Our Vacation Begins ...

Our vacation begins on Wednesday, September 2, 2015.  We have a lot of traveling ahead of us.  The car service for our ride to the airport arrives just before 7:30 am to take us to SFO.  Our flight schedule takes us first to LAX on Delta, then a nonstop flight to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, where we will transfer to a plane to Barcelona.  Barcelona is not our final destination but by flying to Barcelona versus flying just to Paris, our ticket price was cut in half, which of course makes no sense, but that is how it is.  Our first "blip" in our travel occurs when our flight to LAX is delayed by one hour.  Our connection there was only a two hour layover, so we were concerned.  However, the wonderful Delta agent in the Delta lounge was able to book us on an earlier flight so now we had three hours to make our connection in LAX.  Sometimes, arriving at the airport very early for your flight pays off!  We had no further problems with minor exceptions:  we had to undergo security screening at all three airports where we boarded flights (Argh!) and our connection in Paris was also a little tight, but fortunately we made it to the gate with a few minutes to spare (the Priority screening line versus the normal one was a great time-saver for us!).  We enjoyed our Air France flights to and within Europe!

We arrived in Barcelona at around 2:30 pm and were happy that our luggage did as well!  We had a quick ride to the hotel and checked in.  Boy are we jet lagged, though -- nine hour time change.  That said, we are not going to nap yet.  We shower and change our clothes and head out to stroll -- isn't that what all the Europeans do?   Sure seems that way in Barcelona!  We stroll down the Passeig de Gracia admiring what must be the most beautiful architecture in all of Europe, although Parisians would surely disagree.  We stop to admire the Gaudi building called Casa Batllo.  Apparently this can be toured -- not by us today, but surely when we come back at the end of our vacation.

We continue down the street to the Placa de Catalunya, the main square of Barcelona.  Here we stop at Cafe Zurich to enjoy a glass of (cheap, but good) white wine.  We continue strolling down the Ramblas, sticking our nose into the large market, which we pass on -- too crowded this evening.  We turn left into the Barrio Gothic (old quarter), where we join the throngs traversing the narrow pedestrian only streets.  The shopping seems very impressive, much nicer I think than when we were here before (2001).  Rob spies a roof top terrace and we climb up to investigate.  It is a restaurant called Cer Cle, so we elect to have an early dinner, even though it is about 7pm.  This hour is shockingly early by Barcelona standards (most restaurants don't even open until 8:30 pm -- can you imagine?), but we are too tired to eat late and the menu here looks good.  We start with a tapa of fried calamari and enjoy a local white wine.  Here I am doing just that:

Then we enjoy green salads followed by fish.  I have fresh turbot with thin sliced potatoes and onions.  Rob has a delicious crusted cod served over beans with a sauce that seems to be just olive oil infused with smoked papricka.  Both are very good, but Rob's looks better than mine.  Fish and beans is an unusual combination, but it works very well. 

Finally, we walk back to the hotel and turn in, hoping to be able to get a good night's sleep.  Tomorrow, we fly to Lyon, France.  We had just a taste of Barcelona, but we'll be back at the end of this journey to have more time to enjoy it.