Spain 3/27-4/3/06
Karen and I spent 8 days in Spain.
Here are a few photos and observations from the trip.

View of Cadiz from the Cathedral Tower (left)

Barcelona 3/27-3/30
Before we even arrived in Spain there was an incident. We flew Alitalia from Boston to Barcelona, connecting in Milan. About 2 hours into the first leg, a girl got up from her seat and started hurling the a tirade liberlly sprinkled with polysyllabic profanites . This went on for a good 10 minutes before a flight attendant went to try and calm her down. The flight attendant sat with her for a couple hours, but after he left, she launched into another verbal assault of a passenger. I was sure they were going to turn the plane around and haul her off to jail, but they just escorted her to the back of the plane.

Next time they forget my vegetarian meal, I'll remember that that kind of behavior is tolerated.

Woman on balcony in Barcelona (left)

When we arrived in Barcelona, Karen and I had been up for 24 hours, but since it was noon local time we decided to stay up and get used to local time (Spain is 6 hours ahead EDT). We took a tourist bus around the city to get familiar with Barcelona and decide if there was anyting not already on our itinerary that we wanted to visit. The Barcelone Bus Turistic hits every major site in the city on 3 loops. You can get on and off as many times as you like, but since we only had about 5 hours, we stayed on the bus and took a bunch of pictures. The tour guide spoke Spanish and English (and likely Catalon, the regional language). Almost everyone we encounted in Spain spoke English. This was very good since our Spanish consisted of a few key phrased like "Soy vegetariano" and "La cuenta, por favor." The Spanaird's English is much like the Italian's; lilting with vowels (usually "a") added to ends of words.

Tour guide (above) stops for 7 minutes to "get the bus back on schedule." I think he had something else in mind.

Some interesting facts about Barcelona courtesy of our tour guide. FB Barcelona (the local soccer team) plays in stadium that is the largest in Europe. It holds 100,000 people. The team has been very good lately and will likely win the Spanish championship. Their star player, Rolandhino, has his picture everywhere and is in a commercial (for shoes, I think) that is currently airing in the US. FCB's main rival is Real Madrid. They have dominated Spanish soccer for years and outspend all the other teams on players which is why I compare Real Madrid to the Yankees the FBC to the Red Sox.
Local graffitti (Left)

The summer Olympics were held in Barcelona in 1992. This was the year of the first Dream Team (Micheal Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson). Most of the facilites were constructed on a hill near a college. Now the pool and track are used by locals, but the placement is so out of the way that it was empty the day we went and I can't imagine many people use the facility.

The first thing you notice in Barcelona is the construction. Everywhere you go there is a contruction project. In some areas of Italy you cannot even paint your house certain colors without permission from the town. Every bit of historical architechture is preserved. In Spain, however, it is all about progress.

In Barcelona especially, but all over Spain there seems to be a fear of being left behind. Until a few years ago, Spain was one of the poorest countries in western Europe (after Portugual). Today, the economy has roared ahead and people have money to spend. It will be interesting to watch how Spain deals with the questions of growth versus historical preservaltion in the future.

Cafe in Barcelona (left)

Barcelona is a compact city and people do a lot of walking. There is very little parking in Barcelona, so a lot of people use vespas. Cars are difficult to park on the city and expensive (gas is over $4.50 a gallon) Insurance is very expensive as well. So many people use vespas to get around. We saw a lot of women riding vespas, espcially to and from work. At rush hour the
streets are jammed with vespas.

Couple park their motorcycle (left)

For our first dinner in Barcelona, we went to Oben The place was empty, but we were hungry so we decided to give it a try. During our entire meal only 1 other couple (American) came in. They sat down, looked at the menu and left. Too bad, since the food was excellent. We also had some excellent local wine. In Spain, restaurants typically serve smaller portions (tapas). So, after dinner we were still hungry. Karen and I walked down the street in the Barri Gotic (Gothic section of town) to a wine bar. It was 11pm on a Monday night and the place
was crowded with locals and a few tourists from the UK. We were greeted with a plate of olives. We soon found out that a plate of olives is the Spanish equivilent of bread and butter in an American restaurant. I had a couple of glasses of excellent Rioja wine and Karen enjoyed her white. We also had a plate of top notch sheep's milk cheese.

Police on patrol (right)