travelogue, days 0 and 1: indianapolis, in and barcelona, spain

My flight was scheduled to leave Indy around 2 PM on Saturday, May 31st, so asked my friends Lindsay and Luke to take me to the airport a little after 10, knowing we’d have a bit of a drive. I was working on only about four hours of a sleep, having decided to exhaust myself so that when I got on my transatlantic flight later that evening, I’d be able to sleep at least a little. L&L arrived, we loaded my luggage (Luke, as he was lifting my suitcase into his trunk, “Jeez! Do you have a body in there?”) and dropped off my car for some much needed body work, scheduled to get done while I gallivanted around Europe.

The ride to the airport was uneventful and full of fun chatter. Too soon, I was saying goodbye to my friends and thanking them for the ride. I weighed my suitcase and found it was 3 pounds over the limit, so I took some books out and shoved them into my backpack (in a bit of a panic a couple nights before, I went to Barnes & Noble and loaded up on guides for Italy and France, as well as an Italian phrase book. I’d had the sudden realization that “OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO ITALY AND I DO NOT SPEAK ITALIAN and OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO FRANCE AND I DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH”). Security, etc was easy enough and then there was the wait.

See, the evening before we’d seen storms of really impressive caliber. I’ve lived in the Midwest a long time and I’m not sure I’d ever seen trees bend the way I saw them bend in the view from Jeff’s apartment. As it happened, the storms moved on to the northeast, precisely where I was hoping to get that afternoon. To make a long story short, I sat in the Indianapolis airport for 5.5 hours before we were finally able to board our plane. We couldn’t get clearance to leave due to the storms in Newark and I watched my originally very well planned and very cushioned layover (3.5 hours) get smaller and smaller by the minute.

We did eventually leave Indy and there were passengers on our flight in much worse shape than I, though I knew my connection would be tight. None of it fazed me though, something that I needed a witness to and so I called Mel to say precisely that. “I want you to know that I’ve been sitting in this airport for 5 hours and it’s questionable whether I will make my flight to Barcelona once we finally leave. If this had happened 6 months, a year ago, I’d be flipping my shit. But..eh. I’ll get to Europe eventually. It’s a little like I’ve smoked all the pot in the world, but haven’t actually touched anything since that one summer at that one music festival. CAN I GET A WITNESS?”

When we touched down in Newark, I had 30 minutes until the scheduled departure of my flight and they were well into boarding when I finally got off my plane. Terminal C is enormous and of course my new gate was on the opposite side of the terminal. You’ve never seen a fat girl run so fast through an airport, friends. I can only imagine how comical it was to observe, since I was laughing about it my own self. When I finally reached my gate, red faced, sweaty and out of breath, they were calling the absolute final boarding. I was the last person to get on the plane and when my seat mates granted me access to my window seat, I collapsed into it with a heavy, sweaty sigh.

And then we sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours.

No matter, we left eventually and made up some time in the air. I had a really nice woman sitting next to me. She and her siblings had all brought their children on a big family vacation (which apparently their parents pay for each year) for a cruise through the Mediterranean. They were on a different cruise line than me, but we had fun talking about our different ports. She really was sweet and had a great sense of humor and a wonderful Tennessee accent.

When we touched down in Barcelona (now 1 June), I was feeling pretty good. I’d had a few hours of sort-of sleep on the plane and so wasn’t as tired as I thought I’d be. It was an easy trip through immigration to get my visa stamp (woohoo! First stamp in my very first passport is Spain—the way it ought to be!) and then to the luggage carousel to get my suitcase. It never appeared, so still undaunted and just so darn happy to be in Europe, I went to the counter to file a claim. The clerk was sweet but made me a little nervous because she said Continental was not very good at exchanging information about the whereabouts of luggage and she seemed fairly concerned I was planning to get on a cruise ship the next day. We finished up the claim and she briefly mentioned that sometimes they put luggage on the next flight which would be arriving around 1:30 (about 1.5 hours from then).

I was poised to leave the airport and check into my hotel, but decided to stick around for the next flight to arrive. I reasoned that an hour and a half wasn’t too long to wait and I’d rather have my luggage in hand than wait for it to be delivered who-knows-when. It was a bit of a gamble, knowing that my time in Barcelona would be limited, but it paid off as my suitcase was one of the first on the carousel when the next flight arrived.

I made my very first European ATM withdrawal but sadly did not get any coins, which I was hoping for because I was super thirsty and in need of a diet coke. I got in the taxi line and after some broken exchanges, my taxi driver understood where we were headed: Hosteria Grau, just off Las Ramblas.



Check in was easy, though lugging my suitcase up two flights of windy stairs was not, so much. However, my room on the second floor was remarkably clean and newly renovated and met my needs just perfectly:



I had to ask the clerk to help me figure out the lights, as I didn’t realize I had to insert my room key into a light switch to complete the circuit for the room. Once that was taken care of, I took the world’s most welcome shower and changed clothing.

Before I left, I had booked and paid for a scooter tour of Barcelona. Exhausted, I had to really talk myself into going on the tour and am I ever so glad I did.
I was the only person to show up for the tour at the appointed time and this was the scooter I was going to drive:



At least, it was the scooter I was going to drive until I did a test drive and Lalo, my unbelievably good looking 29 year old Italian tour operator, said, very sweetly, “Um, maybe you will feel safer riding with me?” Riding on the back of a really hot guy’s scooter? A really hot guy with an accent? From Italy? Through the streets of Barcelona? OKAY.



And that’s how I spent 2 hours touring Barcelona with a man who despises George W. Bush nearly as much as I do and to whom I taught the word “cocky” (also in reference to Bush). He was even sweet when I launched many of my ungraceful dismounts of the bike. Those hours were two of the most fantastic in my life—it was just the most surreal experience to be zipping up and down the streets of Barcelona, climbing Montjuic on! a! scooter!, viewing La Sagrada Familia from afar, passing bullfighting protestors, seeing Port Olympic and so much more.





Eventually we made our way back to the tour office and kiss kissed on the cheek to say goodbye. I walked along Port Vell for awhile and stopped to get some gelato and do some people watching. Eventually, I hailed a cab and headed back to Grau. I grabbed my travel journal and made some small talk with other travelers in the comfortable lounge area before checking e-mail and dashing some notes off to family and friends to let them know I arrived safely.



Then I retreated to my room to do some reading. I managed to stay awake (barely) until about 10 PM, at which point most of Barcelona was just getting their party started, but I figured was a late enough bedtime to not mess me up too much in the coming days on the ship.