Barcelona Travel Take Two

Last year, thecamelridingcowgirl and I had a bit of drama getting to Barcelona with all our luggage and then getting to the hotel with transport strikes that were going on.  (Missed that story?  Click HERE.)  This year, since the Bodybuilder was taking the Big White Boat back to America, he had the same situation I did last year: no weight limit on luggage.  After hearing about our trouble while making exchanges on the train route, and liking lower prices, he decided to try a different mode of transportation: the bus.

So, the Artist (also returning to the US from Barcelona, but via airplane), the Bodybuilder, and I took the bus from Marseille to Barcelona.  Cost: 43 euros round trip (for me), and 25 euros one way for them.  Bonus: the bus is direct and you don't have to lug your luggage from one train platform to another, up and down stairs, etc.  We loaded all the bags onto the bus at the Marseille bus station (no stairs!), and got them out at the Barcelona bus station and straight into the taxis who were waiting.

Wonderful.

Here we are at 6am waiting with all our their bags.  The Bodybuilder had one with a bike in it that was so big he was worried they would charge him extra for it.  He tried to make a joke about it, telling the man, "There's either a body or a bike in this bag...which is cheaper?"  But the man didn't get the joke, and since he didn't charge anything, the Bodybuilder just let it go.

Six hours later, we were in Barcelona and ready to face the day.  Speaking of "face..."

While she lived in France, the Artist decided to embrace the French's inability to pronounce her name correctly.  At Starbucks especially, she would enunciate extremely clearly (is that phrase I just wrote redundant?), and they would still never get it right.  We thought it was a French thing with their lack of the "th" sound in their language.  After dropping our eight billion bags off at our apartment in Barcelona, we headed straight to Starbucks for a caffeine boost, and look what the Spanish wrote on her cup.  Must be an international thing.  Hehe.

The travel drama from last year did end up carrying over to this trip.  (Do I ever take a trip and not have travel drama?!)  Because there were going to be six people getting on a Big White Boat with luggage from the last two years of their lives, we knew that we'd need several large taxis for them on the morning of their depart, plus a regular one for the Artist to the airport that would need to come very, very early.

So, the day before all of our departures, we stopped a large taxi to ask if we could reserve him for the next day.  In his Spanish broken down easy for our non-spanish-speaking selves, he said, "Tomorrow's a holiday.  Only 50% of the taxis working.  The ones, like me, who work today, no work tomorrow.  The ones who work tomorrow no work today...so you can't call today to reserve for tomorrow."  EEK.  He called several buddies and finally got one to answer who agreed to come with his large van to pick up the Boat crew.  I explained several times that there with six people with at least three big pieces of luggage each, and he kept explaining that they'd all fit fine in his van.

Since the Boat crew left after I did, and they're still on the boat, I still haven't heard how that turned out...

For the Artist, we stopped probably five different taxis to see if they (or one of their non-working-today-but-will-be-working-tomorrow buddies) could pick her up at 5am.  We were consistently told no.  One man, however, gave me a business card and told me to call them, they'd have plenty of taxis.

"Do they speak English?" I asked in my broken Spanish.  "No...but no problem," he responded.

I laughed.  In France, when a non-French-speaking anglophone tries to communicate with a non-English-speaking francophone, it's always a problem.  The French get frustrated quickly with the situation, making the anglophone feel quite the idiot.  In Barcelona, however, the Catalans just don't seem to care or mind at all that you don't speak Spanish.  They keep speaking Spanish to you and listening to your English until you get it worked out.  

The Artist decided that since I speak Portuguese, which is the closest to Spanish out of all the languages spoken in our group of eight world travelers (French, four different Arabics, Macedonian, and Hindi and Urdu), I should be the one to call for the taxi.  Here's how that went down...

"Hola...do you speak English?"

"No, hablo español."

"Ok...yo quiero uno taxi."  (I knew "yo quiero" from the Taco Bell commercials and "uno" from the card game."

"Cuándo?" ("when?")

"A mañana cinco hora la mañana."  (I was really hoping that I was communicating correctly "five in the morning tomorrow.")

"A dónde?" (Now, I understood "where," but I didn't know if she was asking from or to...either way, I needed to tell both...)

"Partira ***ourstreetname*** cinco cinco cinco arriver aeroporto."  (I didn't know how to say "five hundred fifty five, but I figured to say "five five five" would get the point across and guess what...it did!  She laughed, but repeated it back to me to verify.)

She said everything back to me, and from what I could understand, it all seemed right.  I said, "Valé!" (Okay!) and hung up, amazed that I'd just had an entire conversation in Spanish on the phone.  And sure enough...a taxi showed up at ***ourstreetname*** cinco cinco cinco at cinco la mañana.  

We looked up on the internet to find out what holiday it was supposed to be in Spain the day of our departure...turns out there was no holiday, just daylight savings time.  Haha.  At least we gained an hour of sleep on our vacation.  :)  

Stay tuned for more from Barcelona (slow coming as the posts may be...)