The Hilton Diagonal Del Mar, Barcelona, Spain

The view of the Meditteranean...

The coolest bathroom I have ever seen!


European

taste!

By now, we have experienced lodging of every kind - hostels, spare bedrooms, planes, trains, and buses..

I held a quiet anticipation inside of me. You see, thanks to my grand travels and hours spent away from my family, I had accumulated massive amounts of Hilton Honors points. Points that could have been spent, but instead, had been saved. Until now. Yes, I had booked a hotel in Barcelona, with my Hilton Honors points.

This could be a great thing...or a not so great thing. The only other time I had used my points was a bad experience.

When we came around the corner, suitcases in tow, a soft breeze from the Mediterranean, blue sky...what a site the Hilton Diagonal del Mar was.

What you may or may not know about me is that I am an absolute sucker for a nice hotel.

What happened next was just a blessing from above, there is no other explanation. We walked into the grand, open lobby. I waltzed up to the desk and spoke to the desk reception nice man in very fluent Spanish. Presented all my cards and criteria. He was very gracious and accommodating, and seemed genuinely thrilled to have us! He presented me with keys and proceeded to inform me that he was able to upgrade me to the executive level...

My heart began beating faster! Not only a view of the Meditteranean Sea...but a cocktail reception and free breakfast!!! Ah, my heart!! The stuff that dreams are made of!!!!!

The very site of our room just put us in pampered mode. Such contemporary furnishings to my very liking- loving!!! THIS was the life. I'll just let you enjoy the pictures...

First view of Spain

So, here we were! Made it into the airport, through immigration, and then it was off to find our hotel - Novotel in Girona. Yes, the discovery of why the cheap flights work was starting to make sense. What RyanAir does, is offers super-cheap flights to outlying cities that might have otherwise been unknown. This forces the passenger to either bus or taxi into the city of their destination, or stay the night in the otherwise "unknown" town.

By this time, Jenny and I were beyond exhaustion. I couldn't seem to find a way to the hotel, though they were supposed to have a shuttle, and really, now I had to use my Spanish. But wait, I couldn't understand what they were saying! It wasn't Spanish at all - it was Catalan!

We ended up sharing a taxi with a woman and her child who reluctantly spoke Spanish with me. It got us to the hotel. I vaguely recall we looked at the hotel dinner menu, decided it was too expensive, popped some popcorn, ate an apple - and went to bed. Intention - take the 9 AM bus from the aiport to Barcelona, BABY!

Um, let's see...I think we woke up...at 11:30 the next morning????? OH NO! My day in Spain.
Oh well - we got ready quickly, repacked, headed to the airport where we found the BARCELONA BUS! It would be okay - we needed the rest!

So, the first leg of our trip went a little like this:

Yeah! We're on the bus, we made it! We don't really know where we are going, but to BARCELONA, BABY!!!

Just in case you can't find it, they paint the destination on the side. :)

Hmmm, which way do we go? My heart was with Spain, Jenny's with France! Her wish was to come true later...

The gorgeous view from my bus window.
I didn't realize Barcelona was such a large, thriving city. I felt right at home!

The apartment city life!

We did have some funny things happen on our trip - in this case, the bus didn't allow a motorcyclist to pass on the right. The rider exploded into anger, and started kicking the bus and yelling what I would imagine were a LOT of obscenities!!!

After all of this, we arrived at the bus station and bought a map. I knew the hotel was close by but not sure exactly how far. We got information for the subway and tried to make that work - a huge challenge with suitcases and changing lines and wondering where in the world we would end up. The journey was painful, but when we emerged from the metro station, we were treated to a gorgeous afternoon blue sky and a clean city spot right next to the Meditteranean Sea! Stay tuned for the exciting next chapter...since everyone was closed at that point for siesta...

Last plane for the day

After snapping the security card, finishing my book, and getting hit a dozen times by people in the aisle (this is NOT what smart travelers do :), I finally talked with the people next to me, hoping to practice some Espanol that I could use for the next couple of days!

