DAY 151

Friday 9 December 2011

1:45 AM, nature called, Charles answered, stumbling outside Ajfan's cabin, wow! Heavy fog, sitting everywhere. But the short, modern-looking trains (like most we'd seen in Europe -- why only four or five cars long?) we thought were cool, flashing by so close to us. Then only silence, short trees and a gray blanket of fog.

We wanted to get an early start to Barcelona, get up maybe 5:30 (since we turned in at 9:30), so when Charles opened his eyes and saw the beautiful bright colors of dawn he figured it was about right, till he looked at his watch: nearly 8 AM!

Then there was the long job of "putting the van together," after moving nearly everything out to go to Claire and Bill's then kind of throwing it all back in quickly. Next, we couldn't find the oil, a five-liter jug that shouldn't be able to hide in that small space, but did. Finally, we left at 10:15, with no chance to take Marta up on her invitation to stop by for coffee.

Halfway to Barcelona, Dian pulled out a treat, three big leftover burgers on American buns and some of the garlic fries. Sounds terrible cold? No way, that's great campin' food, baby.

Through a GPS programming error we wound up at the wrong camp, closed, but called the right one and they were only five minutes away. The "right one"? We'll tell you later why Estrella de Mar gets our unanimous vote as the worst camp ever.

We got nowhere trying to whittle the sky-high off-season rate of 32,50 Euros/$48, plus another 8 Euros for the wi-fi for 24 hours (most places it was free, and they charged the same 8 Euros for only two hours usage), and tried to pay with our usual credit card but it was declined. So we went with our backup card (which charges foreign transaction fees). More on that later.

We headed for town on the bus, a 40-minute ride (not 25 like the camp advertised) through some unsightly countryside and suburbs until finally reaching Barcelona. We hate to be tourists, but we headed straight for the Bus Turistica, the double decker open top bus that cruises the city's sights and gives you commentary through earphones. It was a good way to get an overview of a spread-out city, as we found in Rome, and you could hop on and off. It was a welcome treat from Dian's parents (as was Rome).

At the booth our card was again declined so we paid cash and hopped on the red line, up top of course for the best view. It was nearly 5:00 and getting dark but the plan was to see Barcelona by night, then the next day in sunshine, with our two-day tickets.

All the headphones people throw on top of the bus stop after their tour

Barcelona's a pretty big city, about five million, and it looked it, with NYC rush-hour-crowded streets in some areas. We enjoyed the many sights on our two-hour ride but didn't do any hopping off -- it was also pretty chilly up there. We saw a towering statue of Christopher Columbus, the harbor, much art in parks and plazas, a mucho fancy McDonald's, La Rambla walking/shopping avenue, the site of the 1992 Olympics, significant palaces, churches and government buildings with centuries of history. The Gaudi buildings, the main reason we HAD to go back to hit Barcelona (sorry, Pau, not you), lived up to our expectations, surreally wavy and earthy in the twilight, but we wanted to see them in the daylight the next day, and take the blue bus tour route that hit maybe the two most interesting sights: his mammoth, still-being-completed La Sagrada Familia cathedral, and the Park Guell.

We headed home tired and a bit chilled, made dinner in the van at the camp, then around 11PM we cranked up the Google Voice phone on the laptop to try to straighten out the credit card blockage. We thought and hoped it was Capitol One screwing up again and blocking charges because they were coming from Europe, even though we informed them just a few weeks ago we were staying another seven months. But no, we had joined the millions who have had their card number stolen. There were charges and attempted charges in Spain, the US and KUWAIT. But only a few, and these were small-minded crooks, no Mercedes or cases of Cristal. We finally got a supervisor named Stanley who took care of us, and arranged to get new cards sent to us within a few days. We finally finished at past 1 AM, not fun. But at least they caught it, and we did have another card to use in the meantime (though it would cost us more). Life on the road.