Barelona Update 1

We have left the pesto and gelato behind! Spain, ahoy. We grabbed a cab in the port of Barcelona to our temporary digs on the Avinguda Paral.lel in the Poble Sec district. Which, by the way, is a really neat part of town. We're right up against the foot of Montjuic, and there are both narrow old streets and wide thoroughfares with bike lanes, lovely trees, cafes and crazy traffic. The street layout and planning here is really excellent (at first blush..we'll see how I feel once I actually mount a bike).

We are staying in a student residence - it's like a dorm for adults. Our room is tiny, with one chartreuse wall, a large window, and a bathroom not unlike what we had on the ferry. It's sort of what I imagine a space pod built by IKEA would look like. We have access to a cooking lounge, with our own little bin & shelf. It's doing the job, if not beautifully. The roof deck with pool and stunning view kinda makes up for the IKEA space pod, though.


There are tons of tourist flats listed on craigslist and loquo.com (thank you to Sara Roca, without whom we would never have found that site), but getting anyone to RESPOND to emails was producing some stress. Our reservation in the spaceport ends on the 14th. Sean, however, being a techie and deeply interested in shady phone stores, scored us a local cell phone and the ability to call people rather than email. This was the way to go. We found a flat that sounded OK and called the folks up. Turns out it's a lovely dude named Joan who had already rented the one we were calling about, but happened to be in his car near us, and would we like to see a smaller flat in the Gothic district? UM, YES PLEASE. So we raced downstairs and Joan pulled up in his RAV4 and off we went.

Joan loves San Francisco (everyone we meet who asks where we're from gets all happy about SF), and wants to take his boyfriend who has never been there. We encouraged him in that notion. It was also a happiness to me that our money was going to a Spanish gay couple.

The flat is a little more than we wanted to spend and a little bit smaller, but who freaking cares! It has an 'American kitchen' (which just means open plan, not in a closet), washing machine, bathroom, terrace, and is furnished. I suspect sean and I will be sleeping on the double futon not the two twins pushed together. I can only see tragi-comic results from THAT situation.

Side bar - our keys look like cattle prods. Serious triple dead bolts on everything which makes me happy. More pictures soon!! I've been slacking on the photos as I'm fighting off my first round of 'food that your body hates' - fevers, chills, emissions, oh my. But I'm on the mend. I blame the mussels.