July 27

The next day we wandered around inside the city again before circling the wall. Almost the entire wall is open to visitors and we made the most of it, climbing on anything not chained off and even pretending to be a knight in a jousting match. (Ok, that was just me.)

We grabbed our bags, jumped a bus, and trundled off to the train station. Our train went straight to the Spanish border where we got off our very comfortable French SNCF train and onto a very uncomfortable Spanish RENF train for the milk run to Barcelona stopping at nearly every blade of grass.

On the upside, we were able to see the coast full of rocky beaches and deep blue waters. On the landward side the steep hills were terraced so every piece of ground could be used to grow grapes. Unfortunately, this portion of the trip was short lived and soon we were rolling through run-down towns covered with graffiti.

The station in Barcelona was amazingly crowded and very hectic. We were told to be aware of pick pockets so we kept our eyes open. For the first time on the trip I couldn't communicate with anyone. How uncomfortable. We navigated the Spanish Metro which I liked far more than the Parisian underground, but not nearly as much as the London system. Our hotel overlooks La Ramblas, Barcelona's answer to the fancy streets of all the other cities of the world. It rivaled even the much vaunted North Bend Way.

We wandered about on the street a bit before discovering we were being tailed by a pick pocket. A couple stern looks and he bailed out to harass someone else, but we continued seeing them all over the street.

For dinner we nearly stopped in a Burger King, but instead found an odd little shop with three poles of meat turning slowly before a couple of flames. A guy would shave off a bundle of meat and stuff it into a pita. I still don't know what it's called, but it was really tasty and for the six meals we had in Barcelona I had a "pole-meat sandwich" for three of them. Amy was amazed I had (a) tried something new and (b) liked it. Even she admitted it was pretty good, though she'd have put more on it.

Back in the hotel we stripped down, turned on the fan, opened the windows, flipped on CNN, and laid wet towels on us to try to escape the heat. Our biggest problem was that our window opened onto an enclosed courtyard which was muggy and free of fresh air. At some point we fell asleep in spite of the heat.

July 28

Early this morning (still dark "early") there was a loud boom followed by sirens. A couple days before we arrived the Basques had blown up a bank so we immediately figured something new had gone boom. We never did figure out what made the noise, but between terrorism (insignificant in comparison to later events) and seeing thieves escorted off the subway we were constantly on our toes.

We found a great market on La Ramblas where we were able to buy fresh fruits and had the opportunity to get skinned sheep heads, but we passed on those. We did a bit of shopping after heading to the train station to make reservations for our next day's travel.

We wandered all around the streets that surround La Placa Cantalunya which is the big square in the middle of Barcelona and at the top of La Ramblas. We saw there was a huge crowd in street and upon investigation discovered they were protesting the WTO. What else is new? We crossed and continued shopping a bit before we realized that if they continued on their current course we'd be cut off from our hotel so we double-timed it up a side street and snuck in front of them to get on the proper side of the protest.

On La Ramblas there were oodles of street performers, mostly of the "drop a coin in my bucket and I'll do something interesting" variety. Oddly, the guy with the most change in his bucket was the guy who did nothing regardless of how much you paid him. I guess people will pay for anything. (They were likely in cahoots with the pickpockets since they preyed on tourists watching the performances.)

Our evening consisted of a poor dinner and a bit of chilling on the balcony overlooking La Ramblas. Tomorrow we leave in the evening on a night train back into France so we're going to sleep in. It may be the first time on this trip.

July 29

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Taking the tourists' bus tour around town is a great way to get a feel for a place. We took our own advice (and Rick Steves') and jumped on one of the millions of big buses tooling around the city. Of course, pointing this out with respect to Barcelona is kind of unfortunate because it was perhaps the worst of the tours we took. In other cities the tours seem to be a self-contained tourist's dream. Here, though, it is more a means to get from one tourist spot to the next with little commentary. Not so good if you do it on a Sunday when most everything is closed. Oh well.

We did get a chance to see some of Barcelona's odd, odd architecture thanks to local-boy Gaudi. Perhaps his best work was a huge cathedral still under construction. In retrospect, we'd rather have had another half a day to see more of his work.

However, lacking the freedom to extend our stay in Barcelona we grabbed a quick dinner, checked out of our hotel, and got to the train station just ahead of the hoards of others heading for the border. We got the last two seats on a train that had people standing for the three hour trip to France and settled down for the journey.

At this point we could plainly see we were far too old to be making this kind of trip. All around us were college students entertaining each other. When we got to the border we had a two hour wait before our train to Arles would leave so we turned our packs from burdens to beds and chilled a bit while people broke out their stories and soccer balls to kill time.

Just after midnight we boarded an air-conditioned train on which the air-conditioning no longer worked. Follow us back to France by clicking here.