy but narrow street with a restaurant downstairs. The place is clean, and nicely appointed, but not overly spacious. We’ll make it work for the next six nights.

We rested for a while, then set out to walk the streets and find a place to eat. Our first impression is that it is a much different vibe here. It’s definitely not as polished as Malaga, not as tourist oriented by a long shot. We’ve been warned by multiple people that we should be on the lookout for thieves and scam artists and consequently we’re on high alert.

Tomorrow we will set out to do more exploring….

 

 

 

I’m drinking tequila as I make this entry. It was a bit of a day.

I awoke early – around 5am local time, so sometime during the second period of the deciding game for the Oilers. Checking my phone, I saw that it was 4-2 in favour of Vegas. Not that I really care, but Carla does, so that had the potential to affect my whole day.

We came to the decision that we were going to go somewhere else by rail tomorrow, but that’s as far as we got. I thought I had better start figuring something out. This is not how I normally roll, but this vacation, we decided, was about getting out of our comfort zone. I can assure you that we achieved that goal today.

Beginning around 7am I started looking at the rail map of Spain. Where to go? Malaga, where we’ve been spending the last week is on the coast and we really like being near the ocean, so I figured we could head up the east coast to Barcelona and then decide from there.

OK. First destination decided. Now to figure out how to get there. Rail seems to be the way to travel in Europe from everything I have read. The train systems are super fast, comfortable, and they take you right into the center of the city vs. airports which are often quite some distance from the action.Forget about driving, I read, because the traffic and parking situations in the cities are a nightmare.

I quickly discovered that there was a lot to learn about travelling by rail. Not knowing what our plans were going to be, I thought it best that we opt for something that would give us maximum flexibility.

I tried booking rail passes through Spain’s “native”  Renfe system. I had read that the website was somewhat problematic and might have trouble with “outside” credit cards. The advantage to using their system is that seat reservations are included and everything can be done online. Great!

But no.. the website wasn’t just problematic. It was total (pardon my french) dogshit. I ended up using another site (raileurope) to purchase a one country Eurail pass which would allow us to travel on eight separate days. We had to decide if we would go first class or second class. I read that for the most part europeans travel second class unless they are going on the company dime, but we thought “screw it, we’re on holidays” and booked a  first class pass.

Then, we had to figure out where we were going to stay in Barcelona. We found an airbnb place in the city center near the water.

In order to travel on one of these high speed trains, you need to make seat reservations. To my dismay, we couldn’t do this online. We had to go to the station.

We set out on foot for the train station, which is some distance away from our airbnb. Today was the hottest day since we got here (28) and we were sweating buckets by the time we rolled up on the train station.  This place was like an airport. A big airport. There were many full on retail stores and even a great big supermarket on the second level. We stood in line for quite a while before we were able to talk to an agent, but managed to get our seat reservations done. I’m hoping we won’t have to do this in person every time we travel and that today it was necessary due to the tight timeline.

After leaving there, we were both feeling pretty sunfried and frazzled, and that was compounded by a sketchy data connection that had us walking in the wrong direction for many blocks while thinking we were on course. We finally made it to the bike shop to pick up our rented bikes for the last day we would have them, but by then we only had about 2 hours left to ride. We headed down along the harbours and the beaches for a while. It was really windy today and not quite as crowded as previous days. Getting on the bikes was good because we cooled down and had some fun.

We returned the bikes and walked back to the condo, The elevator is out of service today, so it was 8 flights – 144 stairs back up to where the cold beer was.

 

 

 

 

Today we got out on the bikes again. Dan and Fran wanted to do a ride North out of Malaga and into the hills. We got kind of a late start and the heat of the day was already upon us. About 15 or so km into the ride and while climbing up the steep winding roads,  Carla and I were about ready to puke.We are most definitely not in the same league as Dan and Fran, who just ran the Boston Marathon. I was on the ebike again, and though I could probably have left everyone in the dust by using the motor, I was riding with no or minimal assist because I was carrying Carla’s water, so I didn’t want to get too far ahead. We decided to let Dan and Fran continue on without us and we back-tracked. The return trip was a lot more fun and a lot faster.

After getting back down off the hills, we rode to the ocean and found a palm tree to sit under, eating some snacks we had in our packs and drinking a now semi-warm beer. It was fun watching the families enjoying the beach on a Sunday afternoon.  We spent a few hours exploring the oceanside, sometimes riding the back alleys, and taking in the sights and sounds.

Both of us now have sore butts from riding over the portions of the trail yesterday that were cobblestone, and just  generally not being used to riding any distance. We were glad to get off the bikes at the end of the day.

We discussed our next moves and we will part with Dan and Fran on Tuesday, possibly to re-connect in another town later. They are set up to bike town to town with everything in their bike panniers. We’re not set up for that luggage-wise and we also want to see more of the country than is possible on a bicycle. Tenatatively, we are looking at going up the east coast of Spain using the rail system. We will definitely want to make it to Barcelona, but there are many other coastal places to visit. The options are endless.

Weird and difficult dreams last night had me feeling disoriented in the morning. Must have been that pizza the night before.After a couple of coffees, the world started to make sense, though.

Our plans for the day were to pick up the bikes we reserved and ride down the coast a bit. The forecast was looking kind of rainy, so we didn’t get a very early start.

Once we got the bikes sorted out, we started threading our way through the busy morning traffic toward the ocean.. The waterfront was packed with people. There were vendors and street performers everywhere. A magnificent tall ship in the harbour stood in contrast to the kajillion dollar yachts still parked there from the day before.

As we threaded our way through the crowds of people, we started picking up the smell of wood smoke and food cooking. What we were smelling was Espetos – grilled sardines skewered on pieces of cane being roasted over open flame. We passed by numerous seaside restaurants where large raised metal fire pits in the shape of boats were smouldering away with a variety of bluefish, whitefish, calamari and octopus being cooked. It was sensory overload. The colours, the sounds, the smells. All the more enhanced by the fact that we were moving through it on our bikes.

As we got further and further away from Malaga and passed through a couple of smaller towns, the restaurants thinned out and gave way to housing and industrial areas. It started to rain to rain, so we took shelter in a tunnel. Just by coincidence, it was the Túnel del Paseo de los Canadienses. A tunnel so named for the assistance given by Canadians to the Spanish in 1937 (in particular Norman Bethune) who answered the call for medical assistance in the fight against fascism in Spain.

After riding a bit further, we decided to turn back and weave our way home. We stopped along the way to eat at one of the seaside restaurants. We downed a couple of beers, had some sardines, prawns and red snapper. It was an expensive meal, but delicious. Unforgettable, really.

We got back home with the bikes and had to go up the very tiny elevator with them one at a time to our eighth floor pad.Well, almost all of us got up the elevator. My bike was an ebike (I’m not a strong cyclist like the others), and being a bit larger it wouldn’t fit in the elevator. So, what I saved in energy using an ebike, I expended getting it up eight flights of stairs. Serves me right.

We finished off the day by attending a football match. The local team has been having a bad season and were ranked 19th in their division. Consequently, the stands were about 40% empty. THey did manage to pull off a win, much to the crowd’s delight. It was a fun experience. After match beers and tapas capped it all off.

More biking tomorrow, I hear… and now, to bed,