Barcelona

Arrival in Barcelona. The flight from Memphis to Amsterdam was dreadful. I thought I picked a good seat in selecting the exit row, but although it had plenty of legroom it was one of the least comfortable seats I've ever flown in. Being too close to the exit door puts you in this kind of refrigerated bubble wherein you get a good feel for the -54F outdoor temperature. The seats themselves were extremely rigid due to their metal frame that is needed to house the collapsible DVD screens. And being metal really reinforced the perception of sitting in a small fridge. Not pleasant at all; I'm amazed that I managed to eek out about 4.5 hrs of sleep on that flight. (I just changed my seat assignment on the return flight; no frickin' way am I sitting in those seats again.) So it was a pleasure finally walking through a nice, large airport with plenty of sunshine. See what I mean about the tall ceilings? I wish our ol' GSP was this airy and bright. On the right you can just make out the train I missed...the next one didn't show up till about an hour later, which basically means that I have to really plan ahead for my flight out, e.g., give myself about 2.5 hrs time to get to the airport. I could cab it, but the train should end up costing about a tenth of what the cab ride might be.

The trains here are a bit confusing. I thought the train out of the airport was the R10 Renfe line. I think though that temporarily it is being called the C2 line. Still Renfe, but C2. And it's the green line instead of the brown line. I wanted to buy the 4-day ticket, but they wouldn't sell me that ticket at the airport. "In Barcelona" the guy said. In Barcelona, "Tomorrow" is what they told me whereas I thought I could buy a ticket one day in advance. Maybe today I'll get one. The idea is to get one ticket that will be good for all zones (2) that I need to get around in and that will last through Sunday. On all trains. This 4-day travel card should be the most cost-effective, but I don't know how to get one. My hosts here use the T-10 ticket which I've read on the web is really popular. It has no time limit, rather, the 10 refers to the number of trips allowed. I have this ticket in my hand, yet I can't see how many trips it has remaining. I'd rather just get the 4-day card... But I digress. The images you see up there there are my first views of the city after I got out of the train station. The only thing I had with me was a Google Earth satellite photo of the square in the right pic. The photo had the location of my hotel on it, but the trick of course is to orient this bird's eye view to street level to figure out one's orientation. And how are you supposed to guess at what the roof of each of the surrounding buildings looks like? So you look for features. The square that I was facing (Plaza Catalunya) happens to have two circular features at one end of it. These circular features look like fountains at street level. It took me a few minutes to realize this but once it sunk in, I turned left, walked half a block and presto! there's the hotel. Nice that this worked out because I really didn't feel like dragging my suitcase much further :) Hopefully I can pull the same thing off in Munich.