Turns out they were from Belgium, on holiday to Barcelona. We chatted for a bit until the woman grabbed her boyfriend, dug her nails in and started to cry. This was during our conversation. Since I was mid-sentence, I paused and asked what was wrong. She couldn't speak. Her boyfriend looked at me and said "Descending". I hadn't even noticed.

I continued the conversation with them, hoping it would distract her for a bit. She seemed to calm down and then we really got into our discussion. The next thing I knew, we hit the ground. Um, we hit the ground HARD. Like, a collective gasp from all sitting on the plane...

I figured it was a rookie pilot, you get what you pay for, etc. etc. It didn't seem like a big deal to me, plus it was dark. I got off the plane and didn't think twice about it - until Jenny stopped me, made me turn around, and I snapped a picture before being escorted into the airport -

YUP - 'dem were fire engines, lights on and just at a safe distance from our plane... hard to make out in the picture but notice right under the staircase, the image behind the plane...

We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming..

Okay, okay. I can't help it.

By now, on this day alone, I have been on a train, a plane, a bus, another plane, and in 2 train stations and 2 different airports and headed to my third country. ALL in ONE day. WHY would I be tired and giddy? And the day was only half over or so...

So, this was where my sense of humor just really kicked in. During all of these modes of transportation, I traded off browsing my pictures on my camera, reading my library books, and people and culture watching. Sometimes I talked with the person next to me to dig a little deeper. Sometimes I listened to the conversation in front of me. Many times I heard Jenny, getting to know her neighbors wherever she was located in the herd. :)

By now, I have stared at the RYANAIR seat in front of me, over and over. But only by this third RYANAIR flight, have I really started to look at what is in front of me. And I couldn't stop laughing. Take a look:

This is the safety card, usually in the pocket in front of you on US flights. Something most people never look at. Ryanair sticks it in front of your nose on the seat in front of you, against a bright yellow background. Oh - and no tray table, either. This is your view the whole flight.

Makes you want to just look away, doesn't it?

I took a closer look, and found it very interesting indeed -

Let's see, in an emergency landing, one must...

Remove their glasses? their teeth?

High-heeled shoes????

EARRINGS???

My heart is racing! How am I ever going to remember all this in a crash?

Oh, but here is the hardest part - remembering to hold my SKIRT down while going down the emergency chute!!! Notice the up-close version, instructing HOW to hold it down...

I just thought this was really really hilarious. Anyone who knows me can say I am laughing out loud right now just recounting it to share with you! :) Someone actually CREATED this. I bet they are pretty darn proud and probably even got a raise or a bonus for it. Then someone actually gave it a design number and revision, just in case it might get better...

I hope you find this as amusing as I did. Well, you probably won't, but it's making me laugh out loud just thinking that you might be reading it today and smiling!

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign!

Wow, cheap!! A beer from US$1.03?? Vodka and herring from US$3.13??? This just cracked us up! So that's why so many were on Holiday in Poland!!!!! So...onto London. We weren't going to get to spend any time there - this was simply a convenience of sorts to get us to our next flight. What I didn't realize was how much this day would take a toll on both of us.

Since we had been traveling already since 3 AM or so...I should have counted on the fact that we would be tired. Tired and hungry. Jetlagged a bit. Out of sorts. Ready to call it a day?

But noooo, not me!!! I had my sights set on BARCELONA, BABY!!! My dream since high school was to go to Spain. I mean, since that was where I was SUPPOSED to go as an exchange student, you know! Though it would be a small taste - nothing was going to stop me now! Not the Pope, not planes, trains, or automobiles (or lack thereof!), not the Late Game, NOTHING.

So, here is how it went...we arrived at London's Stanstead airport. We had to go through customs and retrieve our bags. The problem was that we had to take our next flight - to Barcelona - at another London airport across town. No problem, right?

Nobody said that there would be limited bus schedules, and I thought we had plenty of time. Hmmm. I thought wrong.

We went to get the bus schedule, and found out the bus we needed...was boarding NOW, about 10 minutes away. Otherwise, there was a risk we would miss our flight (even though we had several hours before it departed!)!

So off we went. Jenny's marathon skills kicked in and she was gone. She found the bus and I caught up, breathless and with a seemingly broken arm and lungs, only to find out we had to get tickets for this trip. The bus driver was none too happy with us, but did hang in there and held the bus for us (this was definitely a God intervention, one of many, thank you!!!).

We rode the bus across town (it was HOT and very STUFFY) as I listened to proper English being used on the bus with people and their cell phones. It seemed to take FOREVER to get there!

We finally arrived, freshened up a bit and found something to eat. We were just missing Poland and Bartosz - when we saw these signs pictured above and had a great laugh!!!!

By now, it was late in the afternoon and we boarded yet another plane. Espana bound, baby!!!!

Guess I took 2 pictures!

I am laughing - I guess I did take 2 pictures when we arrived at the train station in the remote town in Poland! In the picture above, you will see that there are stairs going down - that is where the locked restroom was. The blue train is the one that we had just gotten off of!

The Language Barrier

Okay, now what? It was kind of a rainy day. The guys who had been on the train had caught a taxi to the airport, but that was the last thing 2 adventurous girls wanted to do when they had 4 hours to kill!

So, suitcases in tow, we ventured out into the town that we couldn't pronounce. Heck, we couldn't even get anyone to understand our version of "thank you". Mind you, it was only about 7 AM, so there wasn't a lot going on, but it was a weekday, so anything could happen!

We stopped in a little side store and bought some breakfast. It was interesting to communicate with the store people, they smiled and tried to help as best they could to our American demands - bread, cheese, a little yogurt - why not more polska kielbasa??

We wheeled our suitcases a little further and found a park, next to a busy area of buses and taxis, and vendors selling breakfast goods. Now came the people watching. Kids going to school. Women, dressed in suit attire, getting on the bus. I was DYING to know what these people did for a living. It was a busy city-like atmosphere, yet seemed like a small town. The rain dried up just long enough for us to sit and eat our breakfast and have fun watching the way of this world we had never seen before.

Soon we headed back to the train station to try and get a bus to the airport, which never appeared. I was getting nervous, some guy started asking me a bunch of questions to which of course I had no clue about. Plus we were within a couple hours of our flight to London, and we weren't exactly sure where the airport was! I wasn't about to miss this flight - because this led to the next leg of our adventure...London and then Barcelona!

So, we ended up in a taxi. The airport was so small!!! I couldn't believe that jets even flew here. We went through security with our passports. Evidently they don't get Americans through there too often, as both Jenny and I had our documents studied and gone over with a fine tooth comb. There didn't really seem to be too many that spoke English at all.

By now I was tired...sooo tired...apparently the rush of the last couple of days had done me in...I was pushing my stuff through the x-ray machine, kind of staring off into space...

What? Why am I stopped? What are they looking at? Oh no. Was I being targeted as an American? My heart started beating faster. What are they going to take? My prized Polish vodka???

As it turns out, that wasn't the case...I had forgotten and put my makeup bag in my carryon...this had the distinguished personal item - and not everyone will understand - my favorite tweezers! Into the bin they went, along with hundreds of other personal items that had come before me - scissors, sharp objects - oh my. You may not understand why I was so upset over it - normally, who cares, right? But here I was, in a foreign place, not sure where I was landing next or even sleeping or eating. Man, I WAS tired. And missing my tweezers!

So, it was onto the next plane. I didn't see how all these people would fit on this plane. It really was like a herd getting onto the plane - everyone trying to get on as quickly as they could to get a seat. Jenny and I got seats, put our stuff away, and just tried to relax for a while...

Next stop, London